India’s rise good for US global strategy: Obama aide

Ahead of US president Barack Obama's visit to India next month, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia Robert Blake said on Friday that the rise of India's civilian power on the global stage will complement its efforts at rationalising foreign policy.

"The rise of India's civilian power on the global stage will complement our own efforts at rationalising foreign policy and emphasising US civilian power overseas. We will see India emerge as a global leader as it occupies a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council from 2011-2013," Blake said in his speech to the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs.
 
"We look forward to working with India on critical global issues such as thwarting Iran's nuclear weapons programme, fighting piracy in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, and reinforcing human rights around the world," he said, according to a copy of the speech provided by the state department.

"We won't agree on everything, but our common values will ensure that our policies increasingly mirror each other," Blake said as he briefed the Baltimore-based think tank on the increasing strategic relationship between India and the US.

"As two of the world's leading democracies, we can help build a new global commons – an international system in which other democracies can flourish, human dignity is advanced, poverty is reduced, trade is expanded, our environment is preserved, violent extremists are marginalised, the spread of weapons of mass destruction is curbed, and new frontiers in science and technology are explore.

That is the moment, and the promise, that lies before us," Blake said.

"That is why president Obama hosted Prime Minister Singh to the White House last year for the first state visit of his administration, when he called the US-India relationship one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century," he said.