Shadow Government taskmaster guru Will Inboden has written an excellent essay on the broader implications of Burma's opening for the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Particularly intriguing is his exploration of the link between the strategic imperatives driving the U.S.-Burma rapprochement and the indigenous reform process underway in Burma itself.

Will's provocative thesis is that, in Burma and more widely in U.S. foreign policy, the choice between realism and idealism is a false choice. In fact, American efforts to shape a favorable balance of power in Asia can interact with domestic reform processes in transitional countries. In this feedback loop, strategic stability is actively reinforced by political liberalization. The salience of ideas about political liberty, in other words, can create new realities that reorder the material balance of power.

As Will puts it:

In short, if the Burma opening works, it will be a success for balance-of-power realists and human rights advocates alike, and might suggest a new paradigm for international relations theorists and policy practitioners in which maintaining a stable balance of power can serve as a lever for promoting human rights and democracy.

Realism, with its emphasis on the balance of power, is an essential starting point for understanding international relations. But it cannot be the end point, because a country's interests and identity can change over time in ways that redefine its role within a regional balance.

Burma is a fascinating case study. It remains an authoritarian regime whose military tutelage is now disguised by a civilian veneer. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is free, but hundreds of political prisoners remain behind bars. The armed forces continue to make war and commit terrible human rights abuses against ethnic groups in the country's borderlands. Burma's rulers have no intention of ceding power to their political opponents -- but they do appear to be moderating at least the façade of their control over society through an incremental process of political reform. Why?

One theory is that the generals fear undue dependence on China, which now exercises inordinate influence over parts of Burmese territory and significant sectors of its economy. Critics argue that Western sanctions pushed Burma into China's arms. The more accurate judgment may be that Western sanctions have worked, encouraging the Burmese regime to create some distance from China's embrace by releasing political prisoners, allowing the opposition to operate more freely, and meeting other Western demands so as to overcome obstacles to closer relations with countries other than China.

In short, Burma's military leaders defined a strategic problem -- a skewed balance of power that increasingly favored China, putting their country's security and autonomy at risk. They then defined a solution -- earning a degree of international respectability through political reforms that would allow them to enjoy a more normal relationship with the United States, Europe, Japan, and their Southeast Asian neighbors. The effect would be shore up regional equilibrium by creating useful hedges against Chinese dominion through closer Burmese relations with balancing powers in Asia and the West. Judging from China's new concern about losing its previous client state to America, there appears to be something to this.

Burma's opening also embeds it more firmly in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) -- which had refused to allow Burma to chair the organization until the breakthroughs of the past few weeks. Burma will now chair ASEAN in 2014, putting it in the leadership of a bloc whose essential purpose is to preclude the domination of Southeast Asia by any external power (read: China).

From Washington's perspective, democracies make the best partners and allies. The United States will remain Asia's pivotal power as long as Beijing's authoritarian regime inspires fear and anxiety among its (largely democratic) neighbors. Asian democracies like Japan, India, and Australia will continue to deepen strategic cooperation with each other as long as their open societies perceive a threat from domination of their region by an unreformed China. This means that one of the best things U.S. policy in Asia can do is encourage democratic transition and consolidation in the region, creating political bulwarks against threats to the existing balance of power - which is also, in important respects, a balance of values.

A senior U.S. official -- Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- has publicly fingered the Haqqani network as a tool of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. What's surprising is that this is particularly newsworthy: ISI's relationship with the Haqqanis has been an open secret for years. What's different, of course, is that the latest Haqqani attack was not on American forces deployed in Afghanistan but on the U.S. embassy in Kabul -- and that the U.S. government possesses unambiguous evidence of official Pakistani complicity in last week's assault.

In addition to killing American and allied soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and targeting American diplomats in Kabul, Haqqani forces have for years targeted Indian assets in Afghanistan, including several deadly assaults on the Indian embassy in Kabul. Skeptics of Pakistani denials of official complicity have long noted that the Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan, has never attacked an official target in Pakistan - further evidence of its collusive relationship with that country's security services.

The Haqqanis offer Pakistan's armed forces a high-impact, low-cost tool with which to advance the Pakistani military's foreign policy goals: hastening the Western drawdown in Afghanistan, putting Pakistan in pole position to shape an Afghan political settlement that marginalizes (and subjugates) the government in Kabul, and bleeding India while ensuring that its popularity among Afghans - and historic interests in Afghanistan -- does not translate into a bigger Indian strategic footprint on Pakistan's doorstep.

