Obama Moves Beyond Cold War With India as Russian Tanks Roll
By David J. Lynch and Angela Greiling Keane Jan 27, 2015 1:33 AM ET
It’s not every day that an American president reviews a parade of Russian military hardware.
On a rainy Monday in New Delhi, that’s exactly what President Barack Obama did as the invited “chief guest” at India’s Republic Day parade.
His presence personified the closer U.S.-Indian ties that officials have been at pains to highlight during the president’s three-day visit. Obama looked on as Russian-made T-72 tanks -- once a mainstay of the defunct Warsaw Pact -- rolled past underneath a canopy of streaking Russian fighters.
“India obviously has a longstanding defense relationship with Russia, but the relationship with us is on the upswing,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, told reporters in New Delhi on Monday. “It’s a Cold War context. That has been in the past part of the source of mistrust and differences between our two countries. But we’re moving beyond that.”
Reverberations from that movement are being felt in Moscow -- and even more so in Beijing, where the Chinese government has reacted to this week’s Indo-U.S. summit with a mixture of scorn and defensiveness.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-26/obama-turns-page-with-india-on-cold-war-as-russian-tanks-roll-by.html
