The second round of the “2 plus 2” dialogue between India and the United States — involving the foreign and defence ministers of the two countries — which concluded in Washington last week — appears to give us a new paradigm, that in India-US relations two plus two is on a trajectory to becoming six.
The press statement of the ministry of external affairs, issued a day after the 2 plus 2 engagement of December 18, is a transcript of the statements of US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, US defence secretary Mark Esper, minister for external affairs S. Jaishankar and defence minister Rajnath Singh to the media in Washington. It was followed by a brief question and answer session. It is possibly the clearest enunciation that the Narendra Modi government is seeking the kind of engagement with the US that India had developed with the USSR in the bipolar, Cold War era. Read More…
