US needs an integrated Asia policy
Alexander Evans says, moreover, the region's importance goes beyond Beijing-Delhi ties
Chester Bowles, a former US ambassador to India, once called for a single assistant secretary of state to cover the whole of Asia in order to strengthen the US State Department's capacity to think strategically about the region.
As foreign policy attention turns away from Afghanistan towards China's rise, it is time for Washington to reorganise its foreign policy machine to recognise that China is a player in South Asia. US policy on South Asia needs to be properly integrated into a broader Asia policy - one that encompasses all the states across the region, not just the prominent duo of India and China.
There is no better time to do this than 2013. Finally, South Asia matters enough to Washington to merit sustained policy attention.
No longer is it the "backside of the State Department globe", as former undersecretary of state for political affairs Tom Pickering once famously called it. And for the first time in over a decade, no single policy priority sucks up all the air in the room.
Afghanistan is moving towards transition. The US-India relationship is intimate, mature and moving forward. Counterterrorism remains important, but Osama bin Laden's death along with those of many of his lieutenants means that the campaign against terrorists is no longer a super-priority. At least for now, the US-Pakistan relationship is out of the headlines and being worked on.
Until the late 1990s, the assistant secretaries for South Asia and East Asia in the US State Department had virtually no contact.