For PM Narendra Modi, a visit by Donald Trump just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections will be a shot in the arm.
New Delhi: India’s invitation to US President Donald Trump for its Republic Day celebrations next year means that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to look beyond the dissonance in Manila in November 2017, when Modi felt Trump treated him like “just another Asian leader”.
Sources in the external affairs ministry confirmed the invitation had been extended. It is likely that Trump will accept, although that confirmation hasn’t come so far. Invitations to high-profile leaders are only made public when some sort of understanding is reached, the sources added.
“It is a good thing that the US President has been invited,” former ambassador to the US Ronen Sen told ThePrint. “This is good pragmatic policy”.
A Trump visit to India will put an end to all the heartburn in Delhi that it is not being taken seriously by the US administration. The special relationship under Bush and Obama has been under some strain lately.
Why Trump is so important for Modi?
For Modi, a Trump visit in the last few months before the elections will be a shot in the arm. It will demonstrate three things: First, that the PM is willing to bite his tongue when improving India’s relations with the most powerful country in the world is at stake.
Second, it is a signal to China that the US still has India’s back, and that it is not alone in an increasingly uncertain world.
Third, it will tell the rest of the world — read, Pakistan — that Trump may be a maverick, but he understands the importance of having India play a significant role in the region.
Manila setback
In Manila, on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit, Modi is said to have felt reproved by Trump, as if he treated him like “just another Asian leader”. But as Trump travels the world wrecking America’s oldest and strongest relationships, from Canada’s Trudeau to Britain’s May, Modi has, perhaps, come to feel that he is hardly the exception.
Reiterating an invitation to Trump to come for Republic Day, with all its accompanying bells and whistles, could spur Delhi to buy some more arms from America.
It also signals to the US that India is willing to absorb the pain that will come when it commits to shutting off the oil tap with Iran, even though Iran is India’s third largest supplier of oil.
Meanwhile, India and the US are believed to be in negotiations on a possible waiver on Iran oil sanctions.
“These things are not personal. Remember when Richard Nixon called Mrs Indira Gandhi a bad five-letter word (that spells b—ch?),” pointed out another former ambassador to the US who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“Well, did that mean that she and P.N. Haksar stopped dealing with the Nixon administration,” he asked rhetorically.
2 + 2 dialogue in September
Meanwhile, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced Friday that the 2+2 dialogue between the foreign and defence ministers of India and the US will take place in September.
The revival of the 2+2 dialogue is said to have been pushed by US defence minister Jim Mattis, who is fast emerging as the key figure in the India-US relationship.
Mattis, who wrote to Sitharaman in the wake of the cancellation of the meeting to assuage her that the US decision was not personal, has been trying hard for some time to grant India a legislative waiver on the sanctions it wants to apply on Russia.
The speed with which the US has resurrected the 2+2 dialogue — it was supposed to take place on 6 July, but was cancelled because US Secretary of State had a last-minute meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which he also cancelled — demonstrates, at least for now, that the US wants to cut its losses and return to its relationship with India.
Mattis has written to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee John McCain that it must come up with a waiver for India, Republican Senator Dan Sullivan has said.
The visit will have to be carefully choreographed. Consider President Trump’s present visit to Britain, his interview to The Sun, intruding on how Britain should exit Europe, seeing prime ministerial qualities and potential in Boris Johnson. His Republic Day visit will be too close to the general election for similar gaffes to be absorbed.