A Strong U.S.-India Partnership Is in Our Strategic Interest

James Jay Carafano

Security, Asia

The U.S.-India strategic relationship could play a pivotal role in ensuring peace and stability in Asia. The only problem is that there is no framework for creating the right sort of relationship.

Congress has created numerous rules regarding how America goes about establishing strategic relationships. Unfortunately, those rules don’t work well in the world as it exists in the twenty-first century.

Over many decades, the United States has established a two-tier system. In the top tier are our formal allies. Alliances were—and to a large extent remain—the coin of the realm for U.S. statecraft and security relationships.

No worries. George Washington’s ghost won’t be haunting us because of that. When Washington warned against entering into “entangling alliances,” he wasn’t enunciating an immutable principle of foreign policy. He was settling an argument: that the young republic should not insert itself into the endless squabbling between France and England by aiding one side or the other. That made sense then.

But when America became a global power, with global interests and global responsibilities, strategic needs changed. After World War II, the United States and allies needed an alliance structure to deal with long-term concerns. Persistent concerns require persistent relationships, both to demonstrate the willingness to take joint action and to assure access to facilities and forces that enable the U.S. to project power around the world.

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These post-war alliances included both broad regional coalitions like NATO and bilateral defense treaties like those with Japan and South Korea.