The Asia Foundation and ISAS Release South Asia Discussion Papers

Trump and Modi: Prospects for US-India Buren Sharing

For nearly two decades, there has been a steady advance in relations between the United States and India. Refuting skeptics on both sides, the two nations have overcome significant internal political and bureaucratic resistance to advance the relationship. But as a new government takes charge in Delhi after the general elections that concluded in May 2019, the two countries face growing pressure to redefine the framework of their relationship.

To discuss the possible contours of such a framework, The Asia Foundation and the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), Singapore, convened a workshop recently in Singapore. Participants included experts from The Asia Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Wilson Center, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and ISAS. Conferees examined the state of American alliances in Asia, the idea of burden-sharing, and how that concept might apply to India-US cooperation on Afghanistan, the Indo-Pacific, and the global trading order. This discussion resulted in collection of papers – Trump and Modi: Prospects For US-India Burden Sharing – which is now available on The Asia Foundation website. The papers help unpack the potentially new strategic synergy between Washington and Delhi and assess how it may play out in the years ahead. 

Authors C. Raja Mohan and John J. Brandon note in the introduction that there is currently great interest in the topic of US-Asia foreign policy,  “many US friends and partners are paralyzed by the tension between the fear of American ‘abandonment’ and the danger of ‘entanglement’ in an American conflict with their giant neighbor, China.” The Asia Foundation and ISAS will continue to support this discourse as it develops in the coming years. Read the papers here.

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