Let me hasten to add that this does not mean that Washington and New Delhi will always agree on specific policies or tactics. That will not happen. The Indian bureaucracy can be as maddeningly slow and recalcitrant as that in the United States. India's colonial history makes it particularly sensitive to what it perceives as overbearing policies from abroad. Some remnants of the Cold War-era "non-alignment" movement still exist within the Indian government. India has its own strategic perspective based importantly on its geographic location. And Indian domestic politics will sometimes constrain the actions of governments in New Delhi. But in spite of this, the United States and India will always eventually be pulled back together again by these common fundamentals.

How do you see India's role in the Greater Middle East?

If we think of vital U.S. national interests in geographic terms, they are especially concentrated in the region stretching from the Persian Gulf to Pakistan. This region is the nexus for energy, weapons of mass destruction and Islamic extremism. At the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it was called the "arc of crisis." But today it is also an arc of opportunity, and one in which India will play an increasingly influential part.

We sometimes use the term "Greater Middle East" to describe this area, but where to draw the line on the eastern side? Given Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan, I suggest that it ends in the Punjab-or to stretch a bit, perhaps even at the Bay of Bengal. Many Americans-including senior analysts-have the impression that India is far from the Persian Gulf. When asked for the flight time from Dubai to New Delhi, most say six or seven hours. In fact, it is a little over three hours, much closer than western Europe. The strategic perspective certainly changes if you put India in the middle of your mental map: On one side it borders China, on another the Greater Middle East and on another Southeast Asia.

When one asks which country or set of countries will have persistent involvement with the Greater Middle East over the next three decades, one would correctly include the European Union and especially Britain, France and Germany. After all, they are negotiating with Iran (as the so-called "EU Three") over its nuclear programs, and the EU is a participant in the implementation of the "Road Map" for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. EU economic assistance can be a crucial stabilizing factor in the area.

But few understand India's stakes in and connections to the Greater Middle East. As noted above, this region touches many of India's vital interests-energy supply, Islamic terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Jaswant Singh, the "George Shultz of India" (he has served as foreign minister, defense minister and finance minister), once said to me, "Well, Bob, I think it's interesting that you Americans are now preoccupied with Iraq. We Indians have been involved with that part of the world for some time. Indeed, when we first went there, it was called Mesopotamia." In addition to these ancient links between India and that region, some three million Indians live and work in the Persian Gulf. Add to that a growing Indian energy dependence on the Gulf in the decades ahead. And then there are India's civilizational ties to Iran and Afghanistan. India has the world's second-largest Shi'a population after Iran. Too often we do not know our history. For instance, at a recent event at Harvard, a well-known policy pundit opined, "It is absolutely inconceivable to me that Indian troops would ever find themselves in and around the Persian Gulf." The British units active there during the First World War were largely from India, with minor supplements of British troops.

India has not sent troops to Iraq, in part because it was politically just too difficult. But Indian businesses have a centuries-old involvement with Iraq, and there are long-standing Indian commercial connections throughout the Gulf. In the short term, India can help to train Iraqi police and to build a civil society within Iraq. Over time, India will do more. Even when the Indians have disagreed with the United States over policy-most did not support the U.S.-led coalition's military intervention in Iraq and do not agree with it to this day-they most certainly do not want us to fail. Indians understand the consequences for them of an American defeat in Iraq. They realize it would give an intense and long-lasting boost to Islamic terrorism everywhere, particularly against India. And it would introduce another acutely destabilizing element in an already wobbly Middle East region where India's vital national interests are profoundly engaged.

Iran is a tougher issue for the Indian government and, as Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh has made clear, India has a different perception of Iran than does the United States. When Washington abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, India and Iran (along with Russia) opposed the Taliban and sought to keep the Northern Alliance alive. When the United States tells India that it opposes a pipeline between Iran and India, the Indians politely respond that we are free to have our own opinion, but given their energy needs, this project makes strategic sense to them. We are not going to come to a meeting of minds with India on this subject.

Regarding Iran's nuclear program, many Indians ask why they should believe grim U.S. assessments, given Washington's momentous mistake concerning Iraq's WMD capability. Put simply, the Indians are not convinced that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon, and Washington is nowhere close to persuading them.

Nevertheless, India does not want a nuclear-armed Iran, so it should be possible for the administration to enlist India quietly to try to convince the Iranians to give up the nuclear fuel cycle. But New Delhi understands that it has a certain liability in that regard. As one Indian policymaker recently said to me, "We are not the best country in the world to convince Iran not to have a full fuel cycle and nuclear weapons. After all, we acquired both in the face of deep and strident American opposition." In any case, it would be a serious U.S. mistake to attempt to force New Delhi to choose between its burgeoning strategic relationship with the United States and its cordial ties with Iran. India will not do so.

Where does Pakistan fit into all of this?

Pakistan continues to worry both India and the United States. In the last four years, the U.S. relationship with Pakistan has undergone a significant shift for the better, but one that is not easy to sell to the Indians.

As Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institute eloquently points out in his magisterial writing on the subject, there have always been ups and downs in Washington's relationship with Islamabad. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, we needed Pakistan as a staging area from which to ship weapons to the mujaheddin. Yet, throughout this period and into the 1990s, Pakistan was systematically lying to us about its program to develop nuclear weapons and about its supportive relationship with the Taliban. By the second term of the Clinton Administration, the relationship had once again turned sour, especially after the coup d'Çtat led by General Pervez Musharraf in 1999.

September 11 fundamentally changed this bilateral relationship. Once again, we needed Pakistan to wage war in Afghanistan. Our relationship with Pakistan is now much better, one of the major accomplishments of the Bush Administration. We have captured or killed members of Al-Qaeda inside Pakistan-hundreds of them-and continue to hunt Osama bin Laden along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. In sum, Pakistan is a crucial partner of the United States in the global War on Terror.

It has not been easy to persuade the Indians that this is a sensible and productive American policy. Many Indians believe that the U.S.-Pakistani relationship is based on an incandescent double standard. They think that although the administration declares that state supporters of terrorism will be viewed the same way as terrorists themselves, the quintessential state sponsor of terrorism-including against India across the Kashmiri border-is in their view given a pass by Washington. I can personally attest that it is not easy to convince them otherwise. But here too, things are changing. President Musharraf's April visit to India reflected the best bilateral relationship between India and Pakistan in decades. But, Indians ask, will it last?

Pakistan is unstable as a government and a society. This is often the case with one-man rule-and especially one-man rule in which serious people, Al-Qaeda and its allies inside Pakistan, are trying to kill him. There were serious attempts on Musharraf's life within the last year or so, one of which came very close to succeeding. Add to that the thousands of madrassas inside Pakistan and the hundreds of thousands of potential jihadis, as well as Taliban sympathizers who travel back and forth across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Equally problematic is Musharraf's unwillingness to promote genuine democracy inside Pakistan, despite the fact that the only longer-term answer to the problem of systemic instability in Pakistan is pluralism and democratic expression.

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