India-US relations: News and Discussions IV

[S_Madhukar]

US already has a lot of informal ambassadors in India ranging from the charities to neta/babus to Shri Pappu hence they don’t need an actual one . They don’t take us seriously because they believe they have enough agents to chart and influence our course predictively to doom and all they need is to provide the fuel and GPS for this

[arshyam]

There is no strategic partnership for India with the US possible for the next few decades; everything will be transactional.

Actually, this should be rephrased a bit:

There is not, and never has been, any strategic partnership between India and the US, everything has been, and will be, transactional and tactical. The evidence to support this is too stark to ignore or paper over, and this transactional approach has been consistently bipartisan over decades.

The only "strategic" partnership was between some beltway bandits and some of their equivalents in New Delhi, which they kept parroting everywhere. Ironically, our own forum had called the previous avatar of this thread as "India-US Strategic News and Discussion", though we should have known better.

I know some people say that "just wait three and a half years and then we can put this behind us". No, we can't. Trump is merely one particular virulent manifestation of a sickness in a whole lot of Americans' psyche. The most charitable interpretation of the disease is that this is all a reaction to the browning of America.

I see Trump as an expression of American free will, since he came via an election victory. So clearly, there is a constituency of support for what he does, our (BRF's) likes or dislikes notwithstanding. This is not surprising, and, in one aspect, I am happy that this behaviour is out in the open. It will only open the eyes of the current generation of young Indians that there are no real friends out in the world, and change our mindset about shatrubodh, atmanirbharta, etc.