India's Security Interests in Southeast Asia

Featuring:

Jonah Blank
senior political scientist, RAND Corporation

and

Vikram Singh
vice president for national security and international policy, Center for American Progress

Blank will discuss the key findings of his recent report on India’s emerging partnerships in Southeast Asia, “Look East, Cross Black Waters,” and Singh will give his perspectives on the opportunities and challenges that India’s growing strategic interest in Southeast Asia will bring for the United States.

Jonah Blank is a senior political scientist at RAND Corporation. From 1999 to 2011, he served as policy director for South and Southeast Asia on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Blank is the author of Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity Among the Daudi Bohras, and Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana through India. He is also a reporter for Fortune magazine, and has written for publications ranging from Foreign Affairs to the New Yorker to the Washington Post.

Vikram Singh is the vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress. Previously, he served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia at the Pentagon, where he advised senior leaders on policy matters pertaining to development and implementation of defense strategies and plans for the region. Until November 2011, Singh was the deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. Department of State.