A friend in deed

In showering praise on US President George W. Bush for his personal commitment to implement the civil nuclear initiative...

In showering praise on US President George W. Bush for his personal commitment to implement the civil nuclear initiative, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has drawn predictable flak from his opponents at home. Dr Singh’s warm farewell to Bush at White House last Thursday should, however, mark the beginning of a new trend in India’s diplomatic culture — of owning the nation’s friends in public. It adds to India’s reputation as a rising power that it can acknowledge its friends and keep them. Unlike our leaders on the left and right, blindsided by either ideology or opportunism, urban India has consistently given Bush one of the highest ratings in the world over the last few years. This, in turn, was rooted in Bush’s single-handed reversal of the entrenched US hostility towards India on Kashmir and non-proliferation.

Whether it was in preventing Washington’s nuclear ayatollahs from wrecking the deal over the last three and a half years, or the raw exercise of American power to clear the deal through the 45-nation

Nuclear Suppliers Group earlier this month, Bush was ready to spend any amount of political capital to build a new partnership with India. Over the last couple of weeks, despite an unprecedented financial crisis that has consumed Washington, Bush pressed a reluctant American Congress to approve the 123 agreement on short order. The scale of the opposition was evident in

Saturday’s vote in the House of

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Representatives. The fast track, amendment-free procedure demanded that the India bill get a two thirds majority, 290, in a house of 435. The bill scraped through with 298 votes. Without White House’s steam roller, the opponents of the deal — 107 Democrats voted against it — could have killed it with simple legislative manoeuvre. Within hours of the House vote, Bush began to demand that the US Senate approve the India bill before it adjourns this week and consummate the nuclear deal.

As he brings to a close India’s recent nuclear initiative, the boldest diplomatic foray since the 1971 war to liberate Bangladesh, the PM has also begun a new conversation with Bush on South Asia. For decades,

India and the US were on the opposing sides of the Great Game on India’s north-western borders. Thanks to Bush, India and the United States can now consider unprecedented political cooperation to stabilise Pakistan and Afghanistan. That no one had bet on this remarkable strategic turn may be the most definitive testimony to Bush’s historic contribution to the transformation of Indo-US relations.