From the Haqqanis' perspective, the benefits are mutual: the elevation of their position as a core component of the Afghan Taliban (within which they are distinct from the Quetta Shura and other groups); generous and dependable Pakistani sponsorship (including military supply and intelligence support); a political writ from Islamabad that supports the Haqqanis' mafia-like (and richly rewarding) economic penetration of eastern Afghanistan; and a secure sanctuary in the Pakistani borderlands -- where they are safe (so far) from U.S. drone strikes on account of Washington's reluctance to anger Pakistan's general staff by blowing up a valuable strategic asset.

So has the U.S. calculus changed? A star-spangled array of American military, intelligence, and diplomatic leaders has warned Pakistan that this time is different. Senator Lindsey Graham, a leader in the Senate on national security issues, has suggested that America should "put all options on the table" in defense of American troops fighting and dying against Pakistani-sponsored insurgents in Afghanistan.

In response, the Pakistani military's high command has rallied the country's civilian leadership to reject the U.S. ultimatum to end Islamabad's relationship with the Haqqanis. Pakistan's foreign minister warns that America risks "losing an ally"; Pakistani officials warn of an outpouring of Pakistani hostility and Islamic radicalization should America take its drone war to the Haqqani headquarters in Miram Shah. Apparently the Haqqani network really is that valuable -- and that intimate with -- Pakistan's security services, to the point where the entire apparatus of the Pakistani state is rallying to its defense.

It seems clear that the deal the United States made with Pakistan after 9/11 -- we provide oodles of military assistance in return for Pakistani support for our goals in Afghanistan -- is not sustainable. The tweak to this policy, enacted late in the Bush administration and intensified by President Obama with strong Congressional support, of matching military with civilian assistance to more directly benefit the Pakistan people -- and transform the civil-military balance within the state -- was always going to be a generational undertaking unlikely to produce results within only a few years.

Nor is billions of dollars per year in civil and military assistance sustainable, in the current U.S. fiscal environment, to a country that is no ally when it comes to the endgame in Afghanistan -- and that plays the role of spoiler in America's relationship with the most potentially important rising power of the 21st: century: India.

These developments raise the ugly but necessary question of what a completely different - and adversarial -- U.S. approach to Pakistan would look like, one that dispenses of the underlying logic that the countries are allies at all.

Such an approach would require the United States not to leave Afghanistan to Pakistan's designs but to keep a significant deployment of U.S. troops in place to deter and defeat Islamabad's efforts to renew the sphere of influence it enjoyed there when its Taliban allies were in power. (Naturally, this would be harder to do if Pakistan refused us access to its territory to resupply our forces in Afghanistan). It would call for the CIA to cease cooperating with ISI, which it continues to rely on for access to the region, on the grounds that our fundamental goals are incompatible. It would suggest doubling down on our relationship with India, including supporting a greater Indian strategic, political, and economic presence in Afghanistan (which would be welcomed by most Afghans) as a stabilizing force in a troubled country. It would require us to convince Beijing not to fill the vacuum left by the withdrawal of American patronage towards Pakistan; China would need to pursue approaches that complement ours rather than continuing to provide unqualified support to its revisionist, increasingly radicalized ally.

This approach would also require American leaders to take a hard look at our own history in the region. The United States walked away from Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and spent the 1990s sanctioning Pakistan, helping to spawn the anti-Americanism that pervades the officer corps and broader public today. Are we prepared to walk away and sanction Pakistan again, and if we do, are we prepared to deal with the consequences? Or have the current terms of the relationship so manifestly failed that we have no choice?

Is Pakistan an ally or an adversary of the West? The answer, as with so much in Pakistan, is ambiguous. It remains clear that Pakistan and the United States need each other. But it is also evident that the terms of their relations need to change in light of Pakistani support for terrorism. Many of those who know Pakistan best, including leading Western and Pakistani experts convened by the German Marshall Fund, the Institute for Security and Defense Policy, and the French Ministry of Defense for a transatlantic workshop on Pakistan last weekend, have concluded that key elements of Pakistan's military/intelligence combine were complicit in sheltering bin Laden.

