I do not suggest that the partnership is already at a stage of maturity or that we are in completeĪccord on all issues. We will need to talk regularly about real-world concerns to the US, which continues to have both critical interests and a vital presence across the entire globe. As India's horizons expand with the growth of our strategic and economic interests, We have created a comfortable space to exchange opinions as trusted partners, with both candour and, often, convergence. In short, in a few years, consultation has become a habit.
We hope to expand these dialogues to cover many more areas of interest. We hold regular consultations on strategic security issues, covering non-proliferation, disarmament and export controls we are working together closely on India's membership of the four multilateral export control Of our trilateral dialogue with Afghanistan. Just two days ago, we hosted the second round Already, we have held three rounds of a trilateral between the US, Japan and India. It is normal that our dialogue architecture covers the gamut of governmentalĪctivity - from social sector measures to trade and global financial policy coordination, from energy to defence, counter-terrorism and homeland security.Īnd it is now entirely normal that our foreign offices consult each other on a wide range of global and regional challenges. It is now normal that we have over one hundred visits at the senior official level and higher-level exchanges per year. Let me cite a few instances of what I mean by the new normal. Because the truth is that much that has happened since is equally significant in the game of nations in which we have evolved a "new normal" in the relationship. This places a somewhat unfair strain of expectation. The problem, of course, is that everything since that definitive moment tends to be compared with the audacity of what we dared to do together in putting this arrangement in place. The centrepiece was the India-US civil nuclear arrangement and all that went into it and has since emerged from it. Worth emphasising that the nature of this change has been unprecedented. I am part of the squad called upon to sustain the remarkable transformation that has brought the US and India closer together than we have ever been in the past. I hope to suggest some ideas to take stock of where the relationship is.