Of China, India & the US....

President Barack Obama’s top national security adviser has said the United States has “given a full embrace of India’s rise”, leaving little doubt that Washington sees New Delhi as a strategic counterweight to Beijing regardless of what China, India itself, and the rest of the world think of the idea.
The exuberant phrasing from national security adviser Tom Donilon, coming just ahead of the president’s first foray abroad (to Southeast Asia) after his re-election, spilled out in response to a searching question from an Indonesian diplomat, who wondered about the evolving US relationship with India and China, and why in his speech, Donilon had described India as a strategic partner but not China.
“There’s more of an element of competition when you described your relationship with China and there’s nothing like that when you describe your relationship with India. Is it too much for us in Southeast Asia, for example, to expect that one day there will be a strategic partnership between US and China?” the diplomat, Indonesia’s ambassador to the US Dino Patti Djalal, asked after a Donilon speech in which he used the familiar expression of India as America’s strategic partner for the 21st century.
In his reply, Donilon said, “With respect to India, we have given a full embrace of India’s rise. The president went to India on a three-day trip, as you know, and stood beneath the picture of Mahatma Gandhi, and called for India’s membership in a reformed Security Council.”
Meeting for the first time after his re-election, US President Barack Obama told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday that "India is a big part of my plan" after the two leaders met briefly on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit here.
The meeting was brief and unstructured, but the two met and shook hands warmly like old friends. Manmohan Singh congratulated Obama for winning the presidential election.
Obama came here after visiting Myanmar where he met democracy leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi, who had just returned from her India visit. Separately, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon met his American counterpart Tom Donilon for 90 minutes. Before Obama's departure from Washington, Donilon had outlined the administration's Asia policy, especially ties with its two big powers, India and China.