South Asia contains one of America’s most important long-term partners in sustaining a global order safe for the interests and values of free societies, India, as well as a fragile, nuclear-armed state in Pakistan whose weakening and radicalisation could be more consequential for American security interests than nearly any other single contingency. The region also contains a country, Afghanistan, that may not be the centre of Asia but is a centre of strategic competition among key Asian powers and has cost the West a decade of war to defeat extremism and build lasting stability.