Obama Woos India Bollywood-Style

The U.S. President is trying to forge an economic partnership with India more aggressively than ever. Europe, meanwhile, sleeps through this American offensive.

He had just lost the U.S. midterm elections. Later, he flew to Jakarta and Seoul where he could expect a huge row over U.S. economic policy at the G20 Summit. In between, however, President Obama visited India.

Hardly anyone in the West took any notice of the visit; not even the U.S. media appeared interested in what Obama was up to in India. During a joint press conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a U.S. journalist asked Obama what he thought of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble’s criticisms of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy. That’s the way it goes with day-to-day politics: from election to election, from summit to summit. But this time it could be that a central, forward-looking political event went right past the people of the West unnoticed.

In an address to the Indian parliament, he reminded people that he welcomed Singh as the first official state guest of his administration. He emphasized that he would be visiting India for three days – longer than any other country on his itinerary. There is no protocol honor greater than that.

But Obama also emphasized the substance of his visit: he was the first U.S. President to support a permanent seat for India in the U.N. Security Council. Up until now, that honor had been accorded only to America’s longtime ally Japan. He also announced the lifting of U.S. export restrictions on certain weapons systems and high-tech products. He did everything to present the United States as India’s next major ally.

That wasn’t so easy to do. India has no allies. Period. That was the foreign policy espoused by the republic’s founder, Nehru, and that remains unchanged to this day. Former Indian Foreign Secretary Salman Haidar has said that India is too large to need allies. India’s enemy is Pakistan, which will soon get $2 billion worth of weapons supplied by the United States.

Despite the not entirely unsuccessful efforts of his predecessors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama will still have difficult terrain on which to navigate. But so far he has done so in such a manner that has left even his sharpest critics in India temporarily speechless.

India got a three-day, non-stop Obama performance that had everything going for it. Every gesture Obama made, coupled with his best rhetoric, showed the Indians how much he liked them and how important he thought they were. He danced with school kids to Bollywood tunes. He held exhaustive discussions with students, answering their critical questions about America’s failures in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One female student asked him why Pakistan wasn’t branded a terrorist state, but Obama didn’t lose his cool. He didn’t dodge and weave; he explained and explained over and over again. The subject was certainly complex enough, but Obama never talked down to his audiences; there was never a trace of the usual American arrogance. Instead there was his statement, “India isn’t emerging, it has emerged.” He repeated that over and over during the three-day visit.

Obama’s keynote speech revealed what will certainly be the basis of a new American foreign policy toward India: Obama made it clear that the American economy could only recover because Asia is the source of the strongest global economic growth. And Obama sees the United States standing shoulder to shoulder with India. “We are two strong democracies,” Obama declared, meaning they were the two strongest democracies.

Again and again he stressed that the rest of the world could take lessons from India and the United States. That message was obviously aimed directly at China. But it was also a message to us because during these three days Obama never once mentioned Europe. That may well be one reason why Europeans hardly paid attention to his India trip.

But that wasn’t very clever of them. From the European point of view, the way Obama and his Indian hosts talked of global democracy as though Europe didn’t even exist was taken as an insult. But those who don’t pay attention don’t get to take part in the discussions.