The United States on Tuesday may have conveyed its strongest pro-India signal yet. It promised “joint and concerted efforts” to dismantle safe havens of Pakistan-based terrorists groups, including the network operated by gangster Dawood Ibrahim.
The joint statement issued at the end of official talks listed Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammand and the Haqqani Network as the groups whose spheres of financial and tactical support must be destroyed. It called on Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks to justice.
The identification of Pakistan in the statement is significant and will be seen as a victory for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who ended his five-day visit to the US on Tuesday.
To be certain, calls on Pakistan to do the right thing have been made before and not much has happened. It is not clear whether the US is going to actually strike at the outlaws yet. However, US President Barack Obama, who seems to have developed a good rapport with Modi, may do things differently after 2014 when most of the US troops are out of Afghanistan.
The US and Afghanistan signed a bilateral security agreement as the new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani took the oath of office on Monday. Pakistan may feel the pressure from both sides of the border to change its tactics.
Signal to China
The other interesting signal went out to China, whose president Xi Jinping came to India at Modi’s enthusiastic invitation but went back drowned in controversy and confusion of a border incursion. Modi was clearly disappointed and flummoxed.
As a direct message to China, Obama and Modi expressed “concern about rising tensions over maritime territorial disputes” and “affirmed the importance of freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea”.
The pointer at Beijing, which has declared all kinds of zones in the sky and seas around it as its exclusive preserve, is significant. The fact that India and the US are saying it together carries weight. If nothing else, it shows the stiffening of the American spine.
India and the US also agreed to renew the Defence Framework Agreement for another 10 years but the new language is likely to be more ambitious so that thorny issues related to the transfer of sensitive technology can be sorted out. The annual Malabar bilateral naval exercises will be upgraded – a demand Washington has been making for sometime.
Another important point in the eight-page joint statement referred to India’s entry into the four multilateral regimes that was to flow from the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement. Because the nuclear deal hasn’t fructified, the US has been slow to move the process of India’s entry, largely because of the non-proliferation hardliners in the administration.
New memberships
The statement quoted President Obama as saying that India “meets” the requirements and is “ready” for membership of Missile Technology Control Regime, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Australia Group. Obama was giving a clear signal to his own non-proliferation bureaucracy to move the process.
The joint statement had several new initiatives but analysts said they showed that no big idea pushed this visit but lots of small ones did. Modi got the American stamp on his favorite projects around sanitation and digitalising India. He invited US industry to be the lead partner in developing smart cities in Ajmer, Vishakhapatnam and Allahabad and create a new water, sanitation and hygiene or WASH alliance.
In the end, the joint statement was largely Modispeak, painting a forward-looking picture of India to which the US was invited as a participant. Modi and Obama wrote a joint op-ed in The Washington Post with the mantra: “Chalein Saath Saath, forward together we go.”
Symbolic moments
Modi’s visit was studded with symbolic moments – some orchestrated and some spontaneous. After the dinner hosted by Obama, the two apparently developed enough rapport that the American president accompanied Modi to the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial.
The media was advised of the change of plans only at the last minute. But the US president or any state visitor just doesn’t do unscripted events because the Secret Service needs hours to check the venue and give its approval.
But the US president was the Modi’s guide and the two could be seen talking and listening and laughing. Obama is, in a manner, a living embodiment of King’s dream.
Similarly, Modi’s visit to the 9/11 memorial and to the Mahatama Gandhi statue in front of the Indian Embassy were all little dots that seemed to connect so far as image management goes. There were fears in Washington that Obama, a dedicated liberal, and Modi, a leader with a controversial past, would not connect at a personal level. But it seems they did.
Talking business
Modi’s pitch to the business seems to have worked. He talked business at every opportunity he got, joking about how “the ruppiah” runs in his blood as a Gujarati. He told anecdotes highlighting his Gujarat successes, especially the one about a factory that went up and running in 19 months and delivered coaches for the Delhi metro.
His last event was an address to the members of the US-India Business Council where its president Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard, turned downright flowery at the end, saying Modi’s efforts are bound to make the relationship bloom and the prime minister “will have to visit again”.
USIBC has 300 member-companies that have business ties to India. An internal survey of around 20% of the members has revealed that there is potential that India could receive $41 billion in investments in two to three years, according to Banga.
