Why India Matters

Abstract

Relations between India and the United States can be characterized as strained, while punctuated by periods of friendship and cooperation. Difficulties have been less the product of bilateral conflicts than of problems arising from differing perceptions of the strategic environment of South Asia. The U.S. has taken a global view, shaped fundamentally by the East-West conflict with the Soviet Union. India's view is regional, and New Delhi seeks to insulate the subcontinent from superpower conflict. Viewing South Asia as a strategic entity, its borders constituting India's defense perimeter, India seeks to exclude foreign powers and secure its preeminence in the region. An assumption of American foreign policy has been that the United States has no vital strategic interests in South Asia as such. American involvement in the region has been episodic and derivative of other interests-notably, containment of the Soviet Union and, earlier, of China; over the past decade, protection of the vital petroleum resources of the Gulf and their access through the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean has been prominent. In pursuit of these interests, the U.S. established an erratic strategic tie with Pakistan that from its inception affected the nature and course of Indo-U.S. relations. Thus, in the 1950s, the U.S. viewed Pakistan as the eastern flank of the northern tier and a critical link in the chain of alliances forged to contain communist expansion in the Middle East