That a charismatic African-American, Senator Barack Obama, has a good shot at becoming the next US President is indeed a historic moment in the evolution of American domestic politics. For all its extraordinary interest and vicarious participation, the rest of the world does not have a vote in the US elections. In the light of our own experience, it should not be difficult to see that large democracies don’t give a damn to outsiders’ views.

Given America’s global weight, many parts of the world will be affected by the potential foreign policy changes under a President Obama. Those changes are likely to be within the known range of disputation in the US foreign policy establishment and entirely unrelated to the unfolding of a post-racial America.

New Delhi’s problem with Obama arises from the prospect that he might reverse President George W. Bush’s bold departures from the traditional US policy towards India. To be fair, in his outreach to the influential Indian-American community, Obama has promised to build a “close strategic partnership” with New Delhi.

But the devil, as always, is in the detail. Parsing Obama’s statements so far, there is the danger that India’s two core national security concerns — nuclear weapons and Jammu and Kashmir — might be back in play under a Democratic administration.

Thanks to the vacillations of the UPA government, the implementation of the historic civil nuclear initiative in the remaining months of the Bush term appears increasingly difficult. If India kicks the can down the road, there might be serious political trouble under an Obama administration.

... contd.