Washington: The Obama Administration should continue to "bet" on India, the prestigious Asia Society said in a report as it underlined that the US should take a fresh approach to South Asia to best position itself for success in the region after the 2014 military drawdown from Afghanistan.
The report, running into more than 75 pages, offers new ideas on how to integrate competing US interests in South Asia, encourage stronger interagency collaboration across the East Asia-South Asia divide, and expand expertise on South Asia in the US government.
The report titled 'The United States and South Asia after Afghanistan' said the US would best position itself for success after the 2014 military drawdown in Afghanistan by taking a fresh approach to South Asia that considers each country on its own merits and avoids hyphenated "Indo-Pak", "Af-Pak", or "China-India" policies; thinks regionally about economic, security and political issues; connects South Asia to an overall Asia strategy; and integrates diplomatic, defense and development policy agendas.
"India requires sustained high-level attention, but also a structured US approach to the bilateral relationship. This approach needs to accurately judge how much US and Indian interests will converge and how best to manage the tone of political and diplomatic engagement," said the report written by Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Fellow Alexander Evans. "As Secretary of State (Hillary) Clinton has said, the US is making a strategic bet on India's future," it said.
In an interview for this report, a former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs suggested that US and Indian interests "will not always be aligned although they can operate in parallel."
"The United States needs a realistic discussion of how quickly the relationship can move forward, particularly on global issues for which India does not always adopt a similar position to that of the United States. The public tone of Washington's messaging on the relationship needs care. As one interviewee noted, the United States does not need to highlight the value of Indian security cooperation versus that of China," the report said.
However, the greatest policy challenges lie in the US ties with`Pakistan, including vital national interests for Washington, the report said, adding fundamental to the success of any future approach must be some deeper work to understand how Pakistan's own governance works, and a greater willingness to work with other states and international groups. "An overly heavy bilateral approach to Pakistan can reinforce some of the negative tendencies in the US-Pakistan relationship," it said.
In the short term, Washington needs to continue to work with Islamabad on counterterrorism and the drawdown in Afghanistan. In the medium to longer term, the US needs to establish an approach to Pakistan that delivers on vital US interests.
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