India-U.S. ties have seen many ups and downs since India achieved independence in 1947. They have passed through different phases ranging from extreme rivalries to close partnerships.

Both domestic and international factors in both countries have played a major role in evolving India-U.S. ties throughout the years.

Immediately after India achieved independence, relations between the two nations started off well. A further boost was given by then-President Dwight Eisenhower's visit to India in 1959.

This visit played an important role in bringing the two countries closer together in the face of Chinese Communist aggression and its threatening expansion into South Asia and Southeast Asia. Relations were further strengthened during President John F. Kennedy's years when India was viewed as a strategic partner against China.

To match China's economic rise, America tried to help India in its endeavor to set up heavy industries. The promise to set up a large steel mill in Bokaro in the early 1960s, for example, was part of this process.

However, ties between India and the U.S. came to a sudden halt after 1965. The India-Pakistan wars of 1965 and 1971 played a major role in shifting America's perception of India, whose leaning toward the Soviet Union during the 1971 war further deteriorated the relationship.

The India-Soviet Union Friendship Treaty of 1971 signaled an almost compete halt to India's diplomatic alliance with America.

The growing cold war between the U.S. and Soviet Union, along with India's joining the Non-Aligned Movement as a founding member, further complicated the relationship between the two countries.

India's strong socialist policies at home combined with strong strategic and military relations with communist countries abroad made the U.S. think of India as a proxy of the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War years.

The sudden collapse of the USSR and the subsequent ending of the Cold War in the early 1990s brought major change to both countries' perceptions of each other. Changing realties at the international level made both see each other's strategic importance yet again.

To cope with a unipolar world, India started developing relations with different power centers. The European Union and the United States were two such centers that received India's immediate attention.

During the administrations of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, India-U.S. ties received a major boost. Important concerns on issues such as Islamic terrorism, energy security, climate change and the changing balance of power in Asia brought both countries together to work more closely during this period.

The India-U.S. Nuclear Cooperation deal was the high mark during this phase of cooperation. Recently in some quarters, doubts have been expressed that India-U.S. relations might be undergoing a slowing down during Barack Obama's presidency.

Obama's anti-outsourcing and protectionist views have been making many Indian experts think ties with the U.S. may not grow as fast they did in the last decade.

Such doubts were set to rest, however, during Hillary Clinton's recent visit to India when she declared a full backing of Obama administration's desire for India-U.S. relations to reach higher levels.

Currently, India and America are enjoying excellent strategic, military and economic relations. Defense and military cooperation between the two countries has grown substantially in the last decade.

Armies of both countries have been jointly organizing military exercises on low-intensity conflicts in jungle terrain, counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency.

The Indian Navy also conducts the Malabar series of exercises with the U.S. Navy involving contraband control operations, sea control operations, air defense exercises, sea replenishment including fuel transfer and cross-deck flying.

Similarly, the Indian Air Force has also been participating in air exercises with the American Air Force for some time. Defense sales are also increasing between the two countries; recently in once such deal, India agreed to buy six Super Hercules military transport planes from Lockheed Martin, a deal worth $1 billion.

During Clinton's latest visit, the two countries signed two very prominent defense sales agreements. Under one agreement, India will designate two sites on which U.S. companies would have exclusive rights to sell civilian nuclear power reactors, potentially worth an estimated $10 billion in U.S. sales.

Under the second deal India will allow the U.S. to ensure that technology of sensitive American defense items purchased by India are not transferred to third countries. Both deals are expected to take India-U.S. defense cooperation to a higher level.

Trade and economic relations are also growing at a fast pace. From a modest $5.6 billion in 1990, the bilateral trade in merchandise goods has increased to $44.43 billion in 2008 representing an impressive 693 percent growth in a span of 18 years and expected to reach $60 billion by the end of this decade.

There are several areas where economic cooperation between India and the U.S. have great potential of progress. Among these include infrastructure, IT, the telecom sector, energy and other knowledge-based industries such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

Encouraged by the growing pace of military and economic relationship growth, the two countries have decided to broaden the scope of their engagement.

New areas of cooperation could include energy security, education, agricultural reform and much deeper and intensive cooperation on counter-terrorism. Surely, the last word on this phase of growing cooperation between the two countries has yet to be said.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul and president of the Indo-Korean Policy Forum. He can be reached at kapcenterkyu@yahoo.com.