By Lakhvinder Singh

The coming visit of Indian Prime Minister Sardar Manmohan Singh to the United States as the first state guest of honor of the new Obama administration on Nov. 24 has been creating a lot of excitement among India-U.S. watchers for some time now.

This visit is being sold as one of the biggest diplomatic events of the year by the two countries and is expected to give a big boost to the growing relations.

Relations between India and the U.S. have been growing steadily in recent years. Militarily, the two countries have a relationship like never before.

As a sign of their growing trust in each other, in the last week of October, the armies of the two countries organized two weeks of combined training including a complex live-fire assault involving tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and helicopter-borne infantry.

According to Indian army sources, this training exercise was the largest the Indian Army has ever performed with a third country. It was the fifth annual exercise between India and the U.S. In past years, the Indian army has trained in Alaska and Hawaii while the U.S. Army has trained at India's counterinsurgency and jungle warfare school.

Apart from the Indian Army, the Indian Navy and Air Force have also been coming close to the U.S. armed forces. Recently the fourth in the series of annual exercises named Exercise Cope India was completed by U.S. and Indian Naval forces.

In April 2009, Malabar 2009, an annual U.S.-India naval training exercise added Japanese naval forces to the event. In previous years, these Malabar exercises have involved heavy and sophisticated weapons system such as U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups and U.S. Marine Corp amphibious assault forces among others.

Economically India and the U.S. have been growing closer for some time. Economic exchanges between the two are expected to reach more than $60 billion by the end of this decade ― an increase of 693 percent in a span of 18 years since 1990 when India decided to open its economy to the outside word.

Currently infrastructure, IT, the telecom sector, energy and other knowledge-based industries such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology are emerging as important areas in which relations between the two countries are expected to grow further in the near future.

Today, however, the most important aspect of India-U.S. relations are not the growing military and economic ties, but the growing perception of the two countries in terms of working together and helping to solve the world's complicated problems, be they related to the environment, trade or terrorism.

Not long ago, India was seen as a deal breaker in environment-related talks by Western countries. However, recognizing its growing profile in the international arena, India has been readjusting its position toward environment-related talks in recent years.

For some time, India has insisted that it was under no obligation to cut carbon emissions as it claims global warming was the result of the emissions of developed powers.

But recently, under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, India has agreed to cap its emissions and agreed never to exceed the developed world's per capita emissions.

Going further in its proactive environmental policy, India has declared that it will no longer insist on a global environment pact or pledges of financial support and would voluntarily curtail its future emissions.

This is bringing the two countries together on such an important international issue like never before. The Indian leadership's promise that India would be ``a deal maker, not a deal breaker'' at Copenhagen this December has won many hearts in the Obama administration.

Similarly, India has also adopted a new policy approach toward nuclear proliferation, trade and energy-related issues.

In recent years, India has voted twice against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency to condemn the latter's nuclear program, thus supporting the U.S. stand against a former Third World friend and a close neighbor.

In trade-related issues to bring India closer to the American line of thinking, Kamal Nath, who was seen as a deal breaker at the Doha Round by the U.S. and other Western powers, has been replaced by Anand Sharma, a progressive leader seeking to play a positive role in the international arena in a manner that makes a meaningful contribution to finding solutions to major global challenges instead of being seen as an obstacle to progress on major world issues.

Similarly, Prime Minister Singh put everything at stake to have the landmark nuclear energy deal with the U.S. These new policy postures have gone down very well in the U.S. and are bringing the two countries closer than ever before.

Looking forward, there are many possible areas where India and the U.S. can take the relationship to a higher level during this visit.

Foremost among them could be U.N. reforms and the announcement of U.S. support of Indian membership on the Security Council. A closer understanding between India and the U.S. to protect sea lanes in the Indian Ocean could be another possible outcome of this visit.

Recently, some senior U.S. military leaders expressed doubts about the possible role of India in the fight against terror, especially in Afghanistan.

Hopefully, this visit will help clear all misunderstandings on this front and bring India and U.S. closer together in maintaining the peace and security of the region.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul and president of the Indo-Korean Policy Forum. He can be reached at kapcenterkyu@yahoo.com.