All About the Guest: Obama in India

U.S. President Barack Obama will head to India in the final week of January 2015 as the guest of honor at India’s Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi. Republic Day, January 26, commemorates India’s 1950 adoption of a constitution and emergence as a democratic republic in the heart of South Asia. That Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would invite Obama to visit New Delhi to celebrate India’s powerful democratic legacy speaks to his shrewd appreciation of symbolism. While the United States and India have had their differences in the past and continue to do so, the promise of enhanced bilateral cooperation primarily emerges from the two countries’ shared identities as democracies.

Indeed, official rhetoric at U.S.-India bilateral summits over the years has consistently emphasized this common ideological thread. Despite this, observers of U.S.-India bilateral relations will know that there is perhaps no greater story of reality falling short of expectations in the United States’ engagement in the eastern hemisphere. On paper, it makes sense that the U.S. and India should logically converge on several issues of mutual interest. Thanks, in part, to Cold War-era alignments – in which India leaned closer to Russia and the United States closer to Pakistan – the modern relationship between India and the U.S. continues to disappoint. With the exception of the 2006 civil nuclear agreement concluded between the two governments under Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President George W. Bush, the two countries have failed to produce any ground-breaking bilateral agreements in recent years that would take their relationship to the next level.

The significance of Obama’s trip to New Delhi shouldn’t be understated. This isn’t a run-of-the-mill bilateral summit. No U.S. leader has been honored at India’s Republic Day celebrations. India has, however, invited the leaders of several other states, including Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, France, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Kingdom and Vietnam. The complete list of countries includes several member states of the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) and the Commonwealth. In recent years, honoring a foreign leader at the Republic Day celebrations has become a powerful symbol of highlighting India’s diplomatic closeness with a particular country. In 2014, for example, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was honored as chief guest at a time when relations between India and Japan seemed to be reaching an all-time high.

In this sense, the expectations for this visit will be high. Not only because of the rare spotlight being afforded to this U.S. president in India, but also because of the still fresh legacy of Narendra Modi’s maiden visit to the United States as prime minister. Based on press reactions in both the United States and in India, Modi’s U.S. visit was the closest thing to a “rock star” bilateral summit in recent memory. In both New York and Washington D.C., Modi made an important impression on Americans of all political stripes, ensuring that U.S. support for India would be bipartisan and uncontroversial. Indeed, given the weak showing by the Democratic Party in last year’s midterm elections, scoring bipartisan support was a necessity.

In some ways, the Obama administration is going the extra mile for this visit. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry refused to postpone a scheduled early-January trip to India to attend the national unity march in France following the Charlie Hebdo shootings. Instead, he was the lead speaker at a conference on entrepreneurship and innovation – a major initiative of the Modi government. Kerry’s visit also laid the groundwork for Obama’s visit. Interestingly, the U.S. president’s regular security protocol will be broken during his trip to India with the acquiescence of the Secret Service. Generally, during a foreign visit, the president restricts his time in open-air venues to under 20 minutes. As the chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations, Obama will attend the annual parade at New Delhi’s famous Rajpath, leaving him outside for over two hours. Indian security personnel coordinated with their U.S. counterparts to provide adequate security provisions.

The Republic Day parade itself will cast a spotlight on avenues for improved defense and security cooperation between the United States and India. India’s annual Republic Day parade showcases the country’s military hardware and resolve, including everything from its latest intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to carefully choreographed air demonstrations. During Modi’s visit to Washington, the two leaders produced a joint statement that, while not revolutionary, was an important evolutionary step in the U.S.-India defense relationship. Significantly, the statement declared that the U.S. and India will “treat each other at the same level as their closest partners” on issues including “defense technology transfers, trade, research, co-production, and co-development.” This was a positive step toward expanding on the cornerstone 2005 New Framework on Defense between the two countries, and is in line with Modi’s “Make in India” initiative.

Based on that previous statement, it wouldn’t be surprising if the two leaders came together to express their support for freedom of navigation and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, in a joint jab at China. Expect also to see dates announced for major maritime and land-based military exercises involving U.S. and Indian forces. What remains somewhat of a wild card is the extent to which Modi will broach the topic of U.S.-Pakistan cooperation during Obama’s visit to India. Recently, the United States disbursed a huge sum of aid to Pakistan for its military efforts at countering terror groups that use its soil to, among other things, plan terrorist attacks against India. Indian legislators and leaders were, to put it mildly, displeased. Despite its increasingly complicated love-hate relationship with Pakistan, the United States has repeatedly failed to convince Indian leaders that its continuing relationship with Pakistan isn’t actively to the detriment of Indian interests and security.

Given the current context of U.S.-India relations, January 2015 is as good a time as any for the two countries to embark on a major process of strategic convergence along their mutual political, economic, and security interests. The opportunity is there, but seizing it will require determined and dynamic diplomacy from Modi and Obama. While 2015 will undoubtedly include numerous other opportunities for high-level diplomatic interaction between the United States and India, this visit will outline the feasible limits of cooperation and set the tone for the rest of the year.