Obama's 'grand' finale?
These were some of the early reactions from the foreign policy cognoscenti and lay analysts to President Obama's address to the Indian parliament. Others, still in a minority as the evening wore on, bemoaned that it was oratory without substance.
Even Mr Obama's sternest critics conceded there was something to praise in the speech. His invocation to India - where he even chose language from one of the poems of Nobel Prize-winner Rabindranath Tagore - won a lot of brownie points. As analyst Zoya Hasan said: "It was a nice and positive appreciation of India. Indians looking for praise and flattery got that in dollops."
Others, like strategic affairs analyst Bharat Karnad, saw things differently. "The platitudes in the oratory were soaring. Mr Obama was supposed to be pressing the right buttons. But how hard did he want the buttons pushed?"
Good question. For when it came down to the bare essentials of the speech, the euphoria waned a bit.
Some felt Mr Obama's endorsement of a permanent seat for India in the UN did not sound very convincing. Others pointed out that the Republican opposition to Mr Obama was far more pro-Indian and may have gladly committed to India's place in the UN. As leading journalist MJ Akbar said: "His heart was not in [India's] membership. But it's an improvement from saying nothing."
Others like Sumit Ganguly, director of research at the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University, Bloomington, defended Mr Obama's position, saying that it was "not possible for him to say anything more" because he "has to go home and build domestic consensus on the issue". In other words, there is no use being churlish and cribbing about the fact that he did not give a firmer commitment.
Most felt that Mr Obama "rapped India's knuckle" by saying that entry to the Security Council came with the essential caveats of responsibility, and the fact that all members have to abide by all resolutions, including on Iran and nuclear proliferation.
"They will be watching India's conduct as a non-permanent member over the next two years to see whether we are fulfilling those conditions. That is implicit in the speech. Obama is asking us to distance us from Iran. There are the beginnings of that in the speech," said a former Indian diplomat KC Singh.
Will India listen?
Many here say Mr Obama's criticism of "greedy and paranoid" Burma - a strategic friend of India - is misplaced. The US, they say, has a messy record of "nourishing military regimes", especially Pakistan.
It is difficult to see Mr Obama satisfying Indians fully on his stand on Pakistan. He clearly told the parliament that terror havens in Pakistan were unacceptable, echoing what Indian PM Manmohan Singh told reporters earlier in the day. Analysts say he mentioned Pakistan half a dozen times in the speech, but didn't come down hard enough on it for "encouraging state-sponsored terrorism against India".
"Our evidence shows collusion between the government and terrorists. He doesn't say a word about that apart from the cliches," says Mr Akbar. But don't despair, said another analyst. "US's relationship with India is multi-faceted. With Pakistan it is only a transactional one."
Only time will tell whether the speech is an inflection point in the relationship between the two countries. It may not have been a game-changing, dramatic speech - that could be expecting too much from a president who is under siege at home - but it did point to certain maturing and consolidation of ties between two nations who were direly suspicious of each other even a couple of decades ago.
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