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Atmospherics, substance, and US strategic partnerships

While there is great personal chemistry between Obama and Modi, India is unwilling to become a junior partner even as it welcomes US global supremacy.

Published Wed, Apr 22, 2015 · 09:50 PM

    AMERICA'S global dominance is built on the support of partners who are supposed to adhere to the great power's foreign policy. But at times the allies refuse to oblige, sparking a struggle between the larger US hegemon and the smaller partner.

    The United States successfully turned a declining Britain into a junior partner in the mid-1900s, and currently an economically resurgent India is becoming a US partner without the junior-partner tag.

    Unlike the US-British partnership of World War II - when London had no choice but to become junior partner owing to Britain's rapid economic decline following the war and the corresponding rise of the US to global pre-eminence - India now has greater diplomatic voice as its fast-paced economic growth is helping it avoid the tag of junior partner to the US.

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