Washington: Noting engagements with a diverse range of governments on shared challenges that promote a common vision upholding the UN charter, the United States on Thursday termed the I2U2 grouping a "fascinating new partnership" that works in the areas of health and food security.

The grouping of India, Israel, UAE, and the USA dubbed "I2U2" is projected by commentators as the Quad for West Asia. I2U2 aims to encourage joint investments in six mutually identified areas such as water, energy, transportation, space, health, and food security.

Speaking at Georgetown University about the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration's national security strategy, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said, "We are trying creative arrangements all over the world. Creative, purposeful, and entrepreneurial ways like I2U2 which sounds a bit ridiculous by name (he said jokingly) but is a fascinating new partnership between India, Israel, the US and UAE-- to work in areas of water space, health and food security."

The US "is working with a diverse range of governments with shared challenges that promote a common vision," he said.

NSA Sullivan also hailed the Quad grouping which focuses on the Indo-Pacific for maritime domain awareness. Quad and partnership with pacific Island nations help to address illegal fishing practices and build capacity to respond to disasters, he highlighted in his remarks.

Earlier, as the Biden administration released a key policy document on national security, Security Advisor Sullivan noted that China represents America's most consequential geopolitical challenge to the United States.

"Next, we recognize that in the geopolitical space, the PRC (People's Republic of China) represents America's most consequential geopolitical challenge. And while that will play out in the Indo-Pacific to a significant extent, there are global dimensions to the challenge as well," Sullivan said during an on-the-record press call previewing the Biden-Harris administration's National Security Strategy.

The congressionally mandated document states that both China and Russia, who announced a "no-limits partnership" this year, are increasingly aligned with each other but the challenges they pose are distinct.

However, Sullivan said the security strategy also makes clear that the US avoid seeing the world solely through the prism of strategic competition and it intends not to try to divide the world into rigid blocks.

"We are not seeking to have competition tip over into confrontation or a new Cold War. And we are not engaging each country as simply a proxy battleground. We're going to engage countries on their own terms and pursue an affirmative agenda to advance common interests and to promote stability and prosperity," he said.

The policy document contends that competition with China is most pronounced in the Indo-Pacific, but it is also increasingly global.

"We stand now at the inflection point, where the choices we make and the priorities we pursue today will set us on a course that determines our competitive position long into the future," the document says.

The policy states that many US allies and partners, especially in the Indo-Pacific, stand on the frontlines of China's coercion and are rightly determined to seek their own security, and prosperity.

"We will support their ability to make sovereign decisions in line with their interests and values, free from external pressure, and work to provide high-standard and scaled investment, development assistance, and markets," it adds. On the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the document says Moscow's "imperialist foreign policy" culminated "in a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in an attempt to topple its government and bring it under Russian control."

Over the past decade, the Russian government has chosen to pursue an imperialist foreign policy with the goal of overturning key elements of the international order, and the Biden administration says that Russia now poses an immediate and persistent threat to international peace and stability.