Posted by
KsReaganite on Friday, November 27, 2009 11:50:34 AM
It is only fitting that the first state dinner of the Obama presidency was for the Prime Minister of India. I will venture out a loud prediction that in thirty odd years, the only ‘other’ super power will be India. For all the talk of a united Europe, resurgent Russia, and gigantic China becoming peers to the greatness of the United States, frankly it hasn’t happened and is not likely to. Sure, Europe or Russia or China are great powers with even greater potential in some areas of achievement. But none of them have the ‘package’ of India’s strengths, a package that mirrors that of a rising America of the 1920s and predicates sustainable success across the board.
Supporting the infrastructure of a multi-party federal democracy is a market that is growing by the thousands every day as more and more Indians leap into the middle class and hundreds join the elite of information technology professionals. Undergirding a very diverse multi-ethnic society in India is the extended family unit, not unlike our own during the frontier days of the late nineteenth century, which is largely untouched by the meltdown of the family structure that rages through much of old Europe. Old fashioned in many ways but equipped with cell phones and speaking English in the spheres of commerce and technology, Indians are a bunch on the move with strength.
Not surprisingly that strength is also visible in India’s military. Producing much of the hi-tech hardware itself, manned by regiments whose warrior traditions have been proven from the fields of the Flanders to the peaks of the Himalayas, India’s million strong armed forces are easily a match for China and Russia today (interestingly, today India has more aircraft carriers than Russia and China put together).
India has potential for the long term, a potential built on a sustaining blend of participatory politics, strong family structure, and an economy fuelled by a mass market and professionals of tomorrow’s technology. This will be our adversary, hopefully, without being our enemy.