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Asia’s New Triple Alliance

Feb 25 , 2015

Democracy has not featured as a theme of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. He took office promising to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, not to remake those countries in America’s image. The Arab Spring turned into a nightmare, leading Obama to back strongmen in Cairo and Riyadh. Outreach to autocrats in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Havana has sometimes taken precedence over ties with U.S. allies. But in India last month, Obama changed tack, recognizing that a convergence of interests and values makes the world’s largest democracy pivotal to U.S. strategic objectives.

In doing so, he followed in the footsteps of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who predicted as early as 2006 that Japan’s relations with India could surpass those with America to become “the most important bilateral relationship in the world” on the basis of shared interests and values. For his part, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is treating Washington and Tokyo as India’s most valuable external partners.

Both Japan and India lately have also prioritized ties with democratic neighbors in South and Southeast Asia. Abe and Modi are pursuing the sort of values-based diplomacy that Obama previously scorned. But all three now seem to recognize that unsentimental national interest and shared political ideals require closer strategic collaboration to shape the Pacific century.

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