India
As the world’s largest democracy and the dominant regional power in South Asia, India has become a cornerstone for U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific. USIP works to inform policymakers and practitioners through research, analysis and convening on India’s growing strategic partnership with the United States, in addition to the regional conflict dynamics. Priority themes of focus for the USIP India program include the bilateral tensions between India and China; the emerging strategic balance between India and its nuclear-armed neighbors; and regional conflict drivers — including complex post-colonial disputes, fragile democratic institutions, climate and resource pressures, and competition among a growing, heterogeneous population.
Featured Publications
How the India-China Border Deal Impacts Their Ties and the U.S.
Since a 2020 clash between Indian and Chinese troops along their countries’ long disputed border, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC), friction has mounted between the two Asian powers. But the two sides reached a deal in late October to de-escalate tensions. Although the details remain murky, India and China have already pulled back troops from two key flashpoint areas on the Himalayan frontier. Still, it remains to be seen what this means for the broader, frosty India-China relationship. The U.S. and India have significantly strengthened security ties in recent years, in part responding to China’s rise and aggressive behavior in the region. So, Washington will be watching closely to see what comes next.
Connecting West and East: Indian Ocean Security and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy
A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the U.S. does not care about the Indian Ocean. Even after a U.S. focus on the Indo-Pacific emerged in 2017, only a single substantive mention of the Indian Ocean appears in each of the three high-level U.S. strategy documents released in 2022: National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). Instead, most of the attention to the Indian Ocean segment of the Indo-Pacific is focused on India, which has become a key U.S. partner and has arguably been the driving factor in the shift in U.S. strategy from the “Asia-Pacific” toward the Indo-Pacific.
What’s Driving a Bigger BRICS and What Does it Mean for the U.S.?
Leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) will gather in Kazan, Russia, next week for the group’s annual summit, along with an expanded roster of members. This is the first BRICS summit since Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE joined earlier this year. Russia, which holds the BRICS presidency this year, has also invited over two dozen other countries, which have expressed interest in joining the group, for the first “BRICS+” summit. For President Vladimir Putin, hosting this summit is an opportunity to show that Western efforts to isolate Moscow for its illegal war on Ukraine have not been successful and that Russia has friends around the globe.
Current Projects
Religious and Psychosocial Support for Displaced Trauma Survivors
Since spring 2021, USIP has been identifying best practices in psychosocial support to better facilitate collaboration and cooperation between religious actors and mental health professionals who provide services to conflict-affected communities, including trauma-affected displaced persons. This thematic area of work focused initially on Latin America as a pilot region and has since expanded to the Asia and European contexts — offering practical and evidence-based recommendations to relevant stakeholders.
Crisis Communications with China in the Indo-Pacific
In today’s era of strategic competition between the United States and China, crises are more likely than ever in the Indo-Pacific region. Effective mechanisms are therefore needed to prevent such crises from escalating into armed conflict. To this end, USIP is examining crisis communication mechanisms and negotiations between China and its regional neighbors to identify common issues and themes across countries to provide lessons that can be learned and shared.
Senior Study Group on Strategic Stability in Southern Asia
Beginning in June 2021, USIP convened a group of senior experts to assess concerns that recent geopolitical and technological trends increasingly threaten the tenuous stability of Southern Asia. Over seven virtual plenary sessions, the senior study group assessed the changing capabilities, doctrines, threat perceptions and crisis response behavior of the main regional nuclear actors. Their final report summarizes those findings, considers U.S. policy options and identifies priority recommendations for the resolution or mitigation of core disputes, the enhancement of regional strategic stability, and the management of potential future crises.