Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be travelling to the Philippines next week for the ASEAN summit and the accompanying security dialogue for the Indo-Pacific region at the East Asia Summit.
Both events will be attended by several world leaders, including Donald Trump and Chinese premier Li Qiang. Chinese President Xi Jinping is giving it a miss. This will be Trump’s first trip abroad since his Republican party got a drubbing in the mid-term elections.
Modi will be in Manila on November 16 and 17. At a briefing on the PM’s trip, officials were tight-lipped about a possible bilateral between Modi and Trump. Rudrendra Tandon, Secretary East at the MEA, said on Thursday (November 12) that at multilateral events, meetings were decided at the last moment. Nor could be say whether a Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) summit was on the cards.
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Earlier, there was a buzz that as leaders of all four Quad members (Australia, India, Japan, and the US) will be in Manila, a deferred summit could take place. It could still happen of course, but so far there is no official confirmation.
Quad’s future under question
The fact that a Quad summit has not been held since Trump took office for the second term has led to speculation about the grouping. India was to have hosted a summit last year, but it fell through as Trump was in no mood to attend.
There has been much speculation about the future of Quad and whether Trump remains committed to it. Trump’s overtures to China, his visit to Beijing and Xi’s to Washington in September, has led to a belief, at least in India, that Trump saw no use for a forum that was at heart an attempt to contain China’s often-aggressive behaviour on the South China Sea and the Pacific waters. Trump is travelling to China again for the APEC summit and Xi will be in Florida for the G20 meet.
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While a summit has not taken place, other Quad-related events, including meetings of foreign ministers and senior officials of India, the US, Australia, and Japan, have met several times. The Quad foreign ministers last met on October 31 in Atlanta on the sidelines of the G20.
Will there be a Modi-Trump bilateral?
There is also much interest on whether there would be a bilateral between Modi and Trump in Manila. It will possibly happen as the two also met in June on the sidelines of the G7 meet.
India-US ties have significantly deteriorated since Trump’s return to the White House. Apart from slapping the highest 50 per cent tariffs on Indian goods (reduced since), sending back illegal migrants with chains around their ankles, raising the fee for extension of HI-B visas, and claiming a hand in the ceasefire between India and Pakistan following operation Sindoor, it has been a long saga of anti-Indian action. But for Indians, the unkindest cut has been Trump’s outreach to arch foe Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir. India had pushed back against claims that Trump brokered the ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
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Yet in the last few months, the situation has improved, with chances of the bilateral trade agreement coming through by next month. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first visit to India this year helped smoothen ruffled features, though his second trip to Mumbai and Jamnagar raked up another controversy.