Polls suggest the Russian and Indian public also agree in their attitudes: in India, while up to 100,000 Muslims poured to the streets of New Delhi to condemn Bush for the American conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan, 54 percent of Indian respondents assessed the U.S. role in the modern world as largely positive (though with many reservations).

In Russia, we deal with other figures and percentages but it is the same overall: Thumbs down on current policies and -- cautiously -- thumbs up on hopes for a better American role in a world of tomorrow.

One thing about the Russians' version of a world order is equitability. Many Russians feel the pattern The Times of India has proposed -- the United States, for the want of fresh blood in its technological community, is able to outsource high-tech projects to India in return for India's new broad access to global technology, markets, education, and energy -- would basically be right.

And beneficial for Moscow, we might add, because of progress, for example, on the U.S.-India nuclear deal, Russia's opportunities in the Indian nuclear market will also expand because Moscow's efforts have so far been impeded by a series of previous international obligations.

Some will ask why increased competition should be seen as a good thing. In fact, Indian markets accommodate Russian as well as American companies well enough: You can compete with Honeywell, JP Morgan Chase, Parsons, McGraw Hill or AES Corp (whose CEOs, conspicuously, have also come to New Delhi), but no one can think of taking over the entire business. This is simply because closed one-partner markets in Russia, Central Asia, or Europe, as well as India, are already a thing of the past.

There are indeed many people zealously defending -- and as many furiously dismissing -- projections of a future world in which current economic majors will have to surrender their positions, slowly but surely, to the fast-growing newcomers such as India, China, Russia, and Brazil. There are many people in Russia who would drink to Bush's blunders and lament any U.S. success in India -- and elsewhere -- as "yet another" move against Russia.

Knowing that, what we should hope for is an Indo-American rapprochement that could prove them wrong. The Russian debate seems to be divided much stronger along the "zero-sum" line as people increasingly see the changing global posture more as the shaping of a brave new world where old and new players favor interdependence and cooperation than as a kind of zero-sum game.

Hardly accidentally, this is exactly what Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his article now widely circulated across G8 in the run-up to the St. Petersburg Summit: World powers should take collective responsibility for the development of a harmonic international system.

To assess the development of relations between India and the United States is not easy. The worst-case scenario would of course be America's power play behind India's back against China and Iran. With its growing self-assurance as a world power, India is obviously poised to try to curtail Chinese influence; and it might be seen as a suitable agent for applying pressure upon -- if not blockading -- Iran. This would indeed turn 90 percent of Russia's mainland border into several thousand miles of political challenge, which would in turn mean the United States is back on its well-oiled track of causing problems for others rather than addressing its own, ranging from oil addiction to uncompetitive home industries. The main hope, however, is that the Indians are far too clever a nation to dance to an outside tune.

A more optimistic projection is that Bush's new outreach is a message that America is ready to assume an equitable approach to foreign relations.

This is hard to believe right now: Sergei Rogov, head of the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies and one of Russia's most respected U.S. experts, probably knew what he was saying when he remarked dealing with anyone on an equal basis was basically not in Washington's line.

The real world will most likely be somewhere in-between.

The United States will balance between the "new" and "old" relations with India. Where they will go is a question to which time is the best answer.

Dmitry Kosyrev is a political commentator for the RIA Novosti news agency. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.

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