India and the United States in the 21st Century

India and the United States in the 21st Century: Reinventing Partnership examines the astonishing new strategic partnership between the United States and India. Unlike other books on the subject, it brings together the two countries’ success in forging bilateral relations and their relatively skimpy record of seeking common ground on global and regional issues.India’s economic growth and thirst for energy create important common interests. The two governments have a vigorous military-to-military relationship, reflecting similar security interests. They have devoted much less attention to creating a common vision of the world, and they regularly spar in multilateral settings. The big global issues in the coming decade, however, including climate change, nuclear proliferation, and international financial reform, cannot be addressed without India.To develop a new model of partnership that suits both countries, India and the United States have to overcome two crucial disconnects: what each wants from the relationship—India is looking mainly for bilateral benefits, whereas the payoff for the United States is global and multilateral; and what each wants from the other—India has been committed to "strategic autonomy," not allowing its foreign policy to be (or seem) excessively influenced by others, while the U.S. experience of partnership has been to be the dominant voice. This book proposes a policy of inclusion and candor, with the United States taking the relationship global and regional by helping to move India into global councils of leadership.

Teresita C. Schaffer has been director of the South Asia Program at CSIS since 1998, following a 30-year diplomatic career that included serving in South Asia as ambassador to Sri Lanka and in Washington as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia.