NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, weakened by a mortifying defeat in Upper House elections, will address the Indian Parliament later this month. This is an honor that U.S. President George W. Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao did not get during their state visits to India last year. India and Japan are Asia's largest and most-developed democracies, and the honor for Abe flows from the Indian recognition that a strategic partnership between the two is critical to the region's power equilibrium.
Indeed, Japan has never had a head of government so interested in forging close ties with India as Abe. Even before he became prime minister last September, Abe had identified India as a pivotal partner for Japan in a book he published two months earlier. In "Toward a Beautiful Country," Abe devotes three pages to describing how Japan could advance its "national interests by strengthening our ties with India." He says: "It will not be a surprise if in another decade, Japan-India relations overtake Japan-U.S. and Japan-China ties."
It is Abe who helped expand the Australia-Japan-U.S. Trilateral Security Dialogue to include India in a separate Quadrilateral Initiative, founded on the concept of democratic peace. Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, for his part, was instrumental in frustrating Chinese opposition and getting India, Australia and New Zealand into the East Asia Summit initiative, which is to fashion the proposed East Asian Community.