How should the West respond to a long history of Pakistani double-dealing? At least we know what doesn't work. In the early 1990s, after a close partnership with Islamabad to defeat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States slapped sanctions on Pakistan and effectively walked away. What followed was the rampant nuclear proliferation of the A.Q. Khan network and Pakistan's creation of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan also began to fall apart as a state during this period of isolation from the West, with the result that General Pervez Musharraf's 1999 coup was welcomed by many Pakistanis and Western leaders alike. In light of this record, cutting Pakistan off today might be emotionally satisfying, but it would not serve Western interests.

Another option would be pursuing a threat-reduction strategy that reassured Pakistan on its eastern and western frontiers. This would include rapidly drawing down NATO forces in Afghanistan, giving Pakistan the lead role in shaping an Afghan political settlement, and using American leverage to force India to come to terms with its quarrelsome neighbor.

The problem here is that predatory Pakistani behavior in Afghanistan pre-dates Western military involvement there after 9/11. Geography and history may mean that the Pakistani military's obsession with "strategic depth" in Afghanistan can never be satisfied. Indeed, it is more likely that a strong, sovereign Afghanistan with long-term Western partners and capable institutions of security and governance would do more to alleviate Pakistani insecurities than a weak Afghanistan unable to control its territory or govern its people. Hence the argument that one of the best things the West can do for Pakistan is to help the Afghan people build a state that can be a good neighbor to Pakistan -- rather than a chronic source of insecurity that tempts Pakistani adventurism.

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India has decided not to buy American F-16's or F/A-18's for the biggest defense tender in its history -- a pending $10 billion-plus contract for 126 multi-role combat aircraft. Following field trials, it has instead shortlisted the Rafale, made by France's Dassault, and the Typhoon, produced by a European consortium. Skeptics of Indo-U.S. strategic partnership view this as yet another Indian snub to the United States, arguing that the promise of Indo-American entente that was to follow from the historic civilian-nuclear agreement of 2008 has proven hollow.

The charge is that American proponents of closer cooperation with India have oversold India's willingness or ability to partner with the United States. India is unreliable, they argue -- just look at its failure to enact liability legislation that would bring the 2008 civilian-nuclear agreement into force. For the skeptics, Indian foreign policy, rather than tilting in a more pro-American direction, remains guided by non-alignment and an abiding concern for strategic autonomy -- if not an outright hostility to the West, as in the bad old days of the Cold War.

While India's decision is certainly disappointing, this analysis is flawed.

First, the United States has a national interest in Indian strategic autonomy, because one important consequence of India's geopolitical ascent is the ballast it provides to an Asian order not subject to China's tutelage. From an American national interest perspective, it is vital that India retain strategic autonomy by growing its internal capabilities and building external partnerships with a range of important powers, including not just America but also Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, and European states.

The civilian-nuclear deal, advanced U.S. defense sales to India, technology-sharing, and other American initiatives have been designed to build Indian strength and promote Indian development. The mercantilistic idea that the ultimate goal of American policy towards India is creating a lucrative new market for American defense companies is not credible.

Second, India is not non-aligned, whatever the results of one defense sale. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh submitted his government to a no-confidence vote in 2008 over the nuclear deal with the United States -- risking the leadership of his coalition over the future of relations with the United States. India's military exercises more with America's armed forces than with any other, and the United States has emerged as a leading arms supplier to India, successfully selling it reconnaissance aircraft, transport aircraft, naval vessels, and other advanced platforms. Beyond the United States, India's growing set of partnerships are almost entirely with states along the Indo-Pacific littoral that fear the consequences of overweening Chinese power and seek to balance it.

India's double-digit annual defense budget increases, and India's emergence as the biggest arms importer in the world, aren't directed at the United States, or Europe, or Japan. They are undertaken with an eye on China first and Pakistan second. Yes, India's prime minister recently attended a BRICS summit -- though an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman made clear beforehand that India vests more importance in the IBSA grouping (India, Brazil, South Africa) of developing democracies -- because they share common values. The BRICS, of course, do not.

Third, it's worth considering the perspective from New Delhi on the aircraft sale. Despite considerable progress in recent years, the United States historically has not been what Indians would call a reliable supplier of military hardware. To the contrary: It has sanctioned India repeatedly, cutting off sales of military platforms, technologies, and spare parts over several different periods. The United States has also provided advanced weaponry to India's key rivals (Pakistan since 1954, China during the 1980s).

