As Greg Scoblete notes, the chances of India actually gaining a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council are not very good, but I found Obama’s statement of support for this Indian goal interesting for another reason. One of the common claims against Obama’s foreign policy is that he has given short shrift to U.S. allies, and critics have often cited the cool reaction of the Indian government to the Obama administration as proof that not all governments were happy to see Bush leave office. Handling U.S.-Indian relations was one of the very few things that Bush managed to get right, so there was naturally a period of adjustment as the Singh government tried to gauge if Obama would continue on the path Bush had laid out. Obama’s handling of India in the last year has shown that the first critique is simply wrong in this case as in so many others, and the second is not really relevant.

Initially, there was an awkward phase early in Obama’s term when New Delhi was terrified and outraged that he meant what he said about mediating in Kashmir. This was a blunder, and Obama and his advisors corrected this fairly quickly. As soon as that was sorted out, thanks to a quick retreat by Obama, relations have slowly, but steadily improved. PM Singh was the first to be hosted at a formal state dinner, and Obama has become the first American President to endorse India’s aspiration to join the ranks of the major powers holding permanent seats on the Council. To some extent, gaining a permanent seat would be a belated acknowledgment of India as a major power, which most other states accept as a matter of fact in many other venues, and in that respect it is an anachronism and not as important in itself. Nonetheless, it is a significant signal to India that the U.S. takes its ambitions seriously. It is the sort of signal and show of respect that the administration could have made to Turkey, Japan, and Brazil over the last year, but did not. Still, if those count as significant missed opportunities, Obama deserves credit for his successful cultivation of India.

The more interesting question is whether the U.S. is able to acknowledge that major and rising powers do not share its preoccupations and to adjust expectations of their cooperation with U.S. policy accordingly. Washington isn’t likely to abandon its fixation on Iran’s nuclear program, but it should give the administration some pause that it has just publicly endorsed permanent Security Council status for what is, in fact, one of the chief “rogue” nuclear states in the world. This is not a criticism of the administration’s engagement of India. On the contrary, the administration’s correct dealing with India stands as a rebuke to the administration’s Iran policy. Further, the favorable treatment shown to nuclear-armed India confirms that states that never join and flatly ignore the requirements of the NPT and go on to build and test nuclear weapons are not censured or isolated in the least. Instead, they are rewarded with good relations and high status. More to the point, if the administration had what it wanted and India were on the Security Council as a permanent member with veto powers, how much weaker would U.N. sanctions against Iran have had to be to satisfy India? Put another way, if India is ready to be considered such an acceptable and responsible power, what does Indian indifference to Iran’s nuclear program tell us about the rationality of our government’s obsessive hostility towards the same?