Is Modi Going to Get Buff By Drumpf?

http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/

Quote:Every prime ministerial visit abroad is riveted on a ‘Top Secret’ approach paper on what Indian diplomacy expects to achieve and how to go about achieving the desired result. It’s a How to do? brief drawn up by bureaucrats who navigate the big man away from colliding against hidden icebergs in the deep blue ocean of international diplomacy. How would that approach paper look in respect of PM Narendra Modi’s visit to the US?

We get a preview in Modi’s ‘commentary’ in the Wall Street Journal (June 25) – For the U.S. and India, a Convergence of Interests and Values: Our two nations stand as mutually reinforcing engines of growth and innovation.

Don’t be put off by the bombastic title. Delve deeper and the following signposts can be spotted. For a start, Modi hails President Donald Trump’s election in front of an American audience. This was perhaps the trickiest moment, because India cannot alienate its ‘core constituency’, who happen to harbor visceral hatred toward Trump and question the legitimacy of his election.

Modi circumnavigated the problem by complimenting Trump in ‘generic’ terms, by hailing the “strength of our shared values and the stability of our systems.” Trump is at full liberty to interpret it as a compliment to him personally. Modi adds, “Our people and institutions steadfastly viewed democratic change as an instrument for renewal and resurgence.”

Trump has a well-earned reputation for flattery. And this is platinum grade flattery coming from the elected leader of the world’s biggest democracy at a time when the mother of democracy, Britain, is rejecting a Trump visit and seasoned European statesmen view him as an imposter. Modi may have achieved his first objective – work up a ‘good chemistry’ with Trump.

Quote:Modi then turned to the real business – how India can be useful for ‘America First’. Modi spread out a seductive business landscape in India – GST and infrastructure development “worth many billions of dollars over the next decade alone”. He disclosed India’s intention to buy 200 civilian aircraft from Boeing. He forecast India’s import of $40 billion LNG from US. The LNG deal is a “win-win” because Reliance has corporate ties with the US shale industry and Trump administration is tied by umbilical cords to Big Oil. For topping effect, Modi adds, “Defence is another mutually beneficial sphere of our partnership.” India cannot match Saudi Arabia or Qatar, but it’s still a business offer furthering ‘American First’.

Modi thereupon presented his own ‘wish list’. One, he reminded Trump that there could be an “exciting digital and scientific partnership” between India and the US involving a “combination of (US) technology, (US-Indian) innovation and (Indian) skilled workers” and an unleashing of “creative and entrepreneurial energy” — that is, if only Trump would allow “free movement between both countries.” It’s H1-B visa, stupid! Will Trump buy into Modi’s Obamaspeak?

Two, Modi waded into Trump’s agenda of fighting terrorism. He made a stunning offer of lending Indian expertise to Trump’s war, by flagging that “India has four decades’ experience in fighting terrorism.” How Modi reached the timeline of “forty years” we do not know. But it sounds ominous. Let us keep fingers crossed that it doesn’t hint at an IPKF-style deadly saga in Afghanistan, which would of course be a monumental tragedy.

Third, Modi says ‘Barkis is willing’ – if only Trump revives the pivot strategy in Asia. He signals that India will feel privileged to be in the bandwagon. Modi pointedly reminds Trump that US and India “share an interest in ensuring that sea lanes – critical life lines of trade and energy – remain secure and open to all.” Shades of South China Sea and intimations of Chinese submarines lurking in the Indian Ocean!

Quote:Modi ends up with a stirring call: “The logic of our strategic relationship is incontrovertible… a deeper and stronger partnership that extends far beyond the Beltway and the Raisina Hill.”

So, what’s the base line? What emerges is that Modi’s foreign policy compass is set and he doesn’t feel the urge to recalibrate it. The compass needle actually points toward China and Pakistan, India’s great adversaries. Succinctly put, Modi hopes to create synergy in the partnership with the US to deal with India’s China problem from a position of strength and to read the riot act to Pakistan.

Is it bravado or is it based on empirical evidence and objective realities? Arguably, the tone of the article is markedly different from Modi’s past rhetoric. The commentary betrays a vague sense of nostalgia for a bygone era. Never once in the article Modi uses the expressions – ‘natural ally’ or ‘defining partnership’.

On Tuesday morning, we certainly aren’t going to read a joint editorial penned by Modi and Trump in the Washington Post (which was what Modi and Obama did in September 2014). Trump is an utterly self-made personality who went bankrupt half a dozen times and still bounced back as billionaire – and as the world’s most powerful man. He may not regard Modi as his co-author.