The Obama Administration and the government of India appeared to have closed the door on the bad days. There is certainly a new energy. As a beaming officer on the American side said: “There is positive Shakti.”
The joint statement issued at the end of official talks listed Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammand and the Haqqani Network as the groups whose spheres of financial and tactical support must be destroyed. It called on Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks to justice.
The identification of Pakistan in the statement is significant and will be seen as a victory for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who ended his five-day visit to the US on Tuesday.
To be certain, calls on Pakistan to do the right thing have been made before and not much has happened. It is not clear whether the US is going to actually strike at the outlaws yet. However, US President Barack Obama, who seems to have developed a good rapport with Modi, may do things differently after 2014 when most of the US troops are out of Afghanistan.
The US and Afghanistan signed a bilateral security agreement as the new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani took the oath of office on Monday. Pakistan may feel the pressure from both sides of the border to change its tactics.
Signal to China
The other interesting signal went out to China, whose president Xi Jinping came to India at Modi’s enthusiastic invitation but went back drowned in controversy and confusion of a border incursion. Modi was clearly disappointed and flummoxed.
As a direct message to China, Obama and Modi expressed “concern about rising tensions over maritime territorial disputes” and “affirmed the importance of freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea”.
The pointer at Beijing, which has declared all kinds of zones in the sky and seas around it as its exclusive preserve, is significant. The fact that India and the US are saying it together carries weight. If nothing else, it shows the stiffening of the American spine.
India and the US also agreed to renew the Defence Framework Agreement for another 10 years but the new language is likely to be more ambitious so that thorny issues related to the transfer of sensitive technology can be sorted out. The annual Malabar bilateral naval exercises will be upgraded – a demand Washington has been making for sometime.
Another important point in the eight-page joint statement referred to India’s entry into the four multilateral regimes that was to flow from the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement. Because the nuclear deal hasn’t fructified, the US has been slow to move the process of India’s entry, largely because of the non-proliferation hardliners in the administration.
New memberships
The statement quoted President Obama as saying that India “meets” the requirements and is “ready” for membership of Missile Technology Control Regime, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Australia Group. Obama was giving a clear signal to his own non-proliferation bureaucracy to move the process.
The joint statement had several new initiatives but analysts said they showed that no big idea pushed this visit but lots of small ones did. Modi got the American stamp on his favorite projects around sanitation and digitalising India. He invited US industry to be the lead partner in developing smart cities in Ajmer, Vishakhapatnam and Allahabad and create a new water, sanitation and hygiene or WASH alliance.
In the end, the joint statement was largely Modispeak, painting a forward-looking picture of India to which the US was invited as a participant. Modi and Obama wrote a joint op-ed in The Washington Post with the mantra: “Chalein Saath Saath, forward together we go.”
Symbolic moments
Modi’s visit was studded with symbolic moments – some orchestrated and some spontaneous. After the dinner hosted by Obama, the two apparently developed enough rapport that the American president accompanied Modi to the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial.
The media was advised of the change of plans only at the last minute. But the US president or any state visitor just doesn’t do unscripted events because the Secret Service needs hours to check the venue and give its approval.
But the US president was the Modi’s guide and the two could be seen talking and listening and laughing. Obama is, in a manner, a living embodiment of King’s dream.
Similarly, Modi’s visit to the 9/11 memorial and to the Mahatama Gandhi statue in front of the Indian Embassy were all little dots that seemed to connect so far as image management goes. There were fears in Washington that Obama, a dedicated liberal, and Modi, a leader with a controversial past, would not connect at a personal level. But it seems they did.
Talking business
Modi’s pitch to the business seems to have worked. He talked business at every opportunity he got, joking about how “the ruppiah” runs in his blood as a Gujarati. He told anecdotes highlighting his Gujarat successes, especially the one about a factory that went up and running in 19 months and delivered coaches for the Delhi metro.
His last event was an address to the members of the US-India Business Council where its president Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard, turned downright flowery at the end, saying Modi’s efforts are bound to make the relationship bloom and the prime minister “will have to visit again”.
USIBC has 300 member-companies that have business ties to India. An internal survey of around 20% of the members has revealed that there is potential that India could receive $41 billion in investments in two to three years, according to Banga.
The Obama Administration and the government of India appeared to have closed the door on the bad days. There is certainly a new energy. As a beaming officer on the American side said: “There is positive Shakti.”
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