What do Indian prime ministers and US presidents talk about when they have summit meetings, which have become regular only in the last 25 of the 77 years since independence? Quite often, they lean on each other’s shoulders to share experiences because it is quite lonely at the top for those holding high offices.
Barack Obama and Narendra Modi easily broke ice at their first meeting in the residential East Wing of the White House in September 2014, contrary to expectations among aides on both sides. They did this by effortlessly finding common ground as leaders of their respective countries who had stepped into high offices as rank outsiders in their capitals. Modi had never held any elected public office in New Delhi until he became prime minister. Obama was only a first-time senator who had not even completed his term when he was elected president.
There was a time when American presidents were condescending and talked down to Indian prime ministers. When Indira Gandhi and Ronald Reagan met for the first time in Cancun in 1981, the president spent most of their 45-minute meeting lecturing the prime minister with a memorable closing line: “India must pull itself up by its bootstraps to survive.” Janki Ganju, a family friend and the Indian embassy’s one-man lobbyist in Washington for some 30 years, who was with Indira Gandhi, was surprised that she listened to Reagan in silence. When the president finished, her reply was just one crushing sentence: “Mr President, in order for us to pull ourselves up by bootstraps, first we must have boots.” End of meeting.
A quarter century later, the roles had been completely reversed. When Manmohan Singh went to Washington on a farewell visit for George W Bush, the president was a deeply troubled man. The global economic meltdown in 2008 had blemished Bush’s legacy. It had already been tainted by his ill-conceived war against Iraq and a disastrous attempt to recreate this cradle of civilisation in America’s image. As was typical of him, Singh gave Bush a lesson in economics without being patronising. After the prime minister left the White House, their spokesperson said at an informal gaggle that Bush had told Singh he felt comforted and at peace after their conversation. Obama expressed similar feelings to Singh at their lunch in New Delhi in 2010.
It would be a mistake to be judgemental about Modi’s ongoing meetings with Donald Trump solely based on the popular caricatures of the new White House occupant. Taranjit Singh Sandhu, who was the ambassador in Washington during Trump’s visit to India in 2020, is on record that the incumbent president absorbs his talking points and retains the essence of briefings by his aides. When Sandhu presented his credentials to Trump and again called on him to discuss his visit to India, the ambassador found the president intimately aware of Modi’s home state of Gujarat, even about the world’s biggest cricket stadium named after the prime minister.
The crucial difference between then and now is that today, there are few people in the White House and the state department who are capable or authorised to prepare Trump for dealing with India while Modi is in Washington.
The senior director of the National Security Council (NSC) dealing with India and the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia normally brief the US president ahead of a visit like Modi’s. The ambassador in New Delhi also reaches Washington in time for it. Trump has not nominated an ambassador to India after Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, left the post when Joe Biden failed to win a second term.
Till the time of writing this, Trump has not appointed a new NSC director to deal with India. In the absence of a new assistant secretary of state, career diplomat Eric Meyer is the ‘senior bureau official’ for South Asia. This is his second job at the moment—the first being as chargé d’affaires ad interim at the US embassy in Norway, which is his priority. Meyer was rushed to Washington on ‘temporary duty’ by new Secretary of State Marco Rubio on January 20, probably because Rubio saw in Meyer’s bio-data a stint many years ago as a senior adviser in the state department’s South Asia bureau.
Ahead of Modi’s arrival in Washington, Meyer would have lacked institutional support within the state department. The critical post of deputy assistant secretary for India is vacant; so are the positions of several others who keep the bureau well-oiled and functioning.
In the commerce department, which provides significant inputs on trade tariffs, not a single senior employee has been confirmed by the Senate. Operationally, the most important commerce post for India’s interests would be the combined one of assistant secretary for global markets and director general of the US and Foreign Commercial Service; two successive appointees to the job in the recent past have been Indian Americans. Trump has not even found a nominee for assistant secretary for Indo-Pacific security in the department of defence.
It is pertinent to ask if these mid-level officials have any relevance when External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has been dealing with National Security Adviser Michael Waltz since December and has met Rubio twice. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to his Pentagon counterpart a few days ago. Vitally, they are the ones who chart the India policy that trickles up the political ladder; they can put up roadblocks, too. The political leadership often does not have the time or inclination to challenge them. And, typically, they are not sheep.
In the coming days and weeks, both sides will window-dress the Modi-Trump meeting as the resurrection of their personal chemistry and the starting point of a great relationship for the next four years, concessions by New Delhi to incentivise Trump notwithstanding. Both sides will also repackage Biden’s important bilateral initiatives to paint them in Trump’s image. Setbacks, if any, will be given a softer face.
This is not to rule out better India-US relations; but the meat in the relationship will take time to cook. If only because, right now, Trump has bigger priorities than India, which cannot make America great or rich, as his favourite slogan demands from the rest of the world.
(Views are personal)
(kpnayar@gmail.com)
K P Nayar | Strategic analyst