In the first high-profile contact between India and the US in the second presidency of Barack Obama, Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai will hold wide-ranging talks with a host of senior US officials this week that is expected to set the stage for the fourth round of strategic dialogue between the world’s two largest democracies.
With the situation in Afghanistan in a drift and renewed focus on the Asia-Pacific region as a backdrop, Mathai is expected to focus on these issues as well as engage in a review of the bilateral relationship during his talks with US Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
The Obama administration has scheduled a slew of meetings in Washington, including with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who inspires conflicting feelings and assessments among important players in India’s strategic-foreign policy establishment.
The talks are expected to set the stage for the fourth round of India-US strategic dialogue for which External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid will travel to Washington later this year. This will be the first meeting between Khurshid and Kerry and will be watched closely both in New Delhi and Washington for the roadmap it lays down for the future trajectory of the India-US relationship under Obama II.
Mathai is expected to unveil India’s vision of the strategic partnership in his speech at the the Carnegie Endowment Feb 21 on “A 21st Century India-United States partnership for peace, prosperity and progress”.
Indian officials point out that the India-US relations have acquired maturity and solidity specially since the landmark nuclear deal, struck in 2005 and sealed in 2009, removed the last stumbling block in accelerating ties between the two democracies which share so much in common in terms of values and democratic ethos, but remain vulnerable to misunderstandings and misperceptions.
According to former Indian diplomat T.P. Sreenivisan, Mathai told him in a recent interview that the only change he expected in India-US relations in the second term of Obama was that they would be “normal”, not “novel” anymore. In that interview, Mathai had said that economic relations, described not long ago as flat like a “chappati” now looked more like a “poori”. One can add to this diplomatic menu Obama’s fondness for Indian daal, which he confessed to during his chat with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he hosted him for the first state dinner of his presidency in November, 2009.
Pretty talk apart, India and the US have a lot of serious business to do, both bilaterally and on global issues, in days to come to dispel the impression that the relations have lost some of the ardour and spark one saw during the presidency of George Bush. But Indian officials find all this skeptical talk slightly irritating; one can’t do a nuclear deal every year, said an Indian diplomat. Perhaps diplomacy is most effective when it eschews headlines and goes about doing things quietly.
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