Politically, an Indian government under frequent attack for moving closer to Washington stands to benefit from insulating itself against yet more charges of favoritism towards America by buying U.S. fighters. Another core political objective in this context is to avoid the kind of corruption scandals that have marred previous Indian defense purchases (most notably the Bofors scandal of the 1980s, which brought down an Indian government).  The possibility for a potential scandal over the role of American political pressure should India buy American is a charge the country's political masters are keen to avoid, and are now immune from.

A related political factor is the what my Indian colleague Dhruva Jaishankar describes as "the general drift" in U.S.-India relations, which "has only increased both countries' resolve to drive harder bargains. This period of drift was initiated by the Obama administration's early missteps on China and Afghanistan and has persisted despite the president's visit to India last November as a consequence of political developments in both capitals." The underperformance of the bilateral relationship over the past two years is manifested in this week's decision on the aircraft tender.

Fourth, India's decision not to shortlist the American combat aircraft was a technical determination. India's existing fleet of Russian and French aircraft, and the ground-based support infrastructure for air operations, are not closely compatible with American combat aircraft. Some argue that European fighter aircraft are more advanced than older models of U.S. combat aircraft; it is reported that several performed better in flight trials over Indian territory than their U.S. competitors. The American planes are certainly more expensive, which matters in a country with more poor people than in all of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Indian cabinet will make the ultimate political decision on the tender.

This is no defense of India's decision. The great benefit of a U.S. company securing the contract for 126 multi-role combat aircraft wasn't the immediate benefit of a lucrative defense sale. It was the establishment of a long-term supply and training relationship between the air forces of the world's biggest democracies, great powers with the capability to fundamentally shape security order in Asia over the coming century.

India will do fine with its Rafales or Typhoons. But it's a shame longer-range, strategic considerations didn't seem to drive this decision. Leaders in Beijing and Islamabad are probably smiling, even as those of us in Washington are not.

"We have often seen in our contemporary history that the weakness of democracies leaves the field open to dictatorships."

-French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, Mar. 16, 2011

Yesterday the United Nations Security Council voted to authorize military intervention to protect the Libyan people from the depredations of Colonel Qaddafi's rule. What have we learned from the debate over the resolution and its outcome?

(1) The international system doesn't work in the absence of U.S. leadership.  It was only the near 180-degree shift in the Obama administration's position on a no-fly and no-drive zone in Libya -- in the face of what was shaping up to be a massacre by Libyan government forces in Benghazi and strong pressure for urgent intervention from Britain, France, and the Arab League -- that made the UNSC vote possible. For weeks, President Obama has judged the risks of action in Libya to be greater than the risks of inaction -- with the effect that the United States ended up sitting on the sidelines. But the White House belatedly realized that American inaction was the greater risk to the national interest.

In the meantime, by choosing to stand aside during the early, critical stage of the Libyan uprising, the U.S. implicitly endorsed the status quo and allowed Qaddafi to regain the initiative. Washington also unwittingly signaled to other contested regimes in Bahrain and Yemen that they had a choice to avoid the "Mubarak option" of ceding to the will of the people -- by shooting them -- without risking their U.S. ties. Lesson: America still has the unique power to manage unfolding international crises, which are essentially unmanageable when Washington sits on the sidelines -- and a U.S. decision not to intervene is as much a strategic choice as the decision to do so.

(2) The world's rising democracies need to decide whose side they are on.  Developing democracies Colombia, South Africa, and Nigeria supported the Council resolution on intervention in Libya. Brazil and India did not. Great powers have to make choices in international affairs -- it's what makes them great powers. India's abstention in the Libya vote disappoints its many American friends who supported President Obama's call last November for a permanent Indian seat on the Security Council. India's current two-year UNSC rotation was always going to be a litmus test of New Delhi's ability to be a constructive player at the high table of world politics, from which India was excluded for 60 years.  

It is ironic that India -- which intervened in what was then East Pakistan in 1971 to prevent a civilian bloodbath in Bangladesh's independence struggle, intervened in Sri Lanka in 1987 for similar reasons, and has played a critical role supporting democratic solutions to civil conflicts in Nepal, Afghanistan, and elsewhere -- decided that the same values of democracy and human rights that govern its own society are not for New Delhi to protect and advance elsewhere. The same goes for Brazil. Do these giant democracies really think their interests will be better served in a world in which leaders have an absolute right to slaughter their people -- a world in which an archaic notion of "non-intervention" precludes any active defense of the same universal values that underlie the Indian and Brazilian miracles?

