President Bush's visits to India and Pakistan this week signal a strategic change in the United States's policy towards the region, which has a growing importance in world politics.
Continuing a policy begun under Mr Bill Clinton, Mr Bush has shifted US support from Pakistan towards India, recognising India's huge potential role as a democratic counterweight to China in Asia. It suits India's leadership to cultivate this new alliance, after decades of following a more independent policy, because it gives their country access to the US nuclear technology, investment and trade needed to sustain its economic transformation as it opens up to world markets.
The centrepiece of Mr Bush's visit was the agreement reached on sharing US nuclear technology with India,including the separation of its civilian and military programmes. Since its first atomic test was carried out in 1974 India has developed a substantial nuclear capacity outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it refuses to sign. This agreement was not made conditional on Indian compliance with that treaty; it concentrates instead on creating a framework in which most of the country's nuclear reactors will be scrutinised by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In return, India will have access to supplies of uranium and nuclear technology from the US and the international nuclear energy group, without jeopardising its fast breeder reactor programme, on which its military capacity depends. A long-term potential benefit underlined by both sides would be that India's industrialisation will produce less greenhouse gas.
The strategic, political and economic advantages seen by Mr Bush in this major shift of policy leave his domestic and international critics relatively unimpressed. The agreement must find congressional approval in Washington, where objections have been raised that it undermines the Non-Proliferation Treaty, will make it more difficult to insist that Iran and North Korea should adhere to it, and sets a bad precedent for other aspirant nuclear powers. Such double standards may be justified in Mr Bush's eyes by larger geopolitical concerns, but he has a lot of explaining to do if he is to deliver on this deal.
His visit to Pakistan this weekend will expose him to its international consequences. The policy shift is seen as a slight by many of that country's elites, however much they recognise the US needs their co-operation against terrorist movements in Afghanistan. Would it not be open to Pakistan to seek out a similar agreement with China as India's with the US? Nuclear balances of power have their own logic and could have perverse effects if the political circumstances in the region were to change for the worse. In India there are alternative voices heard urging the country to adopt a more multipolar approach which would allow it to cultivate relations with Iran and the European Union rather than opting for this tilt towards Washington. Such debates underline how this part of the world has become so much more important.