Likewise, there have been proven strategic considerations, besides energy, motivating India to implement the nuclear agreement despite international pressure to prevent nuclear proliferation and a domestic risk of government collapse.

In recent years, India has set a clear target of being an internationally influential country. Therefore, developing relations with the United States to rapidly promote its position in the world has become an important diplomatic policy.

Since the nuclear agreement has taken effect, India has been eager to conduct substantial nuclear cooperation with the U.S. side—to guarantee both political and energy demands.

For a long time, India has been dreaming of playing a more dramatic role on the world stage, and obtaining the sixth VIP seat on the UN Security Council.

Abandoning the realm of nuclear isolation is an important step in the right direction.

Washington's advantage

On the U.S. side, meanwhile, Washing-ton can gain economically from exporting nuclear material and technologies to India.

Then there are other considerations: strengthening strategic relations with India, cementing its geopolitical position in South Asia and containing the development of Sino-Indian relations. The Obama administration is also seeking Indian support for its new anti-terror policy.

Obama's Pakistan-Afghanistan anti-terror policy has given Pakistan new strategic importance—and India has often been left out.

But Hillary Clinton related a different story. Her message was that the United States had deep sympathy for India having suffered terrorist attacks. In fact, she chose to stay at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai—the site of India's own 9/11 last November—during the first leg of her Indian trip, and left her autograph with hotel reception.

These acts are not only meant to win Indian people's hearts and minds, but to ease Indian resistance against Washington, while also trying to persuade India to forge peaceful relations with Pakistan.

Islamabad and New Delhi have long been rivals, but their relations were set back even further by last year's terrorist attack, which claimed at least 173 lives.

Washington's goal is to allow Pakistan to concentrate on fighting Taliban militants in its northern regions. Moreover, Clinton didn't follow the U.S. routine and visit Pakistan during the same visit—something that greatly satisfied India's sense of pride.

U.S. companies can also share big business profits from nuclear cooperation with India. Although India has rights to import nuclear material and technologies from many other countries, such as Russia and France, after it got NSG permission, U.S. companies will have access to a multibillion-dollar potential market if India makes exclusive promises to the United States.

Strengthening relations with India can also help the United States to contain China in the region. Washington has been considering China as a major threat for a long time, and is trying to build a defensive wall around the country.

It aims to create a balance between China, India and Japan, because it believes no country should maintain any uncontested domination over this gigantic continent.

To the United States, India is an important key with which to maintain Asia's peace and stability, because its geopolitical position has natural advantage to contain China. Therefore, Washington has decided to drag India into its grand strategy of containing China.

There is plenty of potential for the development of "U.S.-India 3.0." Meanwhile, elements also exist to restrain the development of their ties. For example, India doesn't hope to see a world with just one superpower—the United States—and it criticizes U.S. power politics now and again.

Nor, pointedly, does it want the United States to mediate India-Pakistan relations, especially disputes related to the Kashmir issue.

India insists that Western countries, including the United States, take historical responsibility for climate change. It points out that their strategy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is stifling the economic development of emerging countries, and that India will not accept mandatory reduction targets.

Moreover, even when India tries to contain China with U.S. help, it also hopes to maintain a good relationship with Beijing instead of sacrificing the Sino-Indian relationship for U.S.-Indian ties.

India has always been a country stressing an independent diplomatic policy. So it will never form an exclusive alliance with the United States, nor will it ever follow U.S. dance steps.

The author is a research fellow with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations