You know the Washington press corps is gearing up for the summer doldrums when they waste pixels (and, I suppose, print space — does anyone read print newspapers any more?) on intra-Administration warfare. The absence of news they can easily reach turns their little minds to the palace intrigues and Byzantine maneuverings that so call to them, giving them a chance every year to ignore important events in favor of the gossip and chatter they truly love.

That’s why you can find all sorts of tidbits on “Hillary Clinton marginalized” if you play with The Google for a minute or two — the months-long battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic primary that so bored the rest of us to tears was music to the ears of Washington correspondents and analysts, and their lives have been basically empty since. If you read the news, you know the story by now: President Obama co-opted the junior Senator from New York, and put her in a sinecure while he travels the world, receiving the acclaim of cheering crowds, Hillary’s leaking to undermine him, Barack told Missy he was gonna get back at her while they were in gym class, etc. This story line, regardless of its essential truth or lack thereof, will disappear in September after vacations are over.

That’s just as well. Real things are happening in the world, and the American press corps neither understands nor cares. Incredibly, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are involved, and the words “praetorian guard” appear nowhere in an accurate description. Instead, we’re seeing the maturation of the Obama Administration’s approach to foreign policy, and India is paying for it.

Those of us unfortunately addicted to foreign relations spent the first few months of President Obama’s administration sniffing for rhymes and reasons to the sort of haphazard approach to the world our newly-minted President displayed. For every insult to the British Prime Minister, there was a steady and sincere kowtow to Beijing; for every revelation that our worldly President did not know that Austrian speak German (perhaps he thought Hitler needed a translator in the trenches of World War I?), there was a reset with the genocidal psychopaths in Moscow, or a bow to a Saudi Arabian tyrant. In February, I posited that President Obama’s foreign policy was the triumph of liberal realism, a sort of amoral apotheosis in which left-wing tyrants are tolerated or applauded, while right-wing tyrants are treated as (purely rhetorical) evils, and at any rate, no one’s about to go spending lives and treasure to save brown, tan, or, in fairness, white people abroad any time soon. I also suggested that the President, a lifelong legislator, public agitator, and chatterer, was our first parliamentary president, seeing more value in conferences, summits, and dialogue, than actual ends — or more accurately, seeing those wastes of time as ends in themselves.

I believe both of these things are correct, and that we are now seeing a cementing of the Administration’s foreign policy around these two truths. Over the last six months, we have uncovered the last part of the President’s world-view on the world, and it explains why we have been so terribly slow to reach out to India, the world’s largest democracy. It begins with the premise that the most important things President Obama will do — is called to do, is destined to do, pick your infinitive phrase — are within the borders of the United States, and the world outside them exists to finance those things, complicate those things, or facilitate those things.

So the world is divided into three areas: Problem states; states that can make problems worse; and states that neither present problems nor magnify them. The last category includes pretty much all of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, which is why the President can spend time on feel-good tours there, or engaging in his reflexive preference — born of upbringing and immersion his entire adult life — for ruthless, murderous, corrupt, single-party, left-wing regimes. (After all, as a child, he was raised in Sukarno’s Indonesia, and as an adult, was deeply bound into the Chicago political machine.) A man who came of political age when the word Contra in his social circles was not a reference to the classic Nintendo Entertainment System game, but rather a curse-word for those who had the gall to defy Saint Daniel Ortega’s Marxist thugocracy, would naturally be inclined to lash out at Honduras’s entire government’s decision to actually obey its constitution and remove a left-wing president trying to seize dictatorial power. He can enjoy this luxury because Latin America is an issue only for the politically involved right and left in America, and then only a portion of those groups. As far as his foreign policy is concerned, it does not directly impact his domestic plans, and so he has a free hand there.

