Playing cards with India

ndia does not enjoy the pride of place in America's foreign policy agenda granted it by President Bush
This U.S. administration, unlike its predecessor, appears to disfavor values-based cooperation as an organizing principle of American foreign policy
subjecting cooperation with both India and China to an unsentimental cost-benefit calculation
India
has defined a compelling interest in preserving the gains from globalization by liberalizing international flows of trade, investment, services, and human capital. India's rapidly expanding middle class, currently the size of the entire U.S. population
Domestic consumption
well under half of China's, giving it a more sustainable, less export-dependent economic foundation for growth.
by 2025 those figures will reverse as China's population "falls off a demographic cliff,"
India is expected to bypass Japan in the 2020s as the world's third-largest economy, and to bypass China in the early 2030s as the world's most populous country.

India is the kind of revisionist power with an exceptional self-regard
America'
a model for India's own (peaceful) ambitions, partly because both define their exceptionalism with reference to their open societies. As Indian analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta puts it, Indians have "great admiration for U.S. power" and want their country to "replicate" rather than oppose it.
So let's put to bed the myth that America has more in common with China,
The United States has an enormous stake in the emergence of a rich, confident, democratic India that shares American ambitions to manage Chinese power, protect Indian Ocean sea lanes, safeguard an open international economy, stabilize a volatile region encompassing the heartland of jihadist extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and constructively manage challenges of proliferation, climate change, and other global issues.