•Where do you see India’s role in Asia’s evolving security architecture? 

India is destined to be one of the principal powers of Asia and the world.  For too long, pundits have focused on China’s rise, and neglected the exciting and promising rise of India.  India has a youthful population, a strategically important geographic situation, and a pluralistic democracy, which encourages innovation and free thinking.  I think India, along with Japan, will be as important in shaping the future of Asia and the world as China.  The United States welcomes India’s rise and I believe we should work with India as it achieves its potential.  

•You have spoken of establishing a League of Democracies, which would include India, but not Russia or China. What do you think can be gained from the establishment of such an institution? Where do you see India’s role in this organisation? 

It’s actually rather strange that democracies don’t cooperate more fully in the international arena, in the same way that Islamic nations do in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or the way many developing nations do in the Non-Aligned Movement.  I believe that we should begin exploring ways in which the world’s leading democracies can form a league to cooperate more fully on challenges to our shared interests and our common values.  Let me be clear: a League of Democracies would not replace the United Nations — instead, it could act when the UN Security Council could not. A League of Democracies would be a multilateral international institution in which India would have a large voice and a key leadership role in cooperation with its democratic partners. 

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