THANKS, AL QAEDA!:

India's growing economic and security relationships and interest in the Indo-Pacific region are aligned with its deepening partnership with the United States. Two years after signing the U.S.-India Joint Strategic Vision of 2015, India is a member of the Quad (a strategic grouping of the United States, India, Japan and Australia) and there is talk about making the grouping something more than an annual talk shop.

India, the United States, and Japan already participate in the annual Malabar naval exercises, and Australia may soon join them. While the symbolism of annual joint military exercises under Malabar should not be underestimated, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has rightly noted, the Quad should in addition include technology sharing, military training and strategic planning, while helping to build military-to-military institutional relationships between India and the United States. This is something Washington shares with its close allies in both Europe and Asia, but which is still being built with India.

Yet the two countries have undeniably made great strides already. From being "estranged" democracies during the Cold War, India and the United States today share, in the words of Secretary Tillerson, a "growing strategic convergence." From having almost no military relations during the Cold War, India is today a Major Defense Partner of the United States. From $20 billion in bilateral trade in the year 2000, today the two countries' trade flows stand at $115 billion.

Ever since 1947, Indian leaders have sought recognition for India, based on their belief in its civilizational greatness and the role it is destined to play on the global stage. For most of that time, American leaders have not shared that vision, or even understood what India wanted, given the preoccupations of the Cold War, priorities in other regions of the world, and Washington's convoluted relationship with Pakistan.

Today, however, the United States views India as a potential regional security provider and seeks to build India's security capacity through commercial and defense cooperation between the two militaries.

When it looks at the Indo-Pacific, Washington sees India and the United States as the two "bookends of stability," in Tillerson's words, two "natural allies" who share a commitment to "upholding the rule of law, freedom of navigation, universal values, and free trade." The recent National Security Strategy for 2017 also spoke of America seeking to support India's "leadership role" in the Indo-Pacific region.

The prime minister had Bush over for lunch, also inviting the parliamentary leader of the opposition BJP as well as his Foreign Ministry team. At the Leadership Summit dinner, Bush shared the high table with Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress party and India's most powerful individual politician. It was a thanksgiving moment--a gesture to the man widely seen as the best American president India has ever had.

The emblem of India's fascination with Bush is, of course, the game-changing civil nuclear cooperation agreement that he pushed through between 2005 and 2008. He put his weight behind persuading Capitol Hill, the Nuclear Suppliers' Group and the International Atomic Energy Agency to, in Singh's words, "end India's nuclear apartheid," learn to live with its nuclear weapons and permit it civilian nuclear commerce.

Yet, in a country where he consistently had high--70% and more--opinion ratings almost through his eight years in the White House, Bush's reputation is more than the sum of his gifts. India's ambitious and recognition-hungry middle classes and its business and foreign elites have found themselves completely in tune with his instincts.

In his speech in New Delhi, Bush seemed to see India exactly as Indians imagine it to be: "A vibrant, modern nation built on an ancient civilization"; "a force for stability and peace in one of the most strategically important regions in the world."

On both protectionism and Afghanistan, he echoed Indian sentiment. He thought the recovery from the recession wouldn't be easy but warned against import tariffs--which so worry Indian IT service providers that have clients in the United States--and said his instincts were still with free trade.

On the war against terrorism--which has consumed the Bush legacy--he was categorical that it was an "ideological struggle," made no distinction between Al-Qaida and the Taliban, hoped the "free world" would not "lose its nerve" and warned "I don't think you can negotiate with extremists." In India's dreams, this is the AfPak briefing note Barack Obama will read.

As more than one person in his audience observed, Bush was different from American/Western visitors who either talked down to Indians, sometimes inadvertently, or sought to clumsily second guess them. Bush did neither.

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