In June, the two US officials proffered mailed fists in velvet gloves but the fact is that Washington is a novice in the labyrinthine world of South and Central Asian politics and a newcomer to the region. It has cunning adversaries trained over centuries of survival and manipulation of hegemonic powers.

Above all, Washington's diplomacy, however muscular, skates on thin ice because it has no reliable friend in mainland Asia. The current nuclear stand-off between India and Pakistan presents a historic opportunity for the US to enter Asia on a sure footing, by overturning 40 years of suspicion and chill in its relationship with India. Without friendship with India, Washington will never have solid enough foundations in mainland Asia to constructively channel China's ambitions and emerging power. It cannot earn India's friendship without picking up the pieces of its half-century of troubled relationship with Delhi, to build new trust. Nor can it successfully fight global terrorism growing out of Pakistan's clandestine religious and military academies without addressing India's concerns.

Whatever the rhetoric from Delhi and Islamabad, the Bush administration has to very quickly make a critical choice which will affect its long term presence in mainland Asia. The choice is not just one among personalities, strategic imperatives or fighting terrorism. It is about the vision and fundamental values for which the US will stand in Asia for the foreseeable future.

The battlegrounds of Europe were silenced because the US steadfastly worked towards specific ideals. The battlegrounds of Asia are in the process of waking up, in their turn after Europe. Washington can, if it so wishes, pre-empt those battles by making the right choices, now. This is a time for bold moves to build friendship because some of tomorrow's battles may cross the nuclear threshold.

If Washington plays its cards skillfully, the Armitage and Rumsfeld visits could be the start of a new relationship with India that should bring very significant gains for America's role in Asia in coming years. The US is isolated in Asia because of Washington's overwhelming preoccupation with Western Europe, first because of the Cold War and afterwards because of the risk of political chaos at the West's doorstep in Russia and in Central and East Europe. Mainland Asia got low priority, except during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and periodic attempts to constructively engage China.

India got little attention because of its poverty, complexity and marginal significance for the Cold War. No US President visited India for 21 years until 2000, when Bill Clinton's candor and friendly charm swept Indians off their feet. Until that time, India was seen mainly as an occasional nuisance because of its saber-rattling at Pakistan or a stubborn sermonizer disconnected from political realities at international meetings. Those perceptions softened in the final decade of the last century but India remained an irritating critic much like France of emerging US leadership in the post Cold War world order.

India is far from being a natural ally of America in Asia, but it is the only country in the world outside the West that has a solid democracy and deep commitment to human rights, multicultural secularism and the fundamental values that Washington stands for in global politics. Indians are brittle, proud and stubborn with a sense of their manifest destiny in world affairs, just like Americans. What separates India from America is poverty, poor governance, indiscipline and some traditional cultural traits.

However, there is enough convergence on fundamentals to make those shortcomings manageable, if there is sufficient political will.

A good starting point is to recognize that India's democratic politics are every bit as complex and venal as America's and require similar pork barrel bargaining and give and take. So Washington must learn to deal with India as it does with European democracies rather than the way it handles kingdoms or military regimes, which unlike India can get things done through fiat, repression or police actions.

India was traumatized and fell into Soviet hands after the USS Enterprise appeared outside Dhaka during the 1971 war with East Pakistan, which created Bangladesh. Most Indian leaders and strategists became convinced that the US might one day become India's enemy in its desire to control the South Asian region and seas. Since that time, no Indian government has been able to extend a genuine hand of friendship to Washington without risking the wrath of nationalists.

Now, Washington has the chance to set things rights once and for all. A nationalist government in Delhi is seeking a hand of friendship to ensure the survival of the young Indian nation. India was born as an ideal in 1947 to demonstrate that, in a world consumed by tribal, ethnic and religious hatreds, a poor, technologically deprived and colonial people of enormous diversity can live together as a true democracy and multicultural, multiethnic and multi-religious federation.

