Mike
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/world/asia/obama-and-modi-see-mutual-benefit-in-breaking-more-ice.html?src=me
By ELLEN
BARRYJAN. 22,
2015
Photo
An Indian shopkeeper
offered kites with images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President
Barack Obama in Mumbai this month. CreditIndranil
Mukherjee/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
NEW DELHI — Ever
since India’s prime
minister, Narendra
Modi, visitedPresident
Obama in the fall, the word in New Delhi has been that the two men —
one a former Hindu activist, the other a former law professor — had
“chemistry.”
Mr. Obama broke the
ice by leaving his White House staff behind to give Mr. Modi a personal
15-minute tour of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Soon after, Mr. Modi
decided to invite Mr. Obama to Republic Day celebrations this month, becoming
the first Indian leader to choose an American as his guest for the spectacular
annual parade.
It is hard to say who
was more taken aback: the Americans — Mr. Obama’s attendance required him to
juggle the timing of the State of the Union
address — or the Indians, when Mr. Obama said yes. He is scheduled to
arrive in New Delhi on Sunday.
The emerging good
will between the two leaders was not preordained. Mr. Modi came into office with
a formidable piece of baggage, having been blacklisted by the United States
government for nearly a decade over his handling of religious riots in
Gujarat, the state he led. American diplomats’ efforts to mend fences
were late and awkward, and Mr. Modi is known to hold a grudge.
Beneath the surface
of the two leaders’ personal relationship are the shifting tectonic plates of
geopolitics. With the expansion of Chinese power into the Indian Ocean, American
and Indian interests in the region are gradually converging. It is difficult to
say which government was more quietly gratified this month when Sri Lanka’s
Beijing-aligned president lost his re-election bid, making it less likely that
the island off India’s coast
would eventually provide a foothold for Chinese military expansion.
And aides to Mr. Modi
say the yearslong discussion of his human rights record concealed an important
fact: He is, compared with nearly all of the Indian leaders who preceded him,
quite pro-American.
“He was always very
canny in recognizing that the United States was important for his own ambitions,
and for Indian ambitions,” said Ashley Tellis, a senior associate with the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of a new report on the
two countries’ relationship. “What was missing was that connective tissue which
takes what he knew in his head and translates it into action.”
The meeting between
the two leaders in Washington, he said, provided that emotional turning
point.
This week has brought
a marathon of last-minute negotiations, mainly over issues that the United
States and India have been grappling with for years.
Mr. Modi has styled
himself as a detonator of roadblocks, and some headway may be made this time. A
central obstacle is the sweeping liability law passed by Parliament in 2010 that
froze plans for American corporations to construct nuclear power plants in
India. Negotiators are also trying to finalize major defense purchases and to
close gaps on exports of Indian pharmaceuticals, some of which the United States
bans over patent disputes and safety concerns.
American officials,
meanwhile, have pressed for India to follow China’s lead and agree to an
ambitious target to limit carbon emissions, although they have played down
expectations for a breakthrough. But the officials said the potential seemed to
make another trip to India worthwhile, making Mr. Obama the first American
president to visit twice during his tenure.
“Our hope is that the
chemistry between the leaders and the personal relationship can lead to positive
outcomes for our country,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy
national security adviser. “And so it’s worth the investment in the relationship
with the country, the leader and the people of India.”
Famously reserved,
Mr. Obama does not forge close relationships with other world leaders easily.
But Mr. Modi has been an exception, aides said, as the two leaders found some
shared experiences.
“Just the humble
origins from which both of them came from and the opportunities presented to
both of them” created a “certain space in which the two leaders were able to
engage in these conversations,” said Philip Reiner, Mr. Obama’s top adviser on
South Asia.
Video
PLAY
VIDEO|1:07
Modi
Meets With Obama at White House
Modi
Meets With Obama at White House
In
September, during his first visit to the White House, Prime Minister Narendra
Modi of India discussed clean energy, trade and security issues with President
Obama.
Publish DateSeptember 30, 2014. Photo by Doug Mills/The
New York Times.
They now stand at
very different points, one man confronting the question of how he will stand in
history and the other enjoying international celebrity after years of harsh
criticism from the West. Mr. Modi, in particular, has given careful thought to
the symbolic takeaway of the visit for each leader.
“Go for the big guy
himself, and his international rehabilitation is complete,” said Ashok Malik, a
columnist who advised Mr. Modi’s campaign. “What does Obama get out of it? He
needs a legacy like nobody’s business.”
Since last February,
when the United States ambassador to India at the time, Nancy J. Powell, ended
America’s nine-year period of not meeting with Mr. Modi and held a chilly
meeting with him, a series of developments has warmed the
atmosphere.
A frustrating trade
dispute was resolved. Mr. Modi appointed two senior advisers to his government
who had been living in the United States for years. India’s Ministry of External
Affairs distanced itself from a diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, who was arrested
in New York last year over her treatment of her maid, providing a rallying cry
for anti-American sentiment in India. And Indian security officials were
delighted when the F.B.I. openedan
investigation into a former American diplomat, Robin L. Raphel, who
they long said was influencing American policy in Pakistan’s favor.
One reason for a
closer embrace of Washington by New Delhi is that the members of the new
political elite around Mr. Modi have far deeper ties to the United States than
their predecessors, from the left-leaning and long-dominant Indian National
Congress party.
Many of Mr. Modi’s
supporters are Gujarati businessmen who have prospered in the United States and
preach the successful immigrants’ gospel of free enterprise. In the 1990s, as a
campaigner for a Hindu nationalist organization, Mr. Modi spent months traveling
in the United States, and aides say he avidly studied the country.
Although most Indians
have a positive view of the United States, according to a Pew Research Center
poll taken last year, that enthusiasm has never penetrated into
India’s government — in particular its defense establishment. The roots of this
are deep: The United States has sold advanced weaponry to Pakistan and China,
two neighbors which India has gone to war with, and, after India conducted
nuclear tests, imposed sanctions on the Indian military.
That this gap
persists will be demonstrated on Monday, when Mr. Obama is to stand beside Mr.
Modi at the Republic Day parade for an extensive display of Indian military
hardware, much of it supplied by Russia. He will also be reminded of India’s
pressing need for investment in infrastructure, an area where the United States
cannot begin to compete with China and its vast, state-controlled reserves of
foreign currency.
Indeed, the most
important message from next week’s meeting could end up being a more subtle one:
that the relationship is turning, as slowly as an oil tanker, toward a closer,
more predictable long-term alignment.
Richard M. Rossow, an
expert on Indian-American relations at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said the president’s decision to return to India so soon
after meeting Mr. Modi was the best indication that the two men had sized each
other up and wanted to move forward.
“Are they
buddy-buddy?” he added. “That’s for them to tell you about. But more importantly
for the president of the United States, he sees a counterpart that will actually
try to deliver on things that are promised in those meetings. And so I think
that is probably the best way that they can show friendship
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