Thanks for the Invite Mr. President, Now Can We Talk About Beijing?
By PAUL BECKETT, NOVEMBER 23, 2009, WSJ

The negotiations and ultimate passage of the U.S.-India nuclear deal was good for both suspense and the promise of a major geopolitical realignment that would bring the world's richest democracy closer to its largest.


Paul Beckett

As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh heads for Washington this week, geopolitics may once again be on the table, but this time in a way that reflects tension rather than closeness. If the nuclear deal was about improving bilateral relations between India and the U.S., the new agenda is about how the U.S. can deal with both China and India without causing immediate offense to the other considering how bad relations between the two neighbors have become.

The U.S. got a taste of how tricky this is going to be with the U.S.-China joint statement last week that resulted from President Barack Obama's visit to Beijing. It said the two countries were "ready to strengthen communication, dialogue and cooperation on issues related to South Asia and work together to promote peace, stability and development in that region."

If this means Chinese converted some of its commercial influence into some political influence that helped right the ships of state in Pakistan and Afghanistan, then this should in theory be very welcome, especially by the U.S. Clearly nothing else is working very well. We suspect the U.S. is viewing Afghanistan and Pakistan as nothing short of emergency situations that need immediate attention from every side and that the signal being sent from the communiqué is that the world's two most powerful nations are in synch on the need for corrective action.

But you'd have thought from the Indian response that chief purpose of the statement was to insult India and show it as a third wheel in the trilateral relationship. "A third country role cannot be envisaged. Nor is it necessary," said the Ministry of External Affairs in a terse statement. Some in the business community were incensed because the issue threatened to distract from the carefully-orchestrated camaraderie that is supposed to happen on a business-to-business level on the sidelines of Mr. Singh's visit. And it served up a nice juicy morsel of outrage for the think-tankeratti.

"President Obama's invitation to China to play a role in ensuring peace and security in South Asia, just days before PM Manmohan Singh's visit to the U.S. may end up clouding any other bilateral achievements from this summit," Imagindia, a think tank dedicated to improving India's image, said in a press release. "The only way for the U.S. to recoup momentum and deflect the perceived tilt may be to unequivocally support India for a co-equal seat at the UN Security Council."
No doubt Mr. Obama will have all kinds of reassuring words for Mr. Singh on the topic and no doubt we will see public acknowledgements from the U.S. side that of course India has a really, really crucial role to play in regional stability and security and of course no-one in any way intended to butt in on Kashmir and of course U.S.-India relations are shaping up into the grand alliance that will define the 21st century and of course…

That may be enough to save the summit from being dominated by this issue. But there remains a risk that, after all the planning and preparation to showcase their friendship, the meeting may end up being a peculiar mix of assuaging hurt feelings on the one hand and publicizing the heck out of a few relatively minor initiatives on the other. Not a script from which grand headlines are made.
It would certainly help if there was a big, defining agreement that was front and center this week. But there isn't. Agreements on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel or a letter on nuclear company liability are annoying if necessary appendices to the nuclear pact that, in a business context, would be left to subordinates and lawyers to mop up. And neither of those may even happen during the visit.
There is bound to be lots that is released – partnerships, memoranda of understanding, dialogues – on a wide array of topics. But days before the meeting was to begin, these all seemed too vague to be newsworthy.

U.S. Ambassador Timothy Roemer gave some foreshadowing of this at a press conference at the embassy in Delhi last week. Practically with a drum roll, he announced that the number of Indian students in the U.S. had hit a record 103,260 (Take that, Australia!) He also noted that it was the eighth consecutive year that Indians represented the largest foreign student constituency in the U.S. That was the big announcement.

He then named five areas where he saw the U.S. and India as natural partners. Presumably these are also the issues that the two leaders and their lieutenants will discuss and from whence the MOUs and declarations will spring: education, anti-poverty, green technology, climate change and counter-terrorism.
Mr. Roemer's appearance was strong on rhetoric. He kept saying that the U.S. and India "stand shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, hour by hour" on counterterrorism. Of the increasing closeness of the broader U.S.-India relationship, he said, "Historians might look back 30 years from now and say 2009 might have been the starting point for that trajectory going forward."

We will just have to hope that in 2039 historians look back on 2009 as a positive one for India-U.S. relations and not the moment when a promising relationship was thrown off course.
—Paul Beckett is the WSJ's bureau chief in New Delhi