With the threat posed to global trade by priates growing in both scope and audacity, India’s navy has stepped up to the plate at the forefront of the global response.  While the traditional European great powers fret about the human rights of the priates and the Americans lament the supposed impracticality of military solution, an Indian warship engaged and sank a pirate “mothership”.

This is a natural consequence of India’s growing political, economic, and military role in the world.  One of the world’s fastest-growing economies with a relatively well-educated and English-speaking workforce, India has long been standing in the wings on the brink of great power status.  Repeated conflicts with Pakistan and China and post-Cold War sanctions resulting from India’s 1998 nuclear weapons test slowed its rise, but with the world mired in financial crisis and an emerging threat to trade in India’s backyard, now may be the time for India to finally play a leading role.

For over a decade, U.S. foreign policy has been fixated on maintaining U.S. hegemony in a unipolar world and, to the extent that is impractical, to manage the rise of China and prevent the resurgence of Russia.  India has remained relegated to a minor role in U.S. geopolitical calculations.  But to he degree that U.S. hegemony is based upon global naval superiority, it may no longer be possible or desirable to take India for granted.  The United States needs to consider expanding its de facto economic alliance with India to include more security cooperation to confront shared threats such as piracy.  This means including India in the well-developed Western framework for evaluating and countering global security threats, intensified cooperation with regards to international terrorism, and finally giving serious international attention to promoting stabilization along India’s northern frontiers in Kashmir and in Sri Lanka.

It is time to grant India its long overdue place of prominence in the global geopolitical order.