Obama, in contrast, might take the United States back to the old liberal-internationalist view of India as a problem for the global nuclear order and as recalcitrant on J&K. For Obama, India is an interesting place; it might even be important as a regional player in South Asia, but not significant enough globally to deserve special treatment.

India can address its problem with Obama in two ways. India and its friends in the US could try and persuade Obama and his team to rethink their policy pronouncements on India. It will be smarter, however, to make it more difficult for the next administration to reverse the Bush initiative towards India. It will indeed be criminal negligence on the part of New Delhi not to attempt in the next few months a consolidation of the massive gains in Indo-US relations under Bush.

The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg