Up close and personal

Personal rapport between Nixon and Indira certainly could not have resolved the irreconcilable interests of the United States and India over the liberation of Bangladesh. But even a slightly better chemistry could have limited the damage and minimised the bitterness that lasted so long between the two nations.

If Indira Gandhi could not stand Richard Nixon, she got on famously with President Ronald Reagan when they met a decade later at Cancun, Mexico. In her final term in office, Indira consciously sought to bring some balance into India’s external relations by correcting the tilt towards the Soviet Union in the 1970s. She tried to upgrade relations with the US and normalise ties with Beijing.

Her visit to the White House in 1982 was hugely successful, laying the foundation for high technology cooperation with the United States and resolving the differences over the Tarapur reactors. By getting the US to let the French supply nuclear fuel for the American-built reactors, a long nuclear feud between Delhi and Washington, running from 1974, was brought to a close.

THE youthful and charismatic Rajiv Gandhi attracted huge interest from Washington during his first visit in 1985. By breaking the American image of Indian leaders as preachy and prickly, and by presenting the face of a young and pragmatic leader, Rajiv was successful in charming the American system to do things for India at a time when the US was deeply aligned with Pakistan and China.

He got the US to explore cooperation in the defence sector as well as in liberalising the export of high-performance computers. But above all he signalled India’s potential for greater things on the world stage.

In comparison to Rajiv’s ambitious attempts to transform Indo-US relations in the late 1980s, the brief for P.V. Narasimha Rao, when he went to Washington in 1994, was two-fold. One was to market his economic reforms, and the other to befriend President Bill Clinton well enough to dilute American pressure on Kashmir and the nuclear question.

Personal charm was not cerebral Rao’s forte; but given the easy manner of Clinton he achieved the limited objectives.

Atal Behari Vajpayee, who loved travelling the world, had an even bigger challenge in dealing with America. Having conducted the nuclear tests in May 1998 in defiance of the United States, it was quite an achievement for Vajpayee to arrive in triumph at Washington two years later, having survived American sanctions and lured President Clinton into visiting India.

Vajpayee was no great conversationalist; silence was his preferred option at the table — whether dining or negotiating. Secure in his own persona, Vajpayee let his advisers — Jaswant Singh and Brajesh Mishra — do much of the talking at the meetings with Clinton and other world leaders.

IN his interactions with President George W. Bush in 2001, 2002 and 2003, Vajpayee laid the foundations for an agenda — nuclear reconciliation and strategic partnership — that Manmohan Singh is now trying to implement.

Singh and Bush are no strangers. They have already met thrice in the past year — New York, September 2004; Moscow, May 2005; and Gleneagles, earlier this month. In his own quiet but firm manner Singh has already surprised sceptics at home and abroad with his willingness to take tough decisions in his meetings with world leaders.

His ability to push the peace process with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, against considerable opposition from the conservatives, demonstrated Singh has both foreign policy convictions and the gumption to act. He is also aware of the rare nature of his state visit to the US, taking place amid fundamental changes in international politics.

While there is widespread derision of Bush as a leader, Singh knows Bush is at once tenacious and fun-loving. When they meet one to one first and then with the delegations, Singh and Bush will concentrate on setting India and the US on a direction the two nations have not travelled before.

BUSH is not an intellectual like Clinton, who could hold forth on anything. Bush sticks to the basics on a few issues at hand. That will eminently suit Singh, who would want to see Bush translate some his positive signals about India in recent months into concrete outcomes at the White House.

Singh and Bush have no problem of chemistry. What they will need in abundant measure is the political conviction to overcome the doubting Thomases and naysayers on both sides.