Good stuff : India political scribes are the best in the bizness.

For a country with English as a 2nd language, it is even better!

Lovely synonyms ~

WELL!  HERES VIJAY PRASHAD ON WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED AT THE MEETING ::LOL:: ::LOL:: ::LOL::

AND EQUALLY CLEAR AS MKB

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/28/...tics-meet/

Quote:India’s Narendra Modi is back in Washington, DC. In India, the prime minister is known for his travels around the world. He is rarely home. No amount of chaos in the country, not even the epidemic of violence against oppressed castes and Muslims by lynch mobs, could keep Mr Modi home. He has more important concerns than the turmoil experienced by his citizens.

Meeting US President Donald Trump is an important sign of being a world leader. Modi’s base – which sees him as a strong man – is enamoured by the idea of their leader sitting with Trump. After all, they are both strong men who have nothing but contempt for weakness. Both easily shrug off domestic chaos. Both leave details to others to care for. They see themselves as visionaries, as a new breed of nationalists who represent the hatred of large sections of their citizenry. It is hate that brought them both to power. It is hate that anchors their agenda.

For nine years – from 2005 to 2014 – Modi was banned from entering the United States. Allegations of his complicity in the 2002 pogroms against Muslims in his home state of Gujarat drew a sharp response from the US government. It decided to deny him a visa, a policy that was overturned when Modi became prime minister.

Quote:He visited the US in 2014 and had a private dinner with then US President Barack Obama at the White House. It was full-scale rehabilitation. Modi then returned each year – holding a public meeting at Facebook’s headquarters in 2015 and addressing a joint session of the US Congress in 2016. The current visit is his fourth since he won the Indian general election in 2014.

Both Obama and Trump have been eager to fete Modi. They have recognised that in the current political climate in India, he and his political party – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – are going to be around for a while and will perhaps win the 2019 elections as well. From the US perspective, Modi has to be engaged, so the allegations of his complicity in the Gujarat riots are irrelevant. Pragmatism means that morality can be set aside.

Quote:The politics of hate and the economy of weapons

Not only do Modi and Trump lead movements anchored in hate, but they also appeal to an old-fashioned form of nationalism. Both tell their people that policies are all about getting the best deal possible. And this is where both men will face problems. Despite all the warm words about a new Indo-US arrangement over the past two decades, great divergences exist over actual policies.

Indian governments since 1991 sold out their agrarian sector to US-based agro-businesses, leading to great agrarian distress. The subsequent financial pressure on small farms and various environmental catastrophes led to more than 300,000 farmers committing suicide.

The pushback against these gifts to US agro-business means that Modi cannot bend further to please the Trump administration’s trade ambitions. Nor would Modi’s Make In India initiative go well with a long-standing US desire to open India’s markets to US retail giants such as Walmart.

Modi would like to do all he can to please the Americans, but he would be met with a million mutinies within his own governing bloc if he does so. Nationalism is a curious device. It can easily give you votes, but it also raises the expectations of your voters.

But what Modi can do for Trump is buy more US weapons. India is the world’s largest importer of weapons, while the US is the world’s largest seller of weapons.

Quote:It is of course a vulgarity that India – where 50 percent of the population lives in deprivation – spends so much of its budget on weapons. But today it is how the government chooses its priorities – ignoring the pressing needs of its population in order to service Western arms dealers.

Nationalism is no enemy to defence spending. Just before Modi’s trip to the US, his government sealed a deal to buy 22 US Predator drones at a price of $2bn. Trump surely liked that. He likes to brag about such deals. That it will be the impoverished Indian population paying for it is irrelevant to both heads of state. How 22 drones will help alleviate poverty is something that no reporter could have asked them at their joint news conference. Such a question would have been too vulgar.

But apart from this arms deal that came before Modi arrived in the US, little else was accomplished during Modi’s visit.

During his meeting with Trump, Modi avoided explaining how his protectionist policies would accommodate balancing the trade deficit between the US and India. Trump, on the other hand, dodged the question on pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, which Modi so adamantly supports.

Quote: The two men – pickled in the politics of hate – got to know one another and nothing more.

There was a great deal of back-slapping, mutual praise and displays of machismo. There was a great deal of bragging and making big promises.

This is something that Modi and Trump share: empty rhetoric delivered with no care that policies will not follow. Drama is everything. Publicity matters the most.