Despite its perceived relative decline the US has continued to provide the public goods to the region even as its regional priorities and its ability to act upon them became less clear. Thus the Bush administration encouraged the rise of India as a counterweight to China and took the lead in having its status as a nuclear power accepted by the international community. The Obama administration, however, initially put more emphasis on seeking a partnership with China, even as it praised Indian economic achievements as the world’s largest democracy. Japan, America’s most important ally in Asia, posed problems for the US as for most of the decade its LDP government was circumscribed in its attempt to assist the US in Iraq and Afghanistan until the advent in 2009 of the DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) raised broader problems about the nature of the alliance itself. Meanwhile Sino0Japanese relations improved from 2006 onwards and the new DPJ government in Japan went out of its way to deepen relations with China. Nevertheless tension remained and were ignited in September 2010 by clashes over Islands in the East China Sea.