Pakistan's bloody determination to snatch Indian Kashmir by hook or crook is a lance into the core of India's heart as a nation. It is worth remembering that colonial India was a conglomeration of nearly 500 princely states that paid tribute to the British overlords, who did little more than prevent war among the princes and collect taxes from each village for the enrichment of the people of the British Isles. After 250 years of foreign domination, independent India is a fragile and unprecedented experiment of coexistence among disparate groups crowded into a single subcontinent. The experiment is a work in progress and groans at the edges from time to time, but it is unique because no country has tried to keep so many diverse peoples together within one set of laws, social codes and business practices.

As Indian and Pakistani missiles target one another, at stake is not Kashmir but the concepts that the new Indian nation embodies. What will become of India's 120 million Muslims, if terrorists or Pakistan's tactical nuclear weapons grab India's Jammu and Kashmir state for the sole reason that 85% of the people on half of that state's territory are Muslim? Is it reasonable to expect that 80% of India's population, who are descendants of Hindus ruled for 1,400 years by Muslims or Christians, will turn the other cheek after having tasted freedom for 55 years?

Pakistan is buffeted by fanatics longing to become martyrs to Allah, who are enraged at President Musharraf's ingratitude because he owes his rise to power to their sympathizers in Pakistan's armed forces and Islamic establishment. They accuse General Musharraf of betraying the Pakistan-trained Taliban zealots, dethroned by the US in Afghanistan, and Al-Qaeda fighters who moved freely between friendly Pakistan and hospitable Afghanistan. Pakistan's mullahs also feel betrayed because they spent the past 25 years brainwashing young men, with the Pakistani military's help, to believe that fighting a suicidal jihad in Indian Kashmir would open the embrace of at least 70 virginal beauties per martyr in paradise.

To demonstrate their power inside Pakistan, some of those fanatics from the Sunni branch of Islam killed more than 30 people in suicidal attacks within Pakistan and some 60 people in Indian Kashmir in May and June 2002. As a result, all US diplomatic offices were closed down in Pakistan and all American diplomats and nationals quit the country. The families of almost all Western nationals also left Pakistan and many left India in fear of war. India is in the hands of leaders who remember the horrors of the partition of British India in 1947 and seem determined to conduct a decisive war to convince Pakistan that it cannot snatch territory from India in any manner, whether through terrorism, war or negotiations.

Afghanistan, where the US is heavily involved continues to be unstable despite the new government installed after the Loya Jirga in June 2002. Al Qaeda remains operational and may have split into groups with new names, while Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban's Mullah Omar are thought to be still at large.

Thus, the American presence in Pakistan and Afghanistan has many resolute enemies. China is watching America's intrusive political and military operations in its neighborhood with increasing trepidation and may not standby idly for long. It may find it hard to accept that the US dominates Pakistan's generals who have been China's loyal friends for decades. During the last 15 years, those generals have owed much more to Beijing than to Washington, which imposed several embargos while Beijing supplied missiles, nuclear weapons and military technology without attaching onerous strings. >From Washington, Pakistan's generals expect gratitude because they buried the hatchet in America's hour of need after September 11. They did so in spite of being pushed aside without a word of thanks for all the sacrifices they made for the US during its proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Towards Beijing, those generals feel gratitude because its conventional military supplies help to make them India's equals in the last decade. Chinese nuclear weapons and missiles have also deterred India from "teaching Pakistan a lesson" since the military build up of December 2001. In effect, Beijing has helped the generals to stay in control of Pakistan because a defeat at Indian hands or the loss of even a small amount of territory to India could forever shatter the military's 45-year-old grip over Islamabad.

Controlling Islamabad has considerably enriched the generals; the military currently operates some two-thirds of Pakistan's large enterprises. Against this background, Washington holds the keys to peace between India and Pakistan. It can decide to persuade Pakistan's generals that their Chinese weapons will not deter India from fighting a war to end their rule in Islamabad, if they continue to send terrorists across the border. Or it can decide to soft-pedal the issue in the belief that India is bluffing to coerce Pakistan through Washington to stop terrorism. Or Washington can help Delhi now as an act of friendship because it realizes that India is worth preserving because it is the only power outside Europe whose fundamental ideals and values converge with those of America.