If you want to run with the big dogs...

...you got to stop pissing with the puppies.

The BBC's Delhi-based South Asia bureau editor Paul Danahar writes this excellent piece on the India - US diplomacy and the new row sparked this week by the US Ambassador to India, David Mulford's remarks to the Press Trust of India.

A fantastic analysis, even-handed in explaining the points as they played out on both sides of the row. Especially considering that both sides are neither right nor wrong. Each is just trying to play the cards to their advantage - the US in getting an all-important vote to get the UN to refer Iran to the Security Countil, India in not upsetting the apple-cart vis-a-vis its special relationship with both Iran and the US.

In George W. Bush's world of black and white, the choices in this issue are mut-ex i.e. mutually exclusive. And in a rarity for me, I completely agree. But unfortunately for Georgie (and me), world politics is never played out in black and white. Rather, the viewer needs binoculars capable of interpreting the billion shades of gray that are possible in this drama.

Cooler heads are bound to prevail in this spat, and after all the posturing on both sides (Condi Rice apparently joined in the chorus, warning that the US Congress might not approve the deal if India voted against the US position, and David Mulford had to do the classic back-pedal "the remarks were taken out of context/I was quoted out of context" charade after getting a dressing-down from the Indian government). But it has queered the pitch for the Indian government...thanks to a moment of tactless lapse by a professional tactician.

I mean, how thick do you have to be, to not get the simple fact - nations do not like being bullied around, especially those that have aspirations of their own.

It is too soon to make a comparison, but if this keeps up, I cannot help think of future India-US relations on the same scale as the current French-American relations - quibbling step-sisters who cannot stop arguing/fighting/spitting at each other, and yet cannot be divorced off each other.

Vive diplomatie...