The body language said it all. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi embraced warmly like old friends – also on first name terms – at the beginning of a visit to India this week by the US president that both sides said would put the often difficult relationship between the world's two largest democracies on a new course. President Xi Jinping got a handshake when he called in September.
The US sees India providing an important regional counterbalance to China, and much of the two men's discussions were preoccupied with the latter although the public focus was on trade, energy and breaking a five-year logjam that has held up the sale of American nuclear energy technology to India. It should pave the way for American companies to build nuclear power plants in India.
But the two men were unable to move much forward on climate change, with India still refusing to set specific goals limiting greenhouse gases, as Beijing did in November. And little came of discussions about the Pakistan problem, particularly on how to defuse the challenge of India-Pakistan nuclear competition.
Mr Modi signed a joint statement, however, blaming China for tensions in the South China Sea and suggested reviving a 10-year-old lapsed security network involving India, the US , Australia and Japan that had provoked angry diplomatic protests from Beijing at the time.
The statement and warmth of the meetings suggests a new confidence on the part of Modi that, with perceived hardening Japanese attitudes, represents a significant psychological shift in regional leadership despite India’s need for Chinese investment and goodwill. Beijing’s dismissal of the US visit as a “superficial rapprochement” has a taste of wishful thinking about it.
Mr Obama was the first US president to attend India’s annual Republic Day parade, a show of military might that has in the past been associated with Cold War anti-Americanism and displays of Russian rockets and aircraft. He concluded his visit with a pledge of some $4 billion in investment and loans.