US President Joe Biden had nominated Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, an ambitious star in his Democratic Party, to be ambassador to India, with which the United States has an increasingly close relationship. Garcetti, who has led the country’s second-largest city since 2013 with a focus on improving transportation and sustainability, declined to run for president last year but has been widely seen as seeking to burnish his credentials with a new job.

A Rhodes scholar who spent 12 years as an intelligence officer in the US Navy Reserves and plays jazz piano on the side, Garcetti said in a statement that he had “committed my life to service.”

“And should I be confirmed, I’ll bring this same energy, commitment, and love for this city to my new role and will forge partnerships and connections that will help Los Angeles,” Garcetti said.

If confirmed by the Democratic-run Senate, which appears likely, the 50-year-old Garcetti would take up an ambassadorship with a storied history. Previous tenants of Roosevelt House, as the official residence in New Delhi is known, include the celebrated economist John Kenneth Galbraith and the policy intellectual Daniel Moynihan, who went on to become a senator.

Garcetti would head to New Delhi at a time that the United States is seeking to flesh out a burgeoning relationship with India in the face of an increasingly assertive China, the only other nation of a billion-plus people.

Biden has stepped up the “Quad” partnership of the United States, India, Japan and Australia are four democracies that largely share common cause on China’s rising military and economic might.