South Asia contains one of America’s most important long-term partners in sustaining a global order safe for the interests and values of free societies, India, as well as a fragile, nuclear-armed state in Pakistan whose weakening and radicalisation could be more consequential for American security interests than nearly any other single contingency. The region also contains a country, Afghanistan, that may not be the centre of Asia but is a centre of strategic competition among key Asian powers and has cost the West a decade of war to defeat extremism and build lasting stability.
Over the coming four years, US leadership to shape this region will be essential, for both positive and negative reasons. Positively, the consolidation of a wide-ranging strategic partnership with India could change the course of history in the 21st century by establishing lasting habits of cooperation between the world’s largest democracies. Negatively, US leadership is essential to prevent Pakistan’s many pathologies—state complicity in terrorism, weak institutions,...
