Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis
176 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
ance China. Washington thus began to convey its support for New Delhi
in ways that would have seemed unimaginable a few years earlier. The
United States started to work with India in four arenas in which India’s
possession o nuclear weapons had previously made meaningful coop-
eration all but impossible: civilian nuclear safety, civilian space pro-
grams, high-tech trade, and missile defense. That step laid the foundation
for the achievement o Bush’s second term, the civilian nuclear agree-
ment, which inaugurated resumed cooperation with New Delhi on civil-
ian nuclear energy without requiring it to give up its nuclear weapons.
Skeptics in and out o government argued that the United States
ought to oer its support only to the degree that India would recipro-
cate by consistently aligning its policies with Washington’s aims. But
such a demand would have been a recipe for failure. India was too big
to forgo its vital national interests when they collided with U.S. prefer-
ences, and it was too proud a nation to be seen as Washington’s minion.
It was also much weaker than the United States and could not often
make substantial direct contributions toward realizing U.S. objectives.
Generous U.S. policies were not merely a favor to New Delhi; they
were a conscious exercise o strategic altruism. When contemplating
various forms o political support for India, U.S. leaders did not ask,
“What can India do for us?” They hoped that India’s upward trajec-
tory would shift the Asian balance o power in ways favorable to the
United States and thus prevent Beijing from abusing its growing clout
in the region. A strong India was fundamentally in Washington’s in-
terest, even i New Delhi would often go its own way on speci¿c
policy issues. Both Bush and his successor, Barack Obama, turned a
blind eye to India’s positions in international trade negotiations, its
relatively closed economy, and its voting record at the United Na-
tions, all o which ran counter to U.S. preferences.
The U.S.-Indian partnership was built on a careful calculation by
each side: Washington, unsettled by the prospect o an ascendant China,
sought to build up new power centers in Asia. New Delhi, meanwhile,
hoped to balance China by shoring up its own national power, with the
United States acting both as a source o support and, more broadly, as a
guardian o the liberal international order. Under these terms, the part-
nership Çourished. The two countries concluded a defense cooperation
agreement in 2005—a ¿rst for New Delhi, with any country—and went
on to sign the U.S.-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Paci¿c and
Indian Ocean Region in 2015; Indian policymakers, breaking with their