By Rohan Joshi
Narendra Modi’s government is finally letting go of the past and opening a new era in relations with the United States.
On December 3, 1971, while Indian and Pakistani forces were engaged in pitched land and air battles, then-U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger convened a meeting of the National Security Council’s Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG). “I’m getting hell every half hour from the President that we are not being tough enough on India,” Kissinger is reputed to have said to the WSAG, “…he does not believe we are carrying out his wishes. He wants to tilt in favor of Pakistan.”
By the ninth day of the war and with Indian troops barely 100 kilometers away from Dacca, the capital of East Pakistan, the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Enterprise sailed into the Bay of Bengal ostensibly on a rescue and relief mission for stranded U.S. citizens in East Pakistan. Although this did little to influence the eventual outcome of the 1971 India-Pakistan war — Pakistani forces surrendered to the Indian army five days after the aircraft carrier’s arrival — India construed the act as hostile and as an intent to coerce.as
It would take another two decades before signs of a thaw between the countries emerged from the ashes of the Cold War. The U.S.-India relationship has encouragingly evolved from a period of arms-length interaction predicated on mutual suspicion to one where there is not only a significant convergence of strategic and economic interests and objectives, but also an acknowledgement of these common interests.
President Obama’s visit to New Delhi on the occasion of India’s 66th Republic Day was a significant demonstrator of that acknowledgement. For years, governments in India and the U.S. found it challenging to translate a generally favorable disposition among their citizens into policy. American citizens, for example, view India favorably; in fact, India’s favorability ranking (72 percent) in Gallup’s poll in the highest for any country with which the U.S. doesn’t have some form of military alliance. Similarly, the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project (PDF) finds that Indian citizens view the U.S. more favorably than they do any other foreign country.
Read the full story at The Diplomat