Indian PM Manmohan Singh has decided to stake all the marbles on the U.S.-India nuclear deal, risking his coalition government in an effort to push the deal through. The Left parties, which have opposed the deal all along, are already planning to follow through with their threat to leave the government. Singh is counting on the Samajwadi Party to hold off early elections and see the deal through. M K Bhadrakumarat at Asia Times Online describes Singh’s hardball political calculations here. What’s surprising is his reasoning:
He is personally convinced of the imperative of transforming India’s foreign policy and of making the country a strategic partner of the US, and, more important, ensuring that the transformation becomes irreversible.
So one of the emerging powers with a long tradition of non-alignment, and that traditionally values sovereignty arguments over multilateral interventionism is putting its eggs in the American basket. The multipolar world. Go figure.
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