Obama or Nixon: Which template would Donald Trump's India visit follow?

With a decelerating economy that weakens India's hands on geopolitical issues, it will be interesting to know which way this visit will go.

While it wasn’t an official visit, the first occupant of the White House to land on the shores of India was Ulysses S Grant, and likely not the last with, let’s say a dodgy sense of aesthetics. The 18th President of the United States, Grant served two consecutive terms in office between 1869 and 1877 and was also the Commanding General of the US Army when the Civil War was won. Soon after his term ended, Grant and his wife Julia set forth on a two-and-a-half-year world tour that aimed to project the US as an outward looking power ready to engage with the world.

Grant arrived in Mumbai in February 1879 aboard USS Richmond and undertook the customary trip, on elephant back, to the Taj Mahal in Agra, whereupon the Grants thought it beautiful but not more than the Capitol Hill building. Grant met the then Viceroy Robert Lytton in Kolkata and professed admiration for his father Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novels. In 1982, the San Jose State University instituted the annual, tongue-in-cheek Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest to award the worst possible opening lines of a novel as a tribute to Bulwer-Lytton’s “It was a dark stormy night” in his 1830 work Paul Clifford.

It remains to be seen what reluctant traveler Donald J Trump, the 45th President of the US on his two-day visit between February 24-26 makes of the spartan Sabarmati Ashram, the Taj Mahal, or the ‘Kem Cho, Trump’ rally in Ahmedabad where PM Narendra Modi assures there would be “millions and millions” in attendance.

Beyond the bearhugs and protestations of great personal bond between the two leaders, this visit carries a more transactional flavour than other recent presidential trips to India. Unlike in the past, a trade deal between the two occupies centerstage, given the context of Trump’s domestic policy priorities.

Trump, the self-professed master of deal making has in recent months dubbed India “tariff king” in a tweet pointing towards India’s propensity to heavily tax US exports such as the high-end Harley Davidson motorcycles. India, instinctively wary of trade deals now has more reason to worry considering the deteriorating health of export sector after sector from gems and jewelry to textiles. India’s inability to take any meaningful advantage in return for greater American access to its domestic markets perhaps explains its lack of enthusiasm on this front. But hey, we’re at least talking business. It wasn’t like this always.

Would be unwise to alienate India, turn to Pakistan as partner: US expert

'The US would be unwise to turn to Pakistan as a strategic partner,' Richard N Hass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in an op-ed last week.

Amid an increased India-Pak tension on Kashmir and an ongoing Afghan peace talks, a top American foreign policy expert has cautioned the Trump Administration against any strategic tilt towards Pakistan and moving away from India.

"The US would be unwise to turn to Pakistan as a strategic partner," Richard N Hass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in an op-ed last week.

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Pakistan sees a friendly government in Kabul as vital to its security and competition with arch-rival India, he wrote in his op-ed that was first published by Project Syndicate and thereafter, on the CFR website.

"There is little reason to believe that the military and intelligence services, which continue to run Pakistan, will rein in the Taliban or rule out terrorism," Hass said.

"Equally, the US would be unwise to alienate India. Yes, India has a tradition of protectionist trade policies and often frustrates US policymakers with its reluctance to cooperate fully on strategic issues," he wrote.

But democratic India, which will soon surpass China as the world's most populous country and will boast the world's fifth-largest economy, is a good long-term bet, he added.

"It is a natural partner to help balance China. India has rejected participation in China's Belt and Road Initiative, whereas Pakistan, struggling economically, has embraced it," Hass said.

According to the top American scholar, the US would also be unwise to race for the exits from Afghanistan.

Peace talks with the Taliban mostly look like a means to extract US forces from the country, he claimed, adding that the process is reminiscent of Vietnam, where a 1973 agreement between the US and North Vietnam provided a pretext for American withdrawal from the South but not a basis for peace.

The notion of a coalition government, with power shared by the current government and the Taliban, is optimistic at best, fanciful at worst, Hass observed.

"Instead of embracing fantasy, the US should continue to keep a modest number of troops in Afghanistan to ensure the government survives and the country does not again become a terrorist haven.