French President Emmanuel Macron will be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade on 26 January 2024. The announcement made last week is proof of the growing strategic partnership between the two countries and is a fitting reciprocation following the honour France bestowed on India earlier this year by inviting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be the chief guest at France’s Bastille Day parade. Before Macron’s official confirmation, no one outside the concerned officials had any inkling that the French President had been invited—and that’s how it should be, given the delicate nature of all bilateral relations.
Any non-acceptance can be projected by various interest groups as a snub, even though that may not be the case. Hence, the controversy surrounding Joe Biden’s apparent non-acceptance of the invitation to India’s Republic Day parade was totally avoidable. Only those not versed in the intricacies of diplomacy would make the rookie mistake of making the information about such an invitation public, much before it has been accepted. When such a mistake is made by the ambassador of the United States, eyebrows are bound to go up. There is no reason to believe that the US ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti wants to throw a spanner in India-US relations. Also, surely, Ambassador Garcetti—even though a political appointee to the post of ambassador and not a career diplomat—understands the importance of discretion. Hence, it is not clear why he would make the information public, as he did in September this year, soon after the G20 New Delhi summit.
Unless it was because of tremendous enthusiasm on his part—the enthusiasm with which he has been taking to all things Indian ever since he has arrived in New Delhi. A look at his “X” feed will show how busy the ambassador has been making friends and experiencing Indian culture by criss-crossing the country. In the recent past, perhaps no other US ambassador would have tried to know India the way Ambassador Garcetti has, which is commendable. But the upshot of the faux pas he committed was that once it became clear that the Biden administration was not accepting India’s invitation, western analysts and foreign policy “experts” of all hues started portraying it as an instance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi having isolated India by not toeing the American line on Ukraine. It was also painted as a case of India-US relations having got derailed because of the US allegation that an Indian government official had taken out a hit on Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on US soil. It’s a different matter that neither India’s Ukraine stand, nor the Pannun affair stopped the US from either feting PM Modi with a state visit in June or prevented President Biden from visiting India for the G20 leaders’ summit. But as India has learnt to its peril, more often than not western think-tankers and opinion-makers do not let facts come in the way when spinning a nice fiction.
In fact, there could be several reasons behind Biden not coming to India in January, the primary one being that it is likely clashing with the period during which the US President is preparing to deliver his State of the Union address. The address could be delivered anytime between the last week of January and the first week of March. Biden delivered the 2022 address on 1 March and the 2023 one on 7 February. Moreover, 2024 is an election year for Biden, and things are not right for him domestically. His popularity ratings are headed south. Things have come to such a pass that questions are rising inside Biden’s own party about his suitability to stand for re-election. The speculation is that the beginning of the new year would be hectic for Biden politically. In addition, the Quad summit that India was hoping to host in January got postponed because of scheduling difficulties for both the Japanese and Australian Prime Ministers. So it likely did not make sense for Biden to come for 26 January and then later again for Quad.
The problem with many western “experts” is that they are yet to recover from their Cold War 1.0 mentality of seeing the world in binaries—as US versus Russia, where India, being close to Russia, is in the “enemy camp”, and Pakistan, in spite of being a basket case, is a firm ally. They are not even ready to acknowledge that Russia is history and in the new Cold War 2.0, it is primarily the US (and other democracies) vs Communist China now, and that multilateralism is here to stay. As Prime Minister Modi said in a recent interview to the Financial Times that it must be accepted that in this “era of multilateralism” “absolute agreement on all matters cannot be a prerequisite for collaboration”.
The India-US relationship works in spite of their differences. Any attempt to box India into the ally basket, where it has to toe Uncle Sam’s line, will backfire. In fact, not even US’ Nato allies are toeing the US line, unless it is convenient for them—their buying Russian oil and gas in huge quantities being a case in point. And now that the President of a country as important as France is visiting India, it is hoped that the canard about India being isolated has been put to rest.
As for Ambassador Garcetti, we wish him well in his efforts to make India-US relations shine.
Joyeeta Basu