The expansion of democracy and the growing openness of South Asia's economies have provided the basis to increase cooperation substantially in areas of common concern and mutual benefit. Overcoming this legacy will take time and effort. However, a reservoir of goodwill toward the United States exists in South Asia. Asia interaction, and make recommendations about current and future U.S. interests and priorities in South Asia. Americans have tended to regard the region as one of poverty, overpopulation, ethnic and religious conflict, and natural disasters.
American businesses can benefit from the region's economic opening and growth.
American universities, think tanks, and nongovernmental organizations can widen their agendas and impact through collaboration with their South Asian counterparts. South Asia's fate will increasingly influence the world Americans and others live in. It is a region where the issues likely to dominate international relations in the 21st century come together and where 20 percent of humanity lives. U.S. interests will be served if South Asia achieves sufficiently rapid, well-distributed and sustainable economic growth, reduces poverty, expands democracy, prevents regional conflict and the use of weapons of mass destruction, protects its own and the global environment, limits population growth, advances human rights, and reduces narcotics trafficking and terrorism. But if little or no progress is made in South Asia toward these goals, the world will almost certainly be a more dangerous and unstable place, with obvious negative implications for the United States.