January in New Delhi brings smog, sunless days and the frenetic preparation for the Republic Day parade, which year after year disrupts traffic for weeks around Raisina Hill. This year it is likely to be worse with US President Barack Obama being the chief guest, a first for a US leader. Invariably, the honour to share the saluting stand with the President of India is bestowed on leaders seen as potential partners in advancing Indian national interests. A non-aligned India, since Independence, avoided conferring that honour on a US President or, for that matter, on leaders of nations like China and Pakistan. Saudi Arabia just qualified a few years ago, as did the Iranian President Mohammad Khatami in 2003, as India-Iran relations were then on an upswing.
Significantly, it is a second summit between Mr Obama and Narendra Modi in four months. Clearly, there is mutually good chemistry — a sine qua non of successful summitry. Yet, the larger context and national priorities of each will impel some tough bargaining across a slew of issues. Unstated is the geo-strategic reality of the rise of China and the confrontational nationalism of Russia — two Brics members whose leaders have already been to India. US Presidents, in particular, do not visit just to savour military parades. The larger context is always in play.
China held a Central Work Conference on Foreign Relations on November 29, 2014 for “changes to guidance on foreign policy”. It was a major review after the one in 2006 under the then President, Hu Jintao. The decision is to defend “core interests”, shape a favourable international environment and create opportunities for rising to great power status. The words “harmonious world”, used in 2006, are omitted. Perhaps the Modi government in its internal vision making would have similar objectives. The US, on the contrary, is for the status quo on global economic and security order being maintained and resisting Chinese revisionism.
The Obama visit is thus both about strategic and bilateral matters that underpin any partnership. Take global trade, for instance. While the food security hurdle to the Trade Facilitation Agreement has been overcome, the US has only deferred rising calls from its corporate sector for India to accommodate their intellectual property rights. The US is also pushing two giant trade agreements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and India is excluded from both. Both these can in effect lock out emerging nation groupings from those of the developed world. It is estimated that TTIP could result in Brics trade with Europe dropping by 10 per cent and with the US by 30 per cent. India needs to raise this with the US.
Issues like the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage law, the totalisation agreement that allows repatriation of social security contributions by Indian techies, closer defence cooperation, including to “Make in India”, etc., will all be in play and fully or partly resolved. But the bigger issue is of strategic trust. The monstrous terror act in France targeting the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, coming after the Peshawar school slaughter, highlights that radical Islamist violence has only spread to a wider geographical area despite US led counter-terrorism since 2001. India-Pakistan relations remain on edge as each breach of the ceasefire and incidents like the Pakistani boat stopped by the Indian Coast Guard and the unfettered movement and public articulation by leaders like Hafiz Saeed are feeding a mutually rising cycle of distrust and confrontation.
US secretary of state John Kerry will be in India for the Vibrant Gujarat 2015 event and to prepare for the Obama visit, and then in Pakistan for the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue. The US will try to bridge this mutual chasm of distrust. India will plead that the US strongly urge Pakistan to finally abandon its two-faced approach to domestic terror groups. Pakistan can continue as an irritant in India-US relations or finally become a point of convergence if the US is seen as an honest broker in nudging the Pakistan military towards accepting that all terrorism is bad.
Chinese agency Xinhua in a recent piece on Sino-US relations likened them to a “vessel that keeps moving ahead” even while buffeted by waves. Despite dissonance in trade, cyber, space and maritime issues, the two on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit clinched deals on climate change and lower tariffs on high-technology trade. India will have to follow a similar model. Choose what your critical agenda is and trade off with the US on what their core interests may be. Two vital items for India are technology and energy.
Space to play all sides has shrunk with Sino-US competition holding centrestage. In the 1960s, and again in the 1980s, India misread the decline of the Soviet Union and delayed its outreach to the US. The course correction came only in 1991 when India went as a supplicant. China had already been quietly reforming and regrouping since the early 1980s and was well on its path to greater national power.
Prime Minister Modi has been dealt by the nation a fresh hand to re-orient domestic economic and administrative policies and re-craft quasi-alliances with critical partners abroad who facilitate the Indian rise. Meanwhile, it has to stymie Pakistan via engagement laced with deterrence, not prematurely provoke China or allow domestic socio-religious tension being used by anti-India forces lurking in Pakistan and beyond. The US can be a major partner in this journey. Mr Obama called US-India relations during his 2010 visit the “most defining partnership of the 21st century”. Both nations thereafter allowed distractions to derail the momentum. The visit end January will have to show that Mr Obama and Mr Modi can prove the veracity of the earlier prediction.
The writer is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry. He tweets at @ambkcsingh
