By Rohan Joshi
U.S. President Barack Obama will visit India later this month. Expectations for the visit are high in both New Delhi and Washington D.C.
U.S. President Barack Obama will travel to New Delhi on a three-day state visit in late January. As part of this visit, Obama will attend India’s 66th Republic Day celebrations as its chief guest. This is the first time a serving U.S. president will be a chief guest at India’s Republic Day, an event replete with pomp and pageantry. Obama will also be the first U.S. president to pay an official visit to India twice during his tenure. The Modi government deserves credit for having engineered what some are referring to as a “diplomatic coup.”
It would have been hard to have predicted such a positive trajectory in U.S.-India relations a year ago. In December 2013, an already moribund U.S.-India relationship was hit with another jolt as a result of the Devyani Khobragade diplomatic standoff. India reacted angrily to the treatment meted out to a consular diplomat in New York by revoking privileges afforded to U.S. diplomats in India, removing security barricades on the road outside the U.S. embassy in New Delhi and effectively expelling a U.S. diplomat of the same rank as Khobragade from New Delhi. And with the BJP’s Narendra Modi, who was denied a diplomatic visa to the U.S. in 2005, presumed to be the forerunner in India’s May 2014 parliamentary elections, many analysts were predicting a less-than rosy forecast to U.S.-India bilateral ties.
Those fears proved to be unfounded. Modi’s approach to foreign policy – described as “nimble” and “pragmatic” — has helped revitalized a sagging relationship with the U.S. In his four-day visit to the U.S. in September 2014, Modi attended and addressed the United Nations General Assembly, met with business and political leaders, addressed a large rally at New York’s historic Madison Square Garden, co-authored an opinion piece in the Washington Post with Obama, and held formal consultations with Obama and members of his administration.
An opportunity now exists to move the U.S.-India relationship towards a “new normal,” with closer economic and security cooperation and collaboration. In this regard, it would be wrong to dismiss the importance of Obama’s visit to India and mischaracterize the U.S. president as a lame duck. Indeed, visits to India by second-term U.S. presidents, including Bill Clinton in 2000 (embattled on account of the Lewinsky scandal at the time) and George W Bush in 2006 (unpopular at home due to the Iraq war) were instrumental in providing (a) fillip to the U.S.-India relationship.
Read the full story at The Diplomat