The most critical and important bilateral relationship for the world is that between China and the United States. The unipolar moment of the post-Cold War era has well and truly passed. The U.S. capacity to determine regional outcomes even in Eastern Europe and the Middle East has visibly waned while the public bickering between the administration and the Congress further diminishes its global authority. In retrospect, the so-called U.S. pivot to Asia was less an assertion of continuing U.S. primacy in the region than a recognition of growing Chinese presence, visibility and influence across the Pacific.
The China-India relationship is the world's second most critical and consequential. The only two countries with billion plus populations are also nuclear-armed. Throughout human history both have been among the first ranks of powers. The last two to three centuries in which they faded into obscurity as systemically significant independent countries was the historical anomaly. The pendulum of history is now swinging back to its default setting.
China's re-emergence into Asian and increasingly global prominence began earlier and has proceeded faster and so it is outpacing India in attention, excitement and apprehension. Democratic governance is expected to ensure that India's growth and power trajectory will not generate comparable anxiety in the family of nations, but expectations can prove false.