(3) The Responsibility to Protect is no longer a Western concept. The Arab League's urging of international military intervention in Libya to protect the Libyan people was a historic departure from the norms of sovereignty embraced for decades by Arab strongmen. In the explicit judgment of (largely unelected) Arab League leaders, Qaddafi forfeited his claims to sovereignty over Libya by virtue of his treatment of the Libyan people. This is a more progressive, and enlightened, standard for the universal protection of the basic rights of humankind than that embraced by some of the world's developed democracies. 

Should such a principle strengthen as a pillar of international society, history will clearly not be on the side of Sinocentric autocracy or other forms of authoritarian rule; indeed, it may not be either China or the West but key players in the developing world who shape a new understanding of the limits of sovereignty under international law in a way that tilts the international system more firmly towards freedom. Going back to Point 2, one would imagine that India, Brazil, and for that matter Germany would want to be on the right side of this evolving debate.

(4) U.N. Security Council candidacy has a corrosive effect on countries' willingness to stand up for what they believe in. Three of the four countries aspiring to UNSC membership and currently sitting on the Council -- Germany, India, and Brazil -- abstained from the vote on Libya (South Africa, the fourth, voted for it). Their officials appear to believe that being true to their values and voting with their more natural democratic allies on the Council could complicate their ability to secure Chinese and Russian support for their permanent membership aspirations. While this may be true, the opposite logic should equally apply. Their failure to vote with their natural allies by standing up for the same basic rights for the Libyan people that Germans, Indians, and Brazilians enjoy could complicate American, French, and British support for their quest for a permanent seat on the Security Council. 

(5)   France may be America's natural ally in Europe. It goes without saying that the relationship with Britain will always be special, and that British and American interests in world affairs will continue to closely align. The surprise in the Libyan debate is how forcefully France has demanded justice for the Libyan people and assertive action against their oppressors. In fact, France's pedigree as a country with significant military capabilities that is quite comfortable wielding them overseas makes it a more comfortable partner for the United States than conventional wisdom would suggest. Forgotten in the emotional debate over the Iraq war were concrete French offers to form a substantial part of the military invasion force in 2003 if only Washington would give the U.N. process a bit more time. As French Gaullism gives way to closer military and intelligence cooperation at NATO -- whose military structures France rejoined in 2009 -- and bilaterally with Washington, a natural entente should continue to consolidate between the United States and the country whose people showed the world, in 1789, that the droits de l'homme are the gift of no ruler but the prerogative of humankind.

President Obama had a good year in Asia in 2010. It featured a more realistic China policy, a breakthrough visit to India, the shelving of an irritating base dispute with Japan, a surge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan that is creating results, intensification of a successful drone campaign against terrorists in Pakistan, and closer cooperation with key Southeast Asian nations. But challenges loom: China's growing assertiveness, mercantilistic trade policy, and development of anti-access capabilities that erode U.S. deterrence commitments in Asia; North Korean belligerence; Burmese repression and proliferation; and the continuing weakness of the Afghan and Pakistani states. How can President Obama counteract these trends in the new year while building on previous successes?

1.Implement a long-range strategy to sustain U.S. primacy in Asia in the face of China's challenge.

This means diversifying U.S. military-access and basing rights beyond Japan and Korea, deepening missile defense collaboration with these and other countries (including Taiwan), building up naval power in the Pacific and Indian oceans, and investing in next-generation technologies to counteract asymmetric Chinese weapons systems. With sustained commitment and smart investments, the United States is well-positioned to sustain its military edge in Asia, in part because nearly all regional powers find it reassuring and want to enable rather than constrain it. The harder work may be at home: decisively investing in the domestic reforms that liberate the United States to shape a new century, rather than wallowing in growing indebtedness and domestic discord.

2. Invest in the rise of key countervailing Asian powers that can contribute public goods of stability and security.

This includes prodding Japan, with its enormous but latent military and technological capabilities, to act on its new defense guidelines to become a "normal country" that is a net security provider in Asia; investing further in India's ascent to the top tier of global powers and partners; and working with Indonesia and Vietnam to develop the means to contribute to regional stability while maintaining their independence vis-à-vis their giant neighbor. It also means incorporating Russia into the Asian strategic equation in ways that reinforce common interests in sustaining the balance of power.

