Since 2000, the United States (US) and India have worked to fundamentally reorder the strategic underpinnings of their bilateral ties as well as the substance of their engagement. This chapter exposits New Delhi’s main security challenges and examines the US evaluation and appreciation of those perceptions. It lays out both states’ cost–benefit calculus with respect to their bilateral ties. Unlike the National Security Strategy India does not have a national security strategy document per se. For purposes of this inquiry, the most authoritative open-source document of India’s security perceptions is the Ministry of Defence Annual Report. Washington appreciates India’s concerns regarding Pakistan’s contributions to New Delhi’s domestic woes and regional insecurity. While the US and India disagree in some measure with respect to the optimal policy approaches to Pakistan, both have analogous visions for a rehabilitated Afghanistan—even if both states have a somewhat different set of preferred surrogates and partnerships to secure Afghanistan.