The Globalist/India and China

Since theGlobalist.com has some interesting articles that closely relates to my interest in international economics and I have had some interest in these topics, I think it would be good to critic some of the articles of interest to myself.
The first article with link above is entitled: "India’s Global Bridging Powers". As a prominent member of the Non-aligned nations, India has tended to be suited to this role. But how does it change since the duopoly of the international playfield is changed?

“India should take advantage of this positioning. In fact, it can have a unique role as a bridging power that actively manages relations between the rich states and the poor. And this bridging role also extends to the relationship of the two countries which are currently near-obsessed with sizing each other up, the most powerful state in the world, the United States — and the most populous, China.”

But sometimes it has not looked out for its best interest.

“Essentially because India’s primary mode of exercising autonomy in the international domain has been negative.

It has often refused to participate in alignments, treaties and markets which it viewed as skewed in favor of the more powerful. In some way, it strikes me that this aloof stance could have been an extension of the Gandhian strategy of boycotts and fasts.”

Here's another area the author suggests:

“At a time when the West is embarking on a nervous and intense relationship with Islam and when Muslims feel increasingly alienated within the international order, the Indian model established in 1947 is a powerful example of how ancient religions can co-exist within a single political frame.”

Yes we do need India's help in creating moderate Muslims internationally. But after their recent bombings and continued religious striff, I can not say they are a powerful example. The US is actually a better example where IMO every religion in the world lives here peacefully.
This sounds good:

“Given the botched efforts of the U.S. to pursue domestic change abroad through military intervention, India has an opportunity to offer an alternative method to promote democracy. It can present itself as a model of building democratic states — by coming forward to assist wherever democracy is trying to take root locally, say, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, China, Burma and Bangladesh.”

I am glad that India is not being wishy-washy when it comes to Democracy. India has always supported democracy at home so why did it?:

"The global predominance of the United States is awkward news for India, given India's historical commitment to non-alignment and the idea of a multi-polar world."

If we are to take "multi-polar" as being several actors with similar strength then yes but not multi-polar of free peoples vs unfree peoples.
And another caution:

“Few Americans realize that their biggest vulnerability is not a future terrorist attack. Rather, it is that — unlike Britain at its imperial zenith — the United States of America needs permanently to import goods, services, capital and people to sustain its own momentum and fund its insatiable consumption.”

The whole world needs to import and export (trade) to maintain the momentum in human development and well being and of course I disagree with "insatiable Consumption". My training has shown me that the world wants us to consume, that they want to export and grow their economy through this process. Hopefully I will write about this sometime later. As the world becomes more developed each country will have a specialty of its own or some unique quality to add to human development.
Now let us talk briefly about the second article: Nehru’s Vision for India and China

In the 1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, inspired no doubt by anti-colonial sentiments, envisioned that India and China would come together as a unified force. He hoped for them to exemplify the idea he called "Asianism".

Understandable but:

The 1962 Border War saw Nehru's dream turn into ashes, and even as recent in time as 1998, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes' declaration that "China is India's number one threat" during India's controversial nuclear tests, seemed to put paid to Nehru's words.

But now India and China are complementing each other by India specializing in software and China in computer hardware. And:

While China has a relatively high advantage in woven textile, knit/crochet fabric and made-up textile articles export, India's advantage lies in its export of textile yarn and woven cotton fabrics.

Yes similar to what I have heard. And lastly what does the future hold:

In October 2003, Goldman Sachs released a report which predicted that within 40 years, the economies of India and China, if added to those of Brazil and Russia (the "BRICs") would be larger than that of the United States, Germany, Japan, Britain, France and Italy combined.

This seems obvious since the only nation that is expected to grow over the next 40 years is the US at least on present trends in demographics. Japan and Germany have actually experienced a population decline with Italy and France quickly going in this direction. As their populations age and enter into retirement, the total number of workers will decline, thus creating a strain on the system to support the retirees. Luckily in the US we have a growing population at least when we count immigration, and we do have more live births per woman than the other three countries. The US also still has the ability to attract the brightest and best from around the world. As long as we can, we should be importing (allow immigration) of a wide variety of skills and abilities.