For India, the United States of America is a land of power and middle-class myths — nevertheless, one whose grand designs and exertions in the world have been out of sync with this country’s principal aspirations over time. Is this still true when India has been a story of positive and significant change in the past decade and a half, the US indubitably remains the world’s most crucial power centre although its relative power may have declined, and regional nodes of economic and technological primacy have taken shape on every continent, effecting a nuanced redistribution of international clout that calls out for a renegotiation of the status quo?
Ideologues of different shades are likely to offer polarised views on a question like this, but it may now be misleading to see the glass as being either half-full or half-empty in India-US relations. A continuum in relations with the assurance of the maintenance of the flow might be the healthier approach, even a realistic one. It is well to keep this in mind as President Barack Obama arrives here on Saturday on a three-day visit to this country, his first stop on a long trip to Asia, which includes Indonesia, where he grew up as a boy. Bilateral relations between India and the US have been laden with complexity and the baggage of history. It serves no purpose to burden these ties with the anxiety of expectations. That stage is reached between old and reliable friends who comfortably take one another for granted and shrug off small, non-structural disappointments along the way. India and America can still said to be in the stage of mutual beckoning. The signing of the landmark India-US civil nuclear agreement in 2005 under President George W. Bush doubtless set the stage for a departure in ties that was stuck so long at a low level of morose stability, and there can be no question that we have transcended the realm of dysphoria. This is no small gain for the two “estranged democracies”. If realism prevails rather than euphoria at any given moment, and during the US leader’s visit this weekend, it will no longer be looked upon with unease or mistrust in India, as might have been the case not so long ago. We are today in a position to assure President Obama that he is being welcomed on a hospitable terrain. His individual worth as an intellectual and world statesman who fundamentally seeks peace, and his position as leader of the world’s most important democracy, serve to underline that Mr Obama, whatever his current domestic preoccupation and international constraints, will do what he can to promote ties of friendship with this country. In recent days, the US President has talked of relations with India being the “cornerstone” of his government’s engagement with Asia and has spoken of an “indispensable partnership” with India. Even if these words are meant to soothe diplomatically on the eve of a first visit by a US President, they mark — in the US perception at least — an implicit acknowledgement of the positive changes in India that have a beneficial regional and international impact.
Mr Obama comes here in the wake of a domestic political jolt caused by serious economic difficulties in the period after the international recession two years ago. This suggests that economy and trade, aimed at job creation in America, will be his priority, rather than concerns of a strategic nature. This is something we should be able to take on board while remaining clear about our perceptions and focus in all fields, including in our troubled neighbourhood.