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India is planning to hold the ‘2+2 Ministerial’ meet with the US at the “earliest possible date” even as the US came down heavily on China and Pakistan while it wheedled India into taking a prominent role in the South Asian region as far as security and strategic interests are concerned.
India is believed to have urged US to hold the new ‘2+2 Ministerial’ meeting by February-March in an effort to understand what is expected of it in terms of playing a greater role in the security affairs of the region, during the first-ever India-US Designations Dialogue that got concluded on Tuesday, sources told BusinessLine .
“The 2+2 Ministerial will help in understanding what exactly the US is seeking from India. Not just that, it will also enable laying down the roadmap, as elaborated by US President Donald Trump in the newly released National Security Strategy (NSS),” an official said requesting anonymity.
The ‘2+2 Ministerial’ meet was proposed by Trump during a telephonic conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August. Thereafter, US Secretary of Defence James Mattis reiterated that the meeting should be held at an early date during his visit to India in September.
The meeting was supposed to be held in December but it was postponed to January. However, sources said, it may now be held in February-end or early March.
“It is very difficult to align the schedules of four principals — in fact, exponentially more difficult than aligning schedules of just two counterparts — so I am not at all surprised about delays getting it calendared. The 2+2 will be an important channel for strategic conversation and coordination,” said Alyssa Ayres, a former State Department official under the Obama administration, who is now a Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The ‘2+2 Ministerial’ is going to be an annual Cabinet-level meeting between both the governments that will be chaired by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while from the US side it will be chaired by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defence Secretary Mattis.
Nandan Unnikrishnan, Vice-President of Observer Research Foundation (ORF), and a foreign policy expert, said this was an opportune time for India to leverage its ties with the US and play a larger role in the changing geopolitics of the region and the world.
According to sources, now that the dialogue on Quadrilateral, or Quad, has been revived amongst US, Japan, Australia and India, the ‘2+2 Ministerial’ will help in chalking out its role going forward.
“The quadrilateral is only starting to set an agenda. I suspect we will be able to do more from our 2+2 than the Quad will do, at least initially. We have plenty of bilateral agenda items to be taken up, such as moving forward with co-development and co-production of defence items under the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative,” said Richard Rossow, Senior Adviser and Wadhwani Chair in US-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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