Afghanistan, insofar as it is a state, is a problem state. China is a problem state: It holds a lot of American sovereign debt, and the President needs that to remain true so that he can continue to socialize American health care, give free college tuition on request, and limit the growth of the American economy (and the American population) through deficit spending. Because this is a President who only believes in action against barely-armed eighteen year-old Somali pirates, his reflex is to send Timothy Geithner or Hillary Clinton to Beijing to remind them that we do not care how many Uighurs or Tibetans they slaughter, so long as they keep up the debt finance. Iran is a problem state because no one will do anything about its forthcoming nuclear weapons (which it obviously will never use, cross their hearts), and so the President actually uses terms like “Supreme Leader” to refer to an unelected theocrat, part of a cabal that just held one of the more obviously rigged elections since Saddam Hussein mysteriously disappeared from the scene. Pakistan is a problem state because it’s almost a failed state, it has nukes, it borders Afghanistan, and depending on the day and the inclination of the reporter, its counterattack against the Taliban is either wildly, successfully unifying the country, or breaking it down farther outside the cities.

Not coincidentally, problem states get deference, offers of dialogue, pushes for American recognition in those all-important international fora, and not infrequently, large gobs of American money. They also get American rhetorical help with states that can make problems worse. If you’ve been paying attention lately, you know that usually means India and Israel.

President Bush was known, in some circles, for rhetorically linking Israel and India, and with good reason: Both are functioning democracies with enemies and potential enemies all around; both are nuclear powers; both face threats from explicitly Muslim powers and Islamic terrorism; both are — especially with attention to the latter by two American presidents — allies or potential allies abroad; and both can serve as useful counterweights to unfriendly, rising regional hegemons, like, say, Iran and China. Unfortunately, they make what the Obama Administration perceives as problems worse. Alliances are there to be broken and used, and so we get helpful moments like President Obama’s chiding-by-proxy of a country living under constant rocket attacks, suicide bombings, and nuclear threats from Iran for the need for more introspection.

And India gets marginalized.

I imagine the folks in New Delhi have already put two and two together, but for those of us outside the process, clarity might be helpful: As far as President Obama is concerned, India is at best a problem-free state that is causing or exacerbating a problem with Pakistan. That is why the President did not bother to call India on his election, why he has not bothered to visit, why his State Department has treated the world’s most populous democracy as an unfortunate relative who shows up at family reunions only to spend all his time blowing his nose on the watermelon slices before eating them.

Worse than that, though, is that India is awakening to the fact that it is now only worth words. This interview with Hillary Clinton, for example, is priceless:

Q: Secretary would you link aid given to Pakistan to tangible action against terror which would also assure India?

A: I am very proud to be in India, to deepen and strengthen our relationship; I want your viewers to know we are always stressing the counter terrorism effort in every country.

She wasn’t even trying there. (Good news, though: She “considers India not only a regional power but a global power.” That and $.65 will buy Manmohan Singh a Coke.) This follows on months of sleights over Kashmir and the inexcusably belated concession that a four-year old nuclear arrangement endorsed by the United States and India will, yeah, probably go ahead. That nuclear deal was arguably the most important development in Indo-U.S. relations in a decade, represented a bipartisan effort from the Bush Administration and the Republican and then Democratic Congress, and represented no small amount of horsetrading in Indian politics to get there as well; and it took six months for the Obama Administration to signal that all was well.

India is marginalized where President Bush lauded it because President Obama does not care. He does not see any Realpolitik value in India, because he does not want Pakistan or China to be angry with the United States. Putting to the side the almost inconceivable shift this represents in America’s attitude toward the world (others should be afraid of angering us), this is a dangerous gamble: The President has chosen to make the U.S.-India relationship one of words and faint praise, a second concern to appeasing a failed nuclear state with a populace that hates America and the Han fascist state whose army regularly publishes white papers with titles like “Destruction of the American Technological Infrastructure as First Stage.”

Were I Prime Minister Singh, I would expect lectures on the importance of introspection, decreased joint military exercises, no more landmark treaties, and sudden demands from Washington to consider Pakistan’s difficulties in reining in its own intelligence services. Another Mumbai slaughter is a small price to pay for national health care in America.