He has sent repeated signals that New Delhi is not integral to his
Asian security architecture. Partly as a result of his country's
economic crisis, he has bent over backwards to accommodate China. His
open advocacy of protectionism has been most visibly targeted at
outsourcing of technology jobs to India. He headlined anti-trade
legislation by saying it would punish those who created jobs in
Bangalore rather than Buffalo, a special mention that was
extraordinarily impolitic and did not go unnoticed in India. In contrast, the tariff war against Chinese tyres has not been posited in such stark bilateral terms. This
past week, the Obama team reversed a decade of American nuclear
pragmat...

He has sent repeated signals that New Delhi is not integral to his
Asian security architecture. Partly as a result of his country's
economic crisis, he has bent over backwards to accommodate China. His
open advocacy of protectionism has been most visibly targeted at
outsourcing of technology jobs to India. He headlined anti-trade
legislation by saying it would punish those who created jobs in
Bangalore rather than Buffalo, a special mention that was
extraordinarily impolitic and did not go unnoticed in India. In contrast, the tariff war against Chinese tyres has not been posited in such stark bilateral terms. This
past week, the Obama team reversed a decade of American nuclear
pragmatism and went back to an outdated non-proliferation agenda that
should have died, really, in the 1990s. Once more, India has been asked
to give up its nuclear weapons and sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty as a second-tier power. Most alarmingly, Mr Obama has swung
wildly on Afghanistan-Pakistan (AfPak). At various points his diplomats
and Generals have said different things. Yet, in all this the
overarching political message has been missing.

There has been a remarkable absence of clarity on Mr
Obama's strategic goals. In the early months, it was easy to pretend he
was making up his mind. Now, it would seem he has no mind. …

Given the intensely and admirably egalitarian nature of the
United States presidential election process, it has always been a
theoretical possibility that the country will send to the White House a
person inexperienced in global affairs and unequal to the international
situation before him. Often this has not been the case, and incumbents
have risen to the job. Sixty years ago, Harry S Truman had limited
first-hand knowledge of great power bargaining but turned out to be
farsighted enou...

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There has been a remarkable absence of clarity on Mr
Obama's strategic goals. In the early months, it was easy to pretend he
was making up his mind. Now, it would seem he has no mind. …

Given the intensely and admirably egalitarian nature of the
United States presidential election process, it has always been a
theoretical possibility that the country will send to the White House a
person inexperienced in global affairs and unequal to the international
situation before him. Often this has not been the case, and incumbents
have risen to the job. Sixty years ago, Harry S Truman had limited
first-hand knowledge of great power bargaining but turned out to be
farsighted enough to anticipate the Cold War. Mr Obama is the
antithesis of this phenomenon. He is completely out of his depth and
will probably leave behind a dangerous and unsure legacy. India could
have done without this neophyte.

So could America and the rest of our allies.