A besieged US President Donald Trump is not planning to host Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his Mar-a-lago resort, after all. In fact, the word from New Delhi describes the impending Modi trip as a no frills visit. One can expect no thrills, too.
On the contrary, Modis first visit to meet Trump is supposed to be all business and no play. There are issues galore. The first on the agenda, however much many Indian policy wonks want it to be put on the backburner and treat it as an anachronism-in-the-making, is the reduction in H-1B visas that has put Indias IT companies in a pickle.
Then there is the question of trade, where the US has to play second fiddle to China. Last but never the least, there is terrorism.
The Indian strategic community had one heart-stopping moment when the new US permanent representative to the United Nations Nikki Haley had talked about the US playing an activist role in the Kashmir issue.
The Indian strategic community had one heart-stopping moment when the new US permanent representative to the United Nations Nikki Haley had talked about the US playing an activist role in the Kashmir issue.
Soon enough, reports about Haley being asked to clear her statements by the US State Department before taking the floor at the UN General Assembly or the UN Security Council made their appearance.
So, one can argue that New Delhi maintains some leverage over the new US administration despite sweeping personnel changes in most of the important departments of the US administration. Flowing from there, while the Indian PM is scheduled to meet Trump on June 26, the agenda of the Trump-Modi summit has not been made public yet.
Pakistan will be on the minds of the two leaders. Will Afghanistan be on the table? Narendra Modi may have one or two things to say about that. He can also talk about Chinas Belt Road Initiative (BRI) set to criss-cross Afghanistan before it enters Pakistan. During the latter half of Barack Obamas administration and during insistent push-forwards by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah India was being wooed by Kabul to get involved with greater strategic might in Afghanistan.
One should keep in mind that Obamas retrenchment of US forces in Afghanistan, and pivot-out of the West Asia-Gulf region into the deep waters of the Indo-Pacific, constituted a big strategic move.
That is now being reversed by Trump. As Trump repivots back into West Asia, and the US reconnects its umbilical cord with big oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, more active Islamist terrorism seems ready to emerge on the horizon.
On its part, New Delhi seems to have pulled back a little from its deep courtship with the US leadership. Russian President Vladimir Putin caused heartache to Indian policymakers when Moscow declared that it would hold military exercises with Pakistan for the first time.
That caused Modi to hotfoot to St Petersburg where the two leaders met at the 18th India-Russia Annual Summit. This, before signalling that the India-Russia relationship of special strategic partners has become more transactional, highlighted by the signing of the agreement between the two countries for the development of fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
This was after India had skipped the Belt and Road Summit, which Russia partnered with host China in May. India seemed oblivious of the new alternative (read: non-US) world order that was being shaped.
South Block and Modis advisers failed to realise that BRI was not just about economy and infrastructure but also about reordering of relations in social and cultural terms. This ham-handed approach in dealing with the new Big Powers have a cost.
Whether India can incur that cost is to be watched in Washington next week. If the current re-hyphenation of India and Pakistan being conducted is worth watching, it is because the power doing the re-hyphenating is no longer the US, but China.
The Article first Appeared In TOI
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