US Secretary of State Marco Rubio started his first visit to India on Saturday, looking to restore ties with a usually like-minded partner a week after Washington’s warm summit with China.
Rubio began his four-day, four-city tour in the eastern metropolis of Kolkata where the top US diplomat, a devout Catholic, will tour the headquarters of the late Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.
Rubio will then fly to New Delhi where he will meet later Saturday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to the State Department.
Before leaving on Tuesday, Rubio will also take part in a meeting of foreign ministers of the so-called Quad — Australia, India, Japan and the United States — four democracies seen as a counterweight to China’s presence in the Indian Ocean.
China has long been suspicious of the Quad, calling it as an attempt to encircle it, and has chastised India in the past for taking part in it.
But Rubio’s trip comes as President Donald Trump is shaking up traditional assumptions about US priorities.
Trump paid a state visit to China last week, where he hailed the reception he received from President Xi Jinping despite limited concrete announcements.
Trump in Beijing spoke of the United States and China being a “G2” — a formulation that had fallen out of favour in recent years as US allies fear being shut out of Washington’s dealings with a rising China.
Rubio, who as a senator had championed close ties with India, told reporters on his plane that it would be the first visit in his life to the country.
He is joined on the trip by his wife Jeanette, with whom he will later visit the Taj Mahal, the world-famous monument to love, in Agra.
– Eye on energy –
In brief remarks on India at the start of the trip that also took him to Sweden, Rubio called the country a “great ally, great partner” and said the United States would be looking to find ways to sell it more oil.
India’s fast-growing economy is reliant on energy imports and like many countries has been rattled by the US-Israeli attack on Iran, which retaliated by choking off the strategic Strait of Hormuz, sending global oil prices soaring.
India has historic ties with Iran but also a growing relationship with Israel, which Modi visited just days before the war.
But the conflict has also seen the re-emergence as a key US partner of India’s traditional adversary Pakistan, which has positioned itself as a mediator, with its powerful army chief flying Friday to Tehran.
The United States was a Cold War partner of Pakistan but increasingly took a distance as it prioritized relations with India, seeing the world’s largest democracy as a natural partner in a global order marked by China’s rise.
Trump has turned away from long-held assumptions and warmed to Pakistan, which has lavished him with praise over his diplomacy in its short war with India last year, and has welcomed a cryptocurrency firm owned by the US president’s family.
Modi irritated Trump by not crediting him with ending the war, in which India struck Pakistan following the massacre of mostly Hindu civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Trump imposed punitive tariffs on India shortly afterwards, at rates higher than he had put on China.
Rubio’s deputy, Christopher Landau, raised alarm in India by saying the country’s rise should not come at the commercial expense of the United States, vowing not to repeat “the same mistakes” made with China.
Relations have improved after a trade deal negotiated after the arrival in India earlier this year of US Ambassador Sergio Gor, who has been a close political aide to Trump.
