Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be making a trans-continental trip to India in March to speak at the India Today 2011 conclave in New Delhi, Palin aide Rebecca Mansour tweeted Wednesday.
I first saw the news of Sarah Palin planning to visit India “tweeted” at an Indian think tank website – the Takshashila Institution.
AMERICA’S MACROSTRATEGIC environment is chockablock with assets unavailable to any other country. If nothing else, the United States has an often-overlooked and oft-neglected bulwark of allies: the Anglosphere. This is Washington’s inner circle of defense ties, and it finds no equivalent in its competitor nations’ strategic arsenals. The Anglosphere is perennially—and incorrectly—declared dead or in decline by the media and politicians. Nevertheless, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States remain extremely close in their military and intelligence relations and exchange vast volumes of sensitive information daily, as they have for decades. On terrorism, virtually anything and everything is shared. The National Security Agency and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters have been nearly inextricable since World War II. The same is largely true of the CIA and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. The various English-speaking nations, in practical terms, even assign individual parts of the world to each other, and each worries about the others’ security equities.
Robert D. Kaplan, Stephen S. Kaplan – The National Interest (via CNAS)
President Bush did the right thing and started to strengthen ties with India. (Counterweight to Chinese ambitions?)
President Obama ignores India.
Palin travels to India on what appears to be somewhat of a goodwill tour.
Yet, Palin’s geopolitical credibility is constantly attacked.
Obama is still fighting the Mau Mau rebellion. The Anglosphere will wait until there is a president who appreciates history and the reality of international relationships.
Great Kaplan piece.
He gets it about the Anglosphere.
Blake – from my Stateside vantage point, there seems to be great interest in things American (especially Indian-American or related to American politicians) in the Indian media so I wonder how her speech will be received? The topic is supposed to be her “vision of America.”
She has good instincts so I hope while researching and creating notes for her talk, she pays particular attention to speeches or visits by other American politicians that went particularly well :)
Michael Kennedy – President Obama seems utterly hesitent and unsure of himself given all that is going on in the ME and the Maghreb, etc. I don’t know, though. If he perceives America as a great spoiler overseas, maybe that is the reason for restraint? At any rate, there is so much going on the most likely thing is that people are overworked and confused. Still, his instincts always seem weird to me.
At any rate, I don’t think he gets it about the Anglosphere.
Lex – agreed.
– Madhu