India in Vanishing Bipolar World: Begins Negotiating Choppy Waters

India and the USA had remained ‘estranged democracies’ for more than five decades. The first serious outreach to happen was after Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister. The US Pacific Command’s army commander those days, called Lt Gen Claude Kickleighter, came up with proposals for closer collaboration with India. Gandhi’s minister of state for external affairs, K. Natwar Singh opined about how the country could play as the ‘regional policeman’ to the ‘Big Sheriff’. But after he lost the general elections in 1989, there was a period of policy hiatus. Same year Berlin Wall fell, and the official end of the ‘Cold War’, was declared. Then in 1991, the thread was picked up by another Congress Party government—that of Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, made his opening gambit for establishing a firmer pro-US regime.