India and the US are multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracies. The two countries share values such as faith in democracy and secularism. Given the congruence in values, often there were calls for a ‘strategic partnership’ between the two countries. For instance, President Obama told the Indian Parliament that “the relationship between the US and India—bound by our shared interests and our shared values—will be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century. This is the vision that our nations can realize together.” Scholars such as Stephen Cohen have pointed out that the most significant factor of the new US-India relationship is that it is not based on the relationship between the two governments, but rather on the relationship between their two societies and their economies. This relationship between two societies is also evolving into a strong inter-governmental relationship. In the words of US Secretary of State John Kerry, “The two nations share a common DNA and today collaborate in almost every field of human endeavour.”

The US and India have embarked upon a new bilateral program in early 2004, known as the Next Steps in the Strategic Partnership (NSSP). Under the NSSP program, “the US has agreed to work with India on a quartet of security issues: civilian nuclear technology, civilian space technology, high technology trade, and missile defence.” Furthermore, the India-US nuclear deal (2008) was seen as a watershed in the transformation of the relationship between these two countries. Inspite of certain hurdles in the execution of the deal, the broader picture/trajectory of India-US engagement looks good and is poised for all-round growth and improvement. The first paper in this issue explores some of the emerging contours of the India-US relationship in the 21st century.

B Ramesh Babu, in the paper, “Friends, Not Allies: India-US Equation in the 21st Century”, observes that over the last six decades, upswings and downswings have been a recurring feature of India-US equation, mostly downswings till the 1990s. The demise of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism, and two decades of liberalization and globalization since the 1990s have brought the two “estranged democracies” closer than ever before. Furthermore, the India-US nuclear deal of 2008 ushered in the real breakthrough in the bilateral relations between the two countries. Even though the broader picture of India-US engagement in the 21st century looks good and is poised for all-round growth and improvement, convergence at the conceptual level and divergence at the concrete level will continue to be the enduring hurdle on the way.

Priya Singh, in the paper, “Iran and Israel: Construing the Past and Envisaging the Future”, analyzes the key factors responsible for antagonistic Iranian-Israeli strategic rivalry. The Iranian Revolution of 1979, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, apparently posited Iran and Israel on opposing ends of the geopolitical and ideological spectrum. Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons capability and its political and military support to Hizballah and Hamas has infuriated Israel and intensified tensions between the two countries. Iran, for its part, views Israel as a geopolitical and military rival, and as a challenge to its ambitions of becoming the regional superpower in the Middle East. In the near future, if the emerging Iranian leadership changes their anti-Israeli ideological stance, it is possible that Israeli leaders could frame the Iranian threat quite differently.

Nicos Panayiotides, in the paper, “Great Powers Vs. Weak States: The Case of Cyprus”, deals mainly with the Cyprus problem. The author uses the patron-client relations in order to show the limits weak states like Cyprus face in implementing foreign policy. The author observes that Cyprus problem is very difficult to solve because of the imbalance of power between Turkey and Greece. Furthermore, the dependence of the West on Turkey in the sensitive region renders the negotiating process extremely difficult. The negotiations collapsed mainly because of the conflicting views of the two sides about the kind of federation that should come up. Finally, the problem can be solved only if the parties accept the notion of a genuine federation that will evolve the unitary state of Cyprus into a federal one.

Laurent Metzger, in the paper, “New Light on the Emergency: The Communist Insurrection in Malaya (1948-1960)”, sheds new light on the case regarding the Emergency, the Undeclared War, that spread in Malaya in the aftermath of the Second World War. At the beginning of the 21st century, a brand new set of documents on that period came to light, thanks to some of the former Malayan Communist Party (MCP) members. The new documents give us a better understanding of what happened and provide a complete new outlook of the communist insurrection in Malaya (1948-1960). The author also analyzes the three main reasons for the success of the British forces against the MCP: military strength, support of the Malayan people and weakness of the communists.

-- Kalluri Raj Reddy
Consulting Editor