With Many Factors In Play, Will PM's US Visit Be Fruitful, Or Only Talk?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s three-day visit to the US from September 21 includes two important events. He will attend the four-nation summit of the Quad, consisting — besides India — of host, US President Joe Biden, and prime ministers Anthony Albanese of Australia and Fumio Kishida of Japan. PM Modi will also be in New York to attend the UN Secretary General-summoned Summit of the Future on September 23. There will of course also be a Modi-patented Indian diaspora event in Long Island, New York.

The Quad meeting this year was to be hosted by India but was switched to the US on American request, being President Biden’s last summit. Like the Japanese prime minister in 2023, who hosted the Quad in his hometown Hiroshima, President Biden has chosen his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. He is hosting an intimate dinner at his residence, the Lake House, to give it a personal touch.

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The summit’s venue will be President Biden’s old school, called Archmere Academy, where he began public speaking and overcame his childhood stutter. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, briefing the media, said that “our agenda covers healthcare, security, climate change, critical and emerging technologies, connectivity and maritime security and counterterrorism”. This is the usual list of subjects, in which incremental progress continues to be made. Just as at the 2023 summit there will be rhetoric for a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and demand for the region’s development, stability and prosperity. One additionality, last time, was the condemnation of use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. That is as far as India was willing to berate Russia.

A number of factors are in play as the four leaders meet. Biden and Kishida are attending their last summit as both will leave office in the coming months. It is unclear yet whether Donald Trump returns as president or Vice President Kamala Harris will prevail. That would determine if the Wilmington outcome is pursued or gets absorbed in Trump’s isolationist and protectionist vision.

The second element also relates to Trump who announced some days ago, during an election outing, that “Modi” was “coming” to see him. Trump surely recalls the Houston Indian diaspora gathering in 2020 where PM Modi posed the leading question “Abki baar” and the crowd expectedly shouted “Trump Sarkar”. This could be treated as subtle interference in US elections, unattempted by any foreign leader. Foreign Secretary Vikrim Misri shifted uncomfortably when asked by the media about a potential Trump-Modi encounter. Barely one month and a half before the US presidential election, meeting one contender without seeing the other can send wrong signals in a close election. Kamala Harris may not be in or near New York, unless Biden asks her to the Quad dinner in her capacity as his number two.

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The other controversy clouding the visit is a civil suit filed by G S Pannun, over being targeted allegedly by Indian agencies. Considering that his charge has been partly endorsed by the US and an Indian intermediary in the conspiracy extradited to the US, simple invective from Delhi is unhelpful. An attempt may be made to serve the summon on Ajit Doval, National Security Adviser, who normally accompanies the prime minister on foreign trips. A similar episode occurred in November 2013, when Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), Pannun’s outfit, managed to have a federal court issue summons to Sonia Gandhi, in New York for medical reasons.

In New York, PM N Modi will address a special session, called by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, called Summit of the Future. It aims to both address gaps in existing international commitments and steps needed to respond to emerging challenges and opportunities. A Pact for the Future is proposed as an action-oriented outcome document.

Once again, the UN has been more about rhetoric than action. The Ukraine War has shown Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, in clear breach of the UN Charter. The Gaza conflict has the US, another veto-wielding power, protecting Israel and its brutality against Palestinian civilians. In those circumstances pious slogans at the UN about global cooperation to meet old and new challenges just sound hollow or even duplicitous.

PM Modi’s visit was unavoidable, though his party faces a tough election in Haryana followed by an unnecessarily delayed and more crucial election in Maharashtra. The Union government has, like past tactics, floated another diversionary balloon ie One-Nation, One-Election. Meanwhile both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are keeping their wars going, hoping chaos will help Trump win. In fact the latest pager-based bombs, killing and maiming hundreds if not thousands of Hezbollah members or their families, increased the possibility of war in Israel’s north. PM Modi has been often quoted saying this is not an era of war. But it seems to be one of routine summitry.

KC Singh is former secretary, Ministry of External Affairs

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