Don’t Underestimate Significance of India-Japan Love Affair

Don’t Underestimate Significance of India-Japan Love Affair
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Tokyo, Japan, Sept. 1, 2014 (AP photo by Toru Hanai).

A new love affair is blossoming in Asia. Like so many who have entered the rarefied air of romance, the protagonists, India and Japan, are starry-eyed and filled with expectations that theirs is a relationship of unusual depth, one that was meant to be. They may be right.

There is one obstacle that remains a roadblock—differences over nuclear strategy—but that should not obscure the fact that relations between two of Asia’s major powers are growing closer, and there are many reasons to expect this to continue.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi just completed a visit to Japan, something of a honeymoon between the two countries. By all accounts, Modi and his Japanese counterpart, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, share a remarkable chemistry. It doesn’t hurt that their political, economic and strategic goals are almost perfectly consistent with their dreams of improved ties.

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