The British statesman Lord Palmerston once said, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

India has long taken that dictum to heart, nowhere more so than in its approach to the U.S.

The U.S.-India relationship has never rested on sentimental notions of democratic fraternity or capitalist kinship. It has always reflected Palmerston’s realist precept that interests, not ideals, define relations between states. The relationship is the vector sum of cross-cutting interests — strategic, economic and political — shifting over time and rarely coherent. These dynamics are on full display today.

President Trump’s return to the White House, amid a fluid multipolar globe and the gradual ero

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