ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE—President Barack Obama wants the Chinese to be watching his plane land in New Delhi. He knows they are.

Obama came into office hoping to make a “pivot to Asia,” and he’s spent six years trying to shift U.S. foreign policy in that direction, despite distractions and rebuffs, in an effort to align U.S. interests with those of the world’s most rapidly growing populations and economies. As part of that strategy and an effort to counterbalance China, Obama has looked to bolster India — which is on course to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation — to make sure China has a strong rival in the region.


But for Obama, like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before him, the Indian relationship itself has so far been a huge investment of American time and money with little to show. So now, on the first foreign trip of his final two years and with a mind on building his legacy, Obama’s spending three days in New Delhi trying again.

China, said Jon Huntsman, Obama’s first ambassador in Beijing, “will be implied in everything they do, and everything they discuss.”

The areas in which a stronger India can help U.S. interests vis-a-vis China range from cyber-security to terrorism, said Tim Roemer, Obama’s first ambassador to New Delhi.

“Does China scratch their head and sleep a couple hours less at night as a result of this? Maybe. And maybe that’s good,” Roemer said. “If China thinks twice about cyber-security attacks around the world, that’s good. If China thinks twice about pushing neighbors around in the South China seas. If China thinks twice about helping Pakistan in certain ways, that’s good. If China takes on more responsibility in Afghanistan, given their mining interests and concerns about terrorism and Uighurs, that’s good.”

Of course, Obama being in India is about India too, U.S. officials say.

“To us, it’s not an either/or. It’s important to have this relationship because it’s a large and growing democracy with an economy that, if the partnership grows, will be hugely beneficial to ours,” said a State Department official. “The United States doesn’t look at improving our relationship as being about China.”

The centerpiece of the trip will be Obama’s presence as chief guest for India’s Republic Day parade — the top civic event of the year, an hours-long performance of marching bands and floats, dancing children and rolling tanks. For the honor- and protocol-minded Indians, inviting an American president as the chief guest for the first time in the country’s history was a gesture of enormous importance. Indian media has been buzzing with excitement about everything from Obama’s limo to the fact that he had to schedule his annual State of the Union address around the visit. (The White House announced Saturday that Obama would cut a planned visit to the Taj Mahal to instead fly to Saudi Arabia, where he’ll pay his respects to the royal family.)

But the parade itself holds little import for the U.S. side, and American diplomats have been looking for some other diplomatic achievement to bring home. The likeliest is a renewal of a 10-year defense agreement that the Bush administration signed. The Obama administration would love to formalize more cooperation on counter-terrorism and cybersecurity. Ahead of the U.N. Climate Conference in Paris in December, a climate agreement of some sort would be ideal, a follow-up to Obama’s agreement with China last year that set limits on emissions. But U.S. officials say it would be nearly impossible. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not ready to say yes, and even if he was, getting his