A rising India wants a seat at the table of global powers, and is ready to set its own terms on everything from defense to climate to trade. Ayres considers how a fiercely independent India seeks its place as a leading power, and how the United States should respond.
About the Expert
Expert Bio
Alyssa Ayres is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofits, and the private sectors. Her book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018 and was selected by the Financial Times for its “Summer 2018: Politics” list.
At CFR her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on U.S. relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. She served as the project director for the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S.-India relations, and, from 2014 to 2016, as the project director for an initiative on the new geopolitics of China, India, and Pakistan supported by the MacArthur Foundation. She is also interested in the emergence of subnational engagement in foreign policy, particularly the growth of international city networks, and is working on a new book project about India’s urban transformation.
Ayres came to CFR after serving as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia from 2010 to 2013. During her tenure at the State Department in the Barack Obama administration, Ayres covered all issues across a dynamic region of 1.3 billion people (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and provided policy direction for four U.S. embassies and four consulates.
Originally trained as a cultural historian, Ayres has carried out research on both India and Pakistan. Before serving in the Obama administration, Ayres was founding director of the India and South Asia practice at McLarty Associates, a Washington-based international strategic advisory firm, from 2008 to 2010. From 2007 to 2008, she served as special assistant to the undersecretary of state for political affairs as a CFR international affairs fellow. Prior to that she worked in the nonprofit sector at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Advanced Study of India and at the Asia Society in New York.
Her book on nationalism, culture, and politics in Pakistan, Speaking Like a State, was published worldwide by Cambridge University Press in 2009 and received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies book prize for 2011–2012. She has coedited three books on India and Indian foreign policy: Power Realignments in Asia, India Briefing: Takeoff at Last?, and India Briefing: Quickening the Pace of Change. Ayres has been awarded numerous fellowships and has received four group or individual Superior Honor Awards for her work at the State Department. She speaks Hindi and Urdu, and in the mid-1990s worked as an interpreter for the International Committee of the Red Cross. She received an AB from Harvard College and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago.
Affiliations
- Communities Thrive (an IREX-READ Global partnership), advisory council member
- Japan Bank for International Cooperation, consultant
- McLarty Associates, senior advisor
- Providing outside informal counsel to the Biden for President Campaign
Featured
As the world rapidly grows more urban, city leaders are turning to a new form of voluntary, locally oriented diplomacy to coordinate with their global peers on sustainable development, infrastructure, public safety, and climate change concerns.
Washington will need to identify and commit to specific goals in the Indo-Pacific if this geographic and strategic approach is to be successful.
An office within the State Department should facilitate and provide advisory support to international trade delegations, sister-city linkages, and networks being pursued by American cities and states.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have created a meaningful partnership over the last several years, but the rivalry between the bloc’s two most powerful members poses an obstacle to greater unity.
Current Projects
-
China and India’s border dispute turned deadly for the first time in more than four decades. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s response will be critical to de-escalation.
-
India has so far prevented a major outbreak of the coronavirus, but the trade-off in doing so has meant hardship for those in the vast informal economy.
-
-
-
-
India has become an important trading partner for the United States over the past two decades, but the relationship has been marred by long-standing disagreements on everything from dairy products to intellectual property rights protections.
-
-
-
-
-
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party resoundingly won the general election following a divisive campaign, but it is not yet clear how the results should be interpreted.
-
-
-
-
India is set to begin a mammoth six-week voting exercise to elect a new parliament amid high unemployment, conflict with Pakistan, and debates about its future as a secular nation.
-
-
-
-
Countries that wish for peace must press Pakistan to make better choices and uphold its obligations as a UN member state.
-
-
-
-
Washington will need to identify and commit to specific goals in the Indo-Pacific if this geographic and strategic approach is to be successful.
-