It was an American diplomat, Dennis Kux, who famously termed the United States and India “estranged democracies” during the Cold War era. The historic India-US civil nuclear energy agreement, authored by President George Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was seen as converting them into “engaged democracies”. That honeymoon is not viewed any longer as having lasted more than a decade. President Donald Trump , it is widely believed, has downgraded a “strategic partnership”, what President Barack Obama called the “defining partnership of the 21st century”, to a purely transactional relationship. The recent visit of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is being interpreted as an attempt to reduce the transactionalism and return to a more “strategic” relationship based on “geopolitical” convergence. However, it bears mentioning that even this “convergence” of interests is defined by transactionalism. The fact is that the so-called India-US strategic partnership was always based on a transactional foundation.…