“Our strategic partnership is a joint endeavor for prosperity and peace. Through intense consultations, joint exercises, and shared technology, our security cooperation will make the region and the world safe and secure. Together, we will combat terrorist threats and keep our homelands and citizens safe from attacks, while we respond expeditiously to humanitarian disasters and crises,” it said.
The statement also suggested upcoming agreements, overt or covert, while talking about the two sides supporting an open and inclusive rules-based global order, in which India assumes greater multilateral responsibility, including in a reformed United Nations Security Council. “At the United Nations and beyond, our close coordination will lead to a more secure and just world,” it said in what would constitute a massive reversal of past form in which the two countries have voted against or been pitted against each other more than 90 per cent of the time.
Deals on climate change and energy were also hinted at. “Climate change threatens both our countries, and we will join together to mitigate its impact and adapt to our changing environment. We will address the consequences of unchecked pollution through cooperation by our governments, science and academic communities. We will partner to ensure that both countries have affordable, clean, reliable, and diverse sources of energy, including through our efforts to bring American-origin nuclear power technologies to India,” the statement, perhaps reflecting vision more than immediate intent, said.
Such an expansive vision was hardly on the day’s menu that began with the “private dinner” going off-script. President Obama greeted Modi by inquiring “Kem Cho, Mr Prime Minister?” (in Gujarati, How are you?) as he received him, to which Modi responded in English. By then it had been agreed that Michelle Obama, who was out campaigning in Milwaukee would not join the party, allowing the dinner to become quasi-official, with nine officials on each side joining the leaders. For form’s sake, Modi encouraged his hosts and aides to not be embarrassed to eat their dinner while he sipped warm water on account of his Navratri fast.
As their senior aides and officials knocked back a meal of crisped halibut and saffron basmati rice accompanied by a California wine, Obama and Modi exchanged notes about their political career, according to an official who briefed the media about the meeting. They spoke of their respective election campaigns, of coming to their respective capitals as outsiders, and the problems they encountered in the lack of technological savvy around them, before gravitating to more serious topics such as Ebola, Afghanistan and other serious bilateral stuff that both sides want to work together on.
