NEW YORK, September 30 (RIA Novosti) - A US-India summit taking place in Washington on Tuesday aims to forge a partnership to challenge China's dominance in Asia, Marshall Bouton, a regional expert with the Asia Society, told RIA Novosti.
"A prosperous stable and secure India is fundamentally in US interests, because it will help ensure a stable and even favorable balance of power in Asia. This isn't about containment, but a situation in which China's military, political and economic power does not overly dominate the region," said Bouton.
According to Bouton, the main value of the Summit is "not the big laundry list of initiatives that they will no doubt declare, but whether it leaves a renewed sense of India's great potential."
"That will be hard to measure concretely or immediately, but it will emerge over time," he explained.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama met in Washington on Tuesday for talks on security, climate change and boosting trade between the two nations from $100 billion to an ambitious goal of $500 billion.
Relations between New Delhi and Washington have suffered setbacks, including a row over the strip-searching of an Indian woman diplomat in New York in 2013 and a decision to deny Modi's US visa request in 2005, before he was elected prime minister this May.
