That solves extinction.

India is an indispensable partner for the United States. Geographically, it sits between the two most immediate problematic regions for U.S. national interests. The arc of instability that begins in North Africa, goes through the Middle East, and proceeds to Pakistan and Afghanistan ends at India’s western border. To its east, India shares a contested land border with the other rising Asian power of the twenty-first century, China. India—despite continuing challenges with internal violence— is a force for stability, prosperity, democracy, and the rule of law in a very dangerous neighborhood. The Indian landmass juts into the ocean that bears its name. With the rise of Asian economies, the Indian Ocean is home to critical global lines of communication, with perhaps 50 percent of world container products and up to 70 percent of ship-borne oil and petroleum traffic transiting through its waters. For the United States, India’s location alone makes it a more consequential partner than other nations more distant from these U.S. zones of concern. Unlike many U.S. treaty allies, India does not need to be convinced that a distant problem requires the projection of U.S. power to be successfully managed. Many of America’s global challenges are India’s regional challenges, and therefore India is uniquely positioned to exert influence and offer resources to help deal with them. India’s growing national capabilities give it ever greater tools to pursue its national interests to the benefit of the United States. India has the world’s third-largest army, fourth-largest air force, and fifthlargest navy. All three of these services are modernizing, and the Indian air force and Indian navy have world-class technical resources, and its army is seeking more of them. Moreover, unlike some longtime U.S. partners, India has demonstrated that it possesses not only a professional military force, but also a willingness to suffer substantial military hardship and loss in order to defend Indian national interests. India is an important U.S. partner in international efforts to prevent the further spread of weapons of mass destruction. Despite India’s principled refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), India has shown itself to be a responsible steward of nuclear technology. Similarly, despite decades of work on missile and space launch vehicle technology, India has not been a proliferator of these technologies. India’s assistance on nonproliferation will also be critical regarding chemical and biological weapons, given its substantial chemical and biotechnology industries, which could unwittingly be the source of precursor materials to dangerous actors. In all of these areas where India has considerable technological expertise, India has exhibited restraint and responsibility in its international behavior. During President Barack Obama’s visit to India in 2010, the United States announced its intent to support India’s phased induction into the four multilateral export control regimes (the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Technology Control Regime, Australia Group, and Wassenaar Arrangement), continuing efforts begun in the Bush administration to bring India fully into the nonproliferation mainstream. In addition to its role as a potential technology provider, India will play an important and growing political role on international nonproliferation issues. India’s broad diplomatic ties globally (most importantly in the Middle East), its aspirations for United Nations (UN) Security Council permanent membership, and its role in international organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency make New Delhi an especially effective voice in calls to halt proliferation. India’s position against radicalism and terrorism corresponds with that of the United States. India has suffered terribly from terrorism over the last three decades and like the United States is determined to prevent, deter, and disrupt the terrorist groups that most threaten it. There was no hesitation to India’s offer of assistance to the United States following the attacks of September 11, 2001, because India viewed its national interests as congruent with those of the United States’ in uprooting transnational terrorist groups. Similarly, the United States quickly offered law enforcement and intelligence cooperation after the terrorist attacks on Mumbai that began on November 26, 2008. Economically, India has grown at an average of 7.6 percent in real terms over the last decade, according to International Monetary Fund statistics, with only a modest decline due to the global economic crisis in 2008 and 2009. After charting 10.4 percent growth in 2010, the government of India believes that it can sustain rates of 8 to 9 percent economic expansion for the foreseeable future. Goldman Sachs agrees, estimating that the Indian economy will expand at an average rate of 8.4 percent through 2020. In short, over the next two decades India is on a path to become a global economic powerhouse, with all that implies for the U.S. and world economies. With respect to economic enterprise and science and technology cooperation, the United States is India’s collaborator of choice. India’s English-speaking and Western-oriented elite and middle classes comfortably partner with their counterparts in U.S. firms and institutions, including more than 2.8 million Indian Americans. The U.S. higher educational system is an incubator of future collaboration, with more than 100,000 Indian students in American universities, more than from any other country except China. Trade between the United States and India has doubled twice in the last ten years. Bilateral trade has been balanced in terms of its content and is beneficial to both countries. In many sectors, the role of governments is simply to encourage what the private sector already desires by removing remaining barriers that prevent cooperative outcomes. As India modernizes and grows it will spend trillions of dollars on infrastructure, transportation, energy production and distribution, and defense hardware. U.S. firms can benefit immensely by providing expertise and technology that India will need to carry out this sweeping transformation. India-U.S. cooperation is critical to global action against climate change. According to the International Energy Agency, India is already the fourth-largest aggregate producer of carbon dioxide from energy use, behind China, the United States, and Russia. India’s high ranking as a greenhouse gas producer has mostly to do with its sheer size; India produces dramatically fewer greenhouse gases than industrialized or other developing nations on a per capita basis and is below the global average in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of gross domestic product. Even so, because of India’s aggressive economic growth profile combined with higher than average population growth, its share of global greenhouse gas production will rise substantially between now and 2050. India has shown itself to be keenly interested in cooperation on renewable energy technology and efficiency standards that would allow it to retain its growth and still reduce its emissions intensity over time. India’s role, both as a fast-growing large economy and as a leader of the developing world, makes Indian agreement a necessary condition for the success of any prospective international climate change accord. On issues of global governance, India will remain the most important swing state in the international system. Importantly, India is genuinely committed to a world order based on multilateral institutions and cooperation and the evolution of accepted international norms leading to accepted international law. Despite being a rising power with some complaints regarding the existing global governance structure, India seeks to reform the present system and not to overturn it. U.S. and Indian national interests naturally overlap on many of these issues, given India’s commitment to a stable Asia, democracy, market-driven growth, the rule of law, and opposition to violent extremism. India’s capability extends well beyond the realm of military, economic, and global diplomatic power. Indian culture and diplomacy has generated goodwill in its extended neighborhood. New Delhi has positive relations with critical states in the Middle East, in Central Asia, in Southeast Asia, and with important middle powers such as Brazil, South Africa, and Japan—all of strategic value to the United States. India’s soft power is manifest in wide swaths of the world where its civil society has made a growing and positive impression. This includes the global spread of its private corporate sector, the market for its popular culture, its historical religious footprint, and the example of its democracy and nongovernmental institutions. In addition, India has demonstrated an enduring commitment to democratic values. Indian democracy has prospered despite endemic poverty; extraordinary ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity; and foreign and internal conflicts. It has provided Indian society the resilience and adaptability necessary to overcome and respond to the myriad challenges the nation has faced since independence. India and the United States share the objective to strengthen pluralist and secular democracies worldwide, and India’s rise as a democratic great power promotes that profound global objective. For many of the reasons indicated, a stronger India inevitably makes managing a stable balance of power in Asia significantly easier for the United States. Although other friendly countries in the region writ large will also play a critical role, over the next two decades India may well become the most important Asian partner for the United States in ensuring that the broad balance of power that serves Asia so well is preserved.