India recently launched their first Indian-made nuclear submarine. They relied very heavily on Russian help, but obviously going forward they will be able to build items such as nuclear-powered-and-armed submarines on their own.
What struck me, at least, from this article is how the USA isn't mentioned. Like most Americans I tend to think that everything in the world is about us. However, it does seem clear that if there is a message being sent by this submarine, it is primarily to China, with Pakistan stinging from the fact that India is able to pursue such projects while they can't.
India's rise as a world power, seen through an USA-centric lens, is encouraging. While they have their share of problems, India's government can be said to be at least as open and benign toward its citizenry as ours, and as we've seen through nimh's excellent reporting, India has a vibrant democratic process. They're close allies with the USA, and since we're still indebting ourselves to China at an insane pace, it's nice to see an allied nation make moves toward being able to take a leadership role in that part of the world.
Let's face it: America's reign as the world's superpower is over. We'll still command respect and appear to be preeminent among nations, at least to ourselves, for a while because of the inertia of history. But our time is over - and really, I'm ready for someone else to muck things up for a while.