3. Unite the democracies.

Concern about China is accelerating the development of an array of minilateral groupings among regional democracies. These include U.S.-Japan-Australia, U.S.-Japan-Korea, and U.S.-Japan-India trilaterals as well as new security pacts between Japan and India, Japan and Australia, Australia and India, and India and South Korea. In the meantime, all these countries are working to forge closer strategic ties with Indonesia, a next-generation BRIC. An infrastructure of democratic security cooperation could help deter proliferation from problem states like North Korea and Burma, incentivize China's peaceful rise, and secure increasingly contested maritime commons.

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The biggest disappointment of President Barack Obama's Asia trip was his failure to strike an agreement on the Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement in Seoul. His biggest success was his embrace of a transformative partnership with India. The president can now claim ownership of a relationship that has been on the rocks since he took office, and he deserves considerable credit for arguing that India's rise and success as a future democratic superpower is a core interest of the United States.

The president's vision of a far-reaching partnership with India -- to manage global diplomatic and security challenges, tie the two countries together in a mutually beneficial economic embrace, and promote freedom and rule of law in Asia and beyond -- was bracing. Obama's warm reception by the Indian parliament, commentariat, and public bodes well for future ties between the world's oldest and the world's largest democracies.

In New Delhi, Obama made a strong case for strengthening Indo-U.S. ties -- and to create an "indispensable" partnership that would help define the course of the 21st century:

Now, India is not the only emerging power in the world. But the relationship between our countries is unique. For we are two strong democracies whose constitutions begin with the same revolutionary words -- the same revolutionary words -- "We the people." We are two great republics dedicated to the liberty and justice and equality of all people. And we are two free market economies where people have the freedom to pursue ideas and innovation that can change the world. And that's why I believe that India and America are indispensable partners in meeting the challenges of our time… The United States not only welcomes India as a rising global power, we fervently support it, and we have worked to help make it a reality… [P]romoting shared prosperity, preserving peace and security, strengthening democratic governance and human rights -- these are the responsibilities of leadership. And as global partners, this is the leadership that the United States and India can offer in the 21st century.

Obama's expressed ambitions for Indo-U.S. ties came just in time to check a growing chorus in Washington of pessimism toward the relationship. Most prominent among the skeptics is George Perkovich, the esteemed vice president for studies of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, whose foundational book on India's development of nuclear weapons was an inspiration for this author, and many others, to embrace the study of India. Dr. Perkovich was an India expert long before it was popular, so his arguments carry great weight. That is why his recent Carnegie report arguing that India cannot be the partner the United States wants it to be -- and that ambitions of the kind Obama expressed for the relationship are actually harmful to it -- deserves attention.

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The Center for a New American Security has just released an important report laying out a concrete vision and action agenda for the future of U.S.-India relations. Co-chaired by former deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, and guided by CNAS senior fellow Richard Fontaine, the study group (on which I served) that produced the report seeks to provide a blueprint for the Obama administration as it considers how to reinvigorate relations with India, which have drifted over the past 22 months. As the report puts it:

The transformation of U.S. ties with New Delhi over the past 10 years, led by Presidents Clinton and Bush, stands as one of the most significant triumphs of recent American foreign policy. It has also been a bipartisan success… Many prominent Indians and Americans, however, now fear this rapid expansion of ties has stalled. Past projects remain incomplete, few new ideas have been embraced by both sides, and the forward momentum that characterized recent cooperation has subsided. The Obama administration has taken significant steps to break through this inertia, including with its Strategic Dialogue this spring and President Obama's planned state visit to India in November 2010. Yet there remains a sense among observers in both countries that this critical relationship is falling short of its promise.

The stakes are high: the United States has a compelling interest in facilitating democratic India's emergence as a global power to help shape a world order conducive to our common interests and values. More particularly, as the report notes, U.S. interests in strengthening ties with India are premised on:

• Ensuring a stable Asian and global balance of power.
• Strengthening an open global trading system.
• Protecting and preserving access to the global commons.
• Countering terrorism and violent extremism.
• Ensuring access to secure global energy resources.
• Bolstering the international nonproliferation regime.
• Promoting democracy and human rights.
• Fostering greater stability, security and economic prosperity in South Asia, including in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

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