Over the years, New Delhi has sent some of its best to Washington to explain India, a country of multitudes and mysteries not intuitively understood in the West. Some excelled, some succeeded more than others, while some got lost between Capitol Hill and the White House. It s a tough assignment - policy volcanos erupt regularly, US bureaucracy is demanding and opinion-makers hard to satisfy. One critical article in Foreign Affairs and it s Delhi, we have a problem of Apollo 13 proportions.
Washington's strategic embrace of New Delhi owes both to bilateral efforts and geopolitical concerns. Some divergences remain, but ultimately, mutual interests can be expected to trump other concerns.
The Indian position on the Russia-Ukraine war and the unconditional treaty between China and Russia appear to have caused some ripples in India-US relations and led to a reappraisal of India s usefulness to the US in the eventuality of a conflict with China, notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.