India-US ties | The Rubio repair mission

When US secretary of state Marco Rubio arrived in India for his first official visit, Washington clearly intended it to be a re-set moment. It needed one, as Indo-US relations had drifted into an uncomfortable limbo in the past year despite the new US ambassador Sergio Gor’s efforts to inject vitality into ties by putting key outstanding issues on a bullet-train track. Mostly because US president Donald Trump was preoccupied. When not mired in the Middle East crisis, he was building bridges with Chinese president Xi Jinping—or leaning on Pakistan for diplomatic access to Iran. The perception, as a former…