Council on Foreign Relations

“The U.S.-Israel relationship is in trouble,” warn Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellows Robert D. Blackwill and Philip H. Gordon in a new Council Special Report, Repairing the U.S.-Israel Relationship. Significant policy differences over issues in the Middle East, as well as changing demographics and politics within both the United States and Israel, have pushed the two countries apart. Blackwill, a former senior official in the Bush administration, and Gordon, a former senior official in the Obama administration, call for “a deliberate and sustained effort by policymakers and opinion leaders in both countries” to repair the relationship and to avoid divisions “that no one who cares about Israel’s security or America’s values and interests in the Middle East should want.”

Regional institutions and initiatives have proliferated in the twenty-first century. This latest wave of regional innovation raises, in new guise, a long-standing conundrum for global order and U.S. foreign policy: When is regional organization a useful, even essential, complement to the ends of global governance - financial stability, an open trading system, sustainable development, robust protection of human rights, or the end of civil wars - and when does it threaten or undermine the achievement of those goals? The new regionalism presents the prospect for new benefits for global order as well as new risks. How those challenges and risks are addressed, by the United States and by other member states, will determine whether a fragmented global order or more effective global and regional governance emerge over the next decade.

Five authors examine these dilemmas across five issue areas: finance, trade, development lending, human rights, and peace operations. In each issue area, regional actors and institutions have emerged that reopen and recast earlier debates about regionalism and its effects on global order. In four of the five issue areas, a single, established global institution contends with regional alternatives: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, and the United Nations. In the domain of human rights, the newly redesigned UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) does not enjoy a similar, central position; global human rights conventions set the normative frame for regional human rights commissions and courts. Each author suggests ways in which the new regionalism can be harnessed to serve global purposes and the contribution that U.S. policy can make to those ends.

Call it an American consensus: India now matters to U.S. interests in virtually every dimension. India’s economy is a fast-growing emerging market, increasingly important for international business, and Indian businesses have become investors in the United States. Geopolitically, India’s growing military capabilities can help protect the sea lanes and deliver humanitarian assistance quickly throughout the South Asian region, and increasingly across the greater Indo-Pacific. India’s long-standing stability anchors the volatile Indian Ocean region and helps ensure that no single power dominates the Asia Pacific, leading to a stable balance of power. India’s sheer scale means that complex global challenges, such as climate change, cybersecurity, and health, cannot be solved without it. Additionally, India’s diverse, plural democracy stands out in a world in which authoritarianism poses new threats to the interests of the United States and its allies.
Today, India has a window of opportunity for significant change. There are two Indias, one that appears poised for global success, and one that continues to struggle with weighty economic, social, and developmental challenges. Both exist at the same time—but against the backdrop of slowing global growth, India has a greater chance to stand out. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi elected to office on a campaign focused on job creation and economic growth rather than the welfarism of the past, India may at last be able to translate its long-heralded power potential into reality.