New Delhi:With the President of the United States, Donald Trump, expected to finally visit India, three years after assuming office, especially in the backdrop of the Iran-US escalation, Senior Journalist Smita Sharma spoke to Tanvi Madan, Senior Fellow at Brookings Institute in Washington DC and leading strategic thinker Dr C Rajamohan about the significance of this visit, India-US Trade differences, the Iranian crisis and its regional impact for India on the sidelines of the Raisina Dialogue 2020.
This would be Trump's maiden visit to the country, after the White House had, earlier, turned down a request made by India inviting the US President to the 2019 Republic Day celebrations as the Chief Guest citing the date clashing with the State of the Union Address by the President.
Here is the interview with Dr C Rajamohan and Tanvi Madan for ETV Bharat:
Q- According to media reports, Trump is scheduled to visit India in February. How important does that become, given that India's Republic Day invitation was denied by the US?
There are always scheduling issues with the visits of Head of State or Head of Government.
The US President's, in particular, don't travel much, and the current one travels even less.
The fact that Donald Trump's visit might be working out is a good sign. But it also means that if the visit is going to happen it has to be a substantive one. Many of the pending issues between India and the US on trade, security cooperation, a lot of things can be advanced.
One of the good things about President's and Prime Minister's travelling is that it becomes an action-forcing event on the bureaucracy to wrap up things that have been pending for a long time, to have agreements to be signed by the leaders.
Any such visit will produce good results. With Trump going into the election year, a strong expansion of the Indian relationship will surely help him. For India, it will be a further boost to the US relationship and will be helpful.
Q- How important is it that the two top leaders meet regularly at some multilateral events? Like, the engagement between Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin or to say PM Modi and China's President Xi Jinping. How do you compare the working relationship that PM Modi and Donald Trump have established? How important is it for Donald Trump to be visiting India?
It is always important. It sends a political signal, it sends a signal to other countries, it sends a signal to your own bureaucracy about the state of relationship you are in.
It is an action-forcing event. Donald Trump would not just come thinking that this can be a symbolic event, he will want deals.
It might just be a mini-trade deal. But, in an election year, he would want a trade deal, and perhaps some defence deals, after all not many big defence deals have been signed with the US by the Modi government, at the same time they have been signed with Russia. So you do have a situation where it is important.
Where it is different from the Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi's visit is that you do see a level of consistent operation and institutionalised cooperation between the US and India where these leader level summits are important, but a lot is going on even when they are not meeting.
If you look at the two plus two joint statements, it's worth reading that, it gives you a sense of deep cooperation now going on at the operational level, but I do think it is important to have these leader level visits.
India-US Trade differences and the Iranian crisis and its regional impact for India It will be interesting to watch because usually these things are so highly choreographed, and one thing we know about President Trump is that he is quite unpredictable, so both sides will have to plan for that, sometimes that's good, sometimes it could be bad as well.
Adding to this, Journalist Sharma added, "Pending process of impeachment which might impact the possible date we are looking at for a Trump visit again to India. "
Q - In terms of trade issues, Jeff Bezos in India at a time when Competition commission of India is slapping a few cases against Amazon, is trade really a big villain in relations at the moment which can sort of break of or shape up the relation in a certain way now?
Trade is never a villain. Trade is one area where both sides benefit, but trade is also contentious, even the best friends have trade issues. For the US the biggest trading partner is China, they have constant problems.
The US has just worked it out with two of the most important trading partners Canada and Mexico. So, I don't think we should see trade as a villain. Trade is the one that is going to lift India's fortune on the international stage. The more we trade, the more leverage we have, the more partnerships we have, and the more weight in the global economic affairs we have.
Q - Lots of obstacles are playing out as far as trade deals are concerned?
The fact that the US-India trade relationship stands at USD $ 150 billion today is the most important relationship for India, and it has been growing.
It is very important for India to be seen as moving forward in a trade with the Americans, Europeans so that we are not widely seen as anti-trade, but actually, we have some partners, we are willing to do it with and on our own terms.
Trade is about negotiating hard but also bringing negotiations to a close, Indians generally have problems in closing negotiations. But, given the importance of the issue for Trump, and for India's own position in the international system today where India is increasingly seen as a negative factor in global trade negotiations.
Today it is important to say that look India is ready to negotiate, India is ready to close agreements, but on its terms. But we must close some deals with some key partners such as the US and Europe.
Q - Should we expect some big-ticket announcement on Donald Trump's visit to India?
It signals that they are ready to sign some version of a mini-trade deal, if not necessarily tackling the big issues. They might announce for example that they want to restart talks into the bilateral investment treaty.
I do think that there are some defence deals in the pipeline. There will some big-ticket announcement. There has been a fair bit that has happened in the especially in the defence and security side in the last three years.
If we had announced the presidential visit at another time it would have been considered a big deal, but I am not sure this is the kind of thing President Trump necessarily wants to highlight.
The thing about the trade that makes it different than defence and security, is that in defence and security, once the government decides that they want to push it through, overall they can set the narrative, and they are the ones that can shape the debate on it.
Trade is different because on both sides it involves domestic constituencies, often there are differences in the same party, and that has to be navigated, and both leaders are after all politicians, and both have taken a view of trade that I think is very different from the kind of liberalising tendency that we have seen for many years.
So both sides will have to grapple with this scenario where they are trying to do a trade deal. In some way, they move backwards from liberalisation.
Q - Iranian foreign minister Javed Zarif was here, does that complicate things so far as India US, given India's stakes in the gulf, the middle east and especially its relations with Iran?
India has been very careful and I think more so then Foreign minister Zarif needed to make some points, he has made them in a pretty strong language.
I suspect that there are people who would have preferred that he would not use a strong language in a platform here.
Indian Foreign Minister Dr S Jaishankar made it very clear that this issue is for the US and Iran to solve. India had concerns and these concerns are those that the international community shares about escalation.
I think India's statement was very careful, and they did not give Prime Minister Zarif what he was looking for in the Zarif Jaishankar phone call. Basically, India's statement to said that it did not even use the word assassination, it said it was a killing of a political leader.
I bet that they would not be taking sides against the US. This is not an equidistant relationship at the end of the day, the US is far more important to India than Iran.
India did not want to give up the relation with Iran, but at the end of the day, India will not want Iran defining or shaping its relationship with the US because it's far too important. Indian government's reaction thus far has shown that.
In this context, Sharma added, "Apart from the strategic investments in Chabahar there is also a 31 million Indian diaspora worldwide, 8 million diasporas are residing in that region, it also amounts to huge remittances coming home."
Q - How is the Iranian crisis is going to play out, especially post the downing of the civilian aircraft and the protest which has emerged in the streets of Iran?
Iran is going through a difficult moment, and its international isolation is growing. The pressure from the US has mounted on sanctions and are biting the Europeans, which Iran hoped would bail them out.
So, I think they are going to have a difficult moment. They certainly would want to make a case with their friend such as India, but I think India is not the one that is going to shape the relationship between the US and Iran.
In the world, we have friends who are not friends with each other.., when there are friends of ours who are fighting with each other, you have to manage that fallout.
On international sanctions, you had to go with the international community. But in Chabahar you said that look my direct interest is involved. So the US is willing to cut some slack. It's a management issue, it's not like one Iran issue is going to break India-US relationship.
Q - Did the Iranian crisis improve Pakistan's stakes; as far as the US context is concerned?
No, I think we are too obsessed with Pakistan. The story is really between Iran and the Arabs. Pakistan is dependent on the gulf Arabs, but Iran is a neighbour, so they are trying to manage the contradiction. They (Pakistan) are nowhere near being a decisive force.
