My colleague, Paul Heinbecker, Canada's former ambassador to the United Nations, once commented wryly that the distance from hubris to delusion is short and the George W. Bush administration covered it in a sprint.

By the end of his second term, Bush was so deeply unpopular around the world that little was required of his successor to establish international popularity and be an early contender for the Nobel peace prize. Simply by staying out of sight and doing nothing, President Barack Obama would have stopped further international alienation of friendly and allied citizens, halted the decline in multilateral cooperation and reversed the growth of anti-American rage among Muslims.

Yet even in this bleak international landscape of the Bush administration, relations with Israel and India stood out for their exceptional warmth. Going by the first year of his administration, Obama may well complete the alienation agenda with both. The glitter of the first state banquet for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh notwithstanding, the relationship with India is adrift under an inattentive Obama.

This is a pity. The signing of the bilateral civil nuclear cooperation deal by Bush followed by shepherding the process of its endorsement by the international community reinvigorated the previously rudderless relationship and spawned massive pro-United States sentiment. Acting together, India and the US could bend the arc of international history towards mutually attractive destinations.

The US has a chance to exploit India's partnership potential in addressing key regional and global challenges by crafting policies that view India as a solution, not a problem. Basing its India policy through short-term interests derived from third-party relations like Pakistan and China will not just reverse the Bush gains. They will also jeopardise many significant US

policy goals for the immediate future and waste a valuable long-term strategic asset. The more than two million Indo-Americans - extremely successful, highly educated, among the richest cohorts by household income and fiercely proud of their dual identity - provide an enduring ballast to the bilateral relationship.

First and, strategically speaking, most importantly, India is a model for all developing and Asian countries: democratic, secular, stable and now even prosperous. It is a striking refutation of the alleged incompatibility of democracy, stability and economic growth with Third World conditions, or even with Islam: India's 150 million Muslims are comfortable with democratic institutions and practices.

Second, India's national security interests dovetail with major US security challenges: containing the spread of Islamist fundamentalism, defeating international terrorism, stabilising Pakistan by nurturing the fragile roots of secularism and democracy, securing Afghanistan, preventing the domination of Asia by China, and stopping nuclear proliferation to other nations and terrorists. For these goals India is potentially America's most important partner in Asia. Japan is a

longer, closer and more reliable ally, but its strategic footprint stops in East Asia. With the exception of North Korea and Taiwan - important long-term security concerns - current US security preoccupations are in the region in which India is the natural hegemon. As the most powerful hegemon itself that dominates the Americas, it is puzzling the US fails to see the parallel with respect to the role but also the jealousies and resentments in the neighbourhood.

Third, on most global challenges, from the new G20 grouping to address the task of an orderly exit from the financial crisis to the stalled Doha round of trade talks and the setbacks and reverses in meeting the threat of global warming, India's cooperation is critical to making meaningful progress. After the Copenhagen collapse on climate change, some commentators made the point that the third party in the G3 after the US and China is not Europe, but India. Europe was missing in action in Copenhagen as a united and powerful actor. Its choice of inaugural president and ''foreign minister'' shows how much it is trapped in its own soft bigotry of low expectations.

Not so India. There the chief problem may be the expectations capacity gap in the opposite direction, where future potential is giving an exaggerated sense of current political weight.

Instead of understanding and accommodating India's legitimate interests and world views and working with India's democratic compulsions, the US seems indifferent to and irritated by them. On the Doha round, how many US policymakers know that 199,132 Indian farmers committed suicide in the 12 years, 1997-2008? One reason is the vicious debt trap caused by the removal of quantitative restrictions under the World Trade Organisation regime that has left India's small and marginal farmers, with no access to crop insurance, exposed to the volatility of international markets and prices. No democratic government can ignore such epic human tragedy. On climate change, should Indians accept a permanently lower standard of living than Americans? In the global media village, this would not be an electionwinning platform for any political party.

The US was previously permissive of Chinese complicity in Pakistan's nuclearisation and of Pakistan nurturing terrorism as an instrument of state policy. The anti-Taliban alliance in Afghanistan was kept alive, among others, by India whose role - it is among the largest donors to reconstruction in Afghanistan focusing on building roads, schools, hospitals and a new parliament - is welcomed by many Afghans who are suspicious of Pakistan's involvement. Efforts to compartmentalise the terror threat to US and Western interests from that to India is false in principle and contradicted in practice by an intricate network of jihadists who work with one another against Christians, Hindus and Jews.

Any government of Pakistan has a vested - and understandable - interest in preserving a friendly Islamist faction based in Afghanistan as a counter to India's role. The faction's total liquidation would reduce US dependence on Pakistan. Why should Pakistan cooperate? Being able to convince the US to exert pressure on India to resolve the Kashmir dispute on Pakistan's terms would be an added bonus. Success on this would not end Pakistan's selfserving half-heartedness in cooperating with the US, would not end the threat of Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan, would not turn Pakistanis into champions of the US role in the world, but would turn majority sentiment in India against the US. Some equation.

Yet in his leaked report, General Stanley McChrystal parroted Pakistani warnings that growing Indian influence in Afghanistan would exacerbate regional tensions and encourage ''counter-measures'' by Pakistan. In a recent poll of Afghans commissioned by the BBC, the American Broadcasting Corporation and the German broadcasting company ARD, India was the most favourably viewed country with 71 per cent and the US third with 51 per cent; Pakistan received 2 per cent of the votes.

The US search for accommodation with China is understandable. The US-China relationship is likely to be the world's most consequential for the foreseeable future. Nor can one reasonably expect the US to lecture its chief creditor (to the tune of $US800 billion) on human rights. But does it help the US in its relations with China to adopt a stance of neutrality on such issues as India's north-eastern provinces? Does it advance US global non-proliferation interests to remain quiet on China's supply of designs and material to Pakistan which then found their way to Libya, Iran and North Korea? To concede Asia as China's sphere of influence when under challenge as a military, economic and technological power?

Instead, an unapologetic robust Indo-US defence relationship, backed by parallel arrangements between India and Australia, Japan and Israel that is not directed against specific third countries, would appear to be in all their interests. As Fareed Zakaria - an American Muslim of Indian origin - has noted, for the US in Southern Asia, the prize is India, the booby prize is Afghanistan. Indians recall nostalgically how they were romanced by Bush. Singh and Obama are equally cool and cerebral, if one is more erudite and the other more eloquent. Like Americans, many Indians would welcome signs of passion to re-energise the relationship.