How India-US ties will transform: An ‘open embrace’ or a ‘tight hug’?

Over the past 25 years, India’s relationship with the United States has transformed beyond recognition. While celebrating 70 years of these ties, shouldn’t we be asking where we are heading? Is the India-US relationship an “open embrace” or a “bear hug”? Are we enjoying it? Or is it getting a bit too tight for comfort?

According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, to embrace means: “to hold someone tightly with both arms to express love, liking, or sympathy…” So can an embrace be open? Unlikely.

The same dictionary also says to hug means: “to hold someone close to your body with your arms, usually to show that you like, love, or value them”. A bear hug is always tight.

Without any convergence of their ideological moorings and without embracing each other, Jawaharlal Nehru and Dwight D. Eisenhower got along famously; he was the first US President to visit India in 1959 and it was a hugely successful trip. But it is also believed that Nehru’s visit to the US in 1961 was a disaster. Was it because Pandit Nehru & John F. Kennedy never hugged each other? Perhaps the septuagenarian Nehru, fascinated by the Soviet model of development, and the younger JFK, epitomising free market capitalism, couldn’t embrace each other ideologically. After the era of Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger, when India-US ties hit a nadir and America moved its Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal to intimidate India and the American dup privately referred to India’s then PM Indira Gandhi as a “bitch”, Indira Gandhi and Ronald Reagan hit it off warmly during the Cancun Summit and her visit to Washington in 1981, although Reagan didn’t surprise her with a hug as did the legendary Cuban leader Fidel Castro at the Nonaligned Summit in New Delhi in March 1983.

Bill Clinton, that tall, handsome charmer, had little in common with the affable and endearing Atal Behari Vajpayee in physical traits, dress and body language, yet the two developed a healthy personal chemistry and mutual respect which gave a new, positive and productive thrust to India-US ties without ever trying a hug. It was Vajpayee who had coined the catchy tagline that India and the US are “natural allies”, and Bill Clinton’s visit to India in March 2000, the first by a US President in 22 years, put in place an institutional framework to bring India and the United States closer and open new vistas of cooperation. This was despite Vajpayee’s earlier decision to go ahead with the nuclear tests in May 1998, which had provoked Mr Clinton to impose severe sanctions on India. However, most of these had been lifted by the time his term ended, thanks to the 14 rounds of discussion between India’s external affairs minister Jaswant Singh and US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbot at 10 locations in seven countries.

Dr Manmohan Singh, the “accidental Prime Minister”, and America’s 43rd President George W. Bush did the heavy lifting in New Delhi and Washington and signed the landmark Civil Nuclear Agreement in 2008 though the body contact of the two leaders was restricted to a warm handshake! Barack Obama, the first African-American President, developed a respectful relationship with Dr Singh and referred to him as his friend and philosopher, but without a hug. Mr Obama became the first US President to visit India twice in his presidency and became the chief guest at the Republic Day parade in 2015.

The credit for refining the hug as a potent tool of diplomacy and using it to trigger much warmth and positivity goes to Narendra Modi. In less than five years of his tenure, he has hugged more world leaders than all Indian Prime Ministers put together. Though he was denied an American visa for 10 long years, his enthusiastic hug with President Obama in September 2014 melted away a decade-long disappointment. The slow-motion pictures of Mr Modi’s first joint press conference with President Donald Trump show how the positive vibes of a hug work. Initially, somewhat unsure and tentative, Mr Trump let Mr Modi slip into his embrace but kept his arms open awkwardly; the second time his arms came closer and on the third try he overcame the” hesitations of history” and tightened both his arms behind Mr Modi’s back, making it a picture-perfect embrace!

With bilateral trade having touched $130 billion ($40 billion in India’s favour), over 300 joint military exercises (the latest Malabar trilateral exercises involving the US, India and Japan drawing international attention), defence supplies by the US having crossed $15 billion in the past five to six years, 50 bilateral missions covering almost all possible areas of cooperation from agriculture to outer space and education to artificial intelligence, besides the 2+ 2 dialogue, the US President and the Indian PM getting to meet three to four times a year and conversing on the hotline from time to time, India-US ties have moved into a calmer, more mature and pragmatic level. No one any longer attributes electoral defeats in India to a “CIA hand”, as in the 1960s, nor is India criticised overly if it sometimes toes the Russian line. Despite the occasional sharp barbs by the Twitter-happy billionaire US President over the trade gap and occasional points of disagreement, the ties are mostly on an even keel. It helps that there is bipartisan support for closer India-US ties in both Houses of the US Congress, and in India both the BJP and the Congress Party favour a warm relationship with Uncle Sam. And besides the trade and investment prospects offered by the fastest-growing economy in the world, it’s the fear of an assertive China which motivates the United States to move closer to India, with a market of 1.3 billion people. While India has taken a bold plunge by signing the LEMOA and COMCASA pacts, and the US underlined its intent by assigning STA-1 status to India, the extraterritorial application of CAASTA betrays a high degree of insensitivity on America’s part.

India has now reached the fortuitous stage when the world’s three largest economies — America, China and Japan — want it on their side as does the European Union, Russia and Asean. How we harness this favourable global scenario and exploit it to further India’s interests is the challenge for Indian diplomacy. The nonalignment of the 21st century (sticking to the autonomy of decision-making, and not supporting or opposing any country on others’ prompting) might prove to be the magic mantra.