In his usual hyperbolic style, Trump on Tuesday repeated an earlier claim that Modi had told him in a phone conversation that “seven million people” would line the streets to greet him when Air Force One touches down in Ahmedabad. The assertion has been ridiculed because it means virtually the city’s entire population would be out greeting him. On Thursday, the president doubled down on the claim, saying “10 million people” would show up.

Beyond the razzmatazz to wow Trump on Monday, formal events are on the cards the next day in New Delhi. The US president will meet Modi and his officials, confer with Indian President Ramnath Kovind, and participate in a round table with Indian corporate titans.

A US$2.6 billion deal for India to buy 24 Seahawk helicopters from Lockheed Martin is expected to be signed during the visit – a purchase that will take the total value of US arms exports to India to nearly US$20 billion, up from virtually zero two-way defence trade 12 years ago.

Other pacts reportedly slated to be concluded during the visit include a deal for the US energy company Westinghouse to build six nuclear reactors in the South Asian country.

Military analysts say imminent deals for a US missile shield to protect the capital New Delhi and an addition of a further six Apache helicopters to the 22 the Indian military already operates are also likely to be discussed privately – if not acknowledged publicly.

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‘CHINA THREAT’

In the US capital, especially, foreign policy commentators say the so-called “China threat” that both countries are facing from an increasingly assertive Beijing makes Trump’s visit potentially one of the most important – if not the most important – junctures in the bilateral relationship in recent decades.

At the same time, the analysts readily admit that ties between the world’s oldest and biggest democracies are girdled by jarring differences on a range of issues.

Four US senators, including Trump ally Lindsay Graham, last week wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing concern about Modi’s crackdown in Muslim-majority Kashmir and the government’s controversial new citizenship law. Modi’s moves “threaten the rights of certain religious minorities and the secular character of the state”, the senators said.

Still, the likes of Washington-based South Asia watcher Michael Kugelman believe the rapid expansion of Chinese power projection makes the deepening of US-India ties almost inevitable.

“To be sure, the two countries might differ on how to address the China challenge, but they converge closely on how they perceive the China challenge and on the need to tackle it,” said Kugelman, deputy director of the Wilson Center think tank’s South Asia programme.

That refrain rang across analysts weighing in on the significance of Trump’s whistle-stop trip that reportedly was mooted by Modi just last month when the two leaders exchanged New Year pleasantries over the phone.

Modi met Trump twice last September, in the midst of the annual United Nations General Assembly meetings, and when he took a detour to Texas to hold a “Howdy Modi” rally attended by the US president and over 50,000 Indian Americans. The “Namaste Trump” [Hello Trump] event on Monday at the 100,000-capacity Motera stadium in Ahmedabad is a sequel of sorts to that event.

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“While you might not hear the word ‘China’ mentioned [during the trip], you will hear allusions to it constantly throughout remarks and some of the deals,” said Tanvi Madan, an analyst at Washington’s Brookings Institution and author of a book on China’s role in shaping US-India ties during the Cold War.

Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy, said the presidential trip was part of efforts to develop relations with a country considered “a core part of the administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy”. “Both countries are worried about China as a principal security threat and have been stepping up collaboration in recognition of those concerns,” Bremmer said.

India for decades held on to a determined independence from the US partly because of Washington’s close ties with neighbouring Pakistan, New Delhi’s prime adversary.

The relationship particularly soured over a brief American naval show of force in the Bay of Bengal in favour of Pakistan during a 1971 war between the neighbours, and later over India’s status as a nuclear renegade.

Ties have generally been improving since 2007, when former US president George W. Bush struck a landmark civil nuclear accord with the prime minister at the time, Manmohan Singh, that removed the South Asian giant from the list of global atomic pariahs.

At present, analysts say one of the prime drivers of the strengthening US-India “strategic convergence” is China’s activities in the eastern Indian Ocean – an area where New Delhi has traditionally asserted dominance.

Last November, the US and India for the first time held a joint land, air and sea exercise in the Bay of Bengal called Tiger Triumph. The training featured some 1,200 personnel from India and 500 Americans.

India’s military – now the world’s fifth-biggest military spender – used to only hold such exercises with the erstwhile Soviet Union, its key military partner during the years of estrangement with the US. Russia remains India’s top weapons supplier.

Jeff Smith, an India expert at Washington’s Heritage Foundation, said “the entrance of the People’s Liberation Army Navy into the Indian Ocean as a regular actor for the first time in modern history” has had India “feeling more encircled than before”.

“Even though it doesn’t always articulate them in public, India shares many of the concerns about China and it’s always unspoken,” Smith said.

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India’s reticence towards openly criticising China – as opposed to Washington’s increasingly strident public comments about Beijing – remains one of the main divergences in both countries’ approach towards the East Asian juggernaut.

Kurt Campbell, a former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, offered this anecdote about how India handles its concerns about China: “The most fascinating thing about working with Indian friends about China [is that] Indian friends will tell you exactly what they want you to say about China.”

“And then you will say it, and they will be like, ‘I can’t believe you said that, I don’t want you to talk like that’,” Campbell narrated at a recent public forum.

DIPLOMATIC CHOKE POINTS

The observers stressed that broad agreement on how to deal with China alone will not eliminate key hurdles in the US-India relationship.

Foremost of the challenges is Trump’s intolerance for major economies’ trade surpluses with the US – even if these countries are developing nations like India.

Trump has famously called India the “tariff king”, and, this week, in reference to ongoing trade talks, said the US was “not treated very well by India”.

The US president suspended New Delhi’s preferential trade status under its “Generalised System of Preference” (GSP) that has been in place since 1976, claiming that Indian non-tariff barriers were blocking market access to US companies in areas such as agriculture and medical devices.

The US Trade Representative’s Office (USTR) estimated that India was exporting US$5.6 billion worth of goods to the US using the GSP mechanism; New Delhi’s estimate is much lower at US$250 million.

A mini-trade deal was reportedly in the works to restore India GSP status during the visit – with the Modi government offering concessions in the closely guarded dairy and poultry industries – but there are few signs of such a deal coming to fruition any time soon.

Trump on Tuesday said “we can have a trade deal with India, but I’m really saving the big deal for later on”.

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Nisha Biswal, president of the US-India business council, on Thursday told reporters in a telephone briefing ahead of the presidential visit that while the lobby group was hopeful for “some kind of agreement” to be reached, “we do recognise and acknowledge that both governments have been indicating that is unlikely at this juncture”.

Analysts say another similarly difficult bilateral issue likely to be raised during the visit is India’s US$5 billion deal in 2018 to purchase Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile systems.

The Trump administration has previously warned that the deal could trigger sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions (CAATSA) law targeting Russia, Iran and North Korea that the president signed into law in 2017.

Akriti Vasudeva, a research associate at the Stimson Center’s South Asia programme, told This Week in Asia that “Indian officials expect that due to President Trump’s camaraderie with Prime Minister Modi and general fondness for India as well as an alignment in the US and Indian strategic view of China, he may grant India a waiver” on CAATSA sanctions.

The researcher said “there may be some receptivity” in the Trump administration to India’s position that it cannot “drastically and abruptly” reduce dependence on Russian weapon systems. Russia accounted for 58 per cent of Indian arms imports in 2013-2018, compared to the 15 per cent attributable to imports from US defence companies in the same period.

“It remains to be seen what happens. I imagine this issue will at least be touched on in the discussions during President Trump’s upcoming trip,” Akriti said.

BEYOND THE BONHOMIE

Other diplomatic watchers warned that there are downsides to overly relying on the bonhomie between the two leaders likely to be on full display during the visit – as well as on viewing balancing China as a raison d’être for the bilateral relationship.

Michael H. Fuchs, an Obama administration state department official, said the duo’s controversial social agenda could prove the undoing of long-term ties between the US and India. “Yes, the two countries share strategic interests – in particular balancing against China,” said Fuchs, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “But if the democratic values that the US and India embody are eroded by nationalist, divisive and exclusionary policies like those now being pursued by Trump and Modi, then the relationship would lose its most powerful asset.”

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On the Indian side, commentaries in the last week have urged the Modi administration to throw caution to the wind in dealing with an American president up for re-election in November.

Some in the commentarial have suggested at least part of Trump’s motivation for the India trip is to shore up his support among the small but influential and wealthy Indian American community.

Sanjeev Joshipura, executive director of the Indian American advocacy group Indiaspora, said the community was heartened by “bipartisan political support” in Washington for stronger US-India relations. Trump’s participation in last year’s Howdy Modi event left “no doubt” that the US president is courting the Indian American vote, Joshipura said.

The estimated three million-strong community has traditionally voted for Trump’s rivals in the Democratic Party, and Joshipura said it was “difficult to ascertain whether and to what extent these initiatives and overtures will change our community’s voting patterns.”

In an op-ed, the Observer Research Foundation’s analysts Harsh V. Pant and Kashish Parpiani suggested India needed to be mindful of maintaining “Indian neutrality on American polarisation” in the event of changes in the Washington political landscape following the election.

“With Trump’s visit, New Delhi must ensure its projection as a net gain for the bilateral relationship-at-large – and not merely an extension of the US president’s re-election campaign.” ■