As a welcome curtain-raiser to the third round of the Indo-U.S. Strategic Dialogue in Washington DC on June 13, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that India was among the eight countries exempt from sanctions to our financial institutions because of significant reductions to our imports of oil from Iran. While this is a relief, it does underline once again the unilateralism that makes it difficult for India to work with the United States despite wanting to do so.
The broad setting for the third round of the Dialogue is the global shift of economic weight eastward to Asia, and US resistance to the outcome of its relative economic decline, military exhaustion and indebtedness to its greatest strategic rival, China. Along with a better economic performance and our more mature relations with other regional powers in Europe and Asia, India’s relationship with the US has dynamically transformed over the last decade. That has raised Indian expectations of more mutuality in the bilateral exchanges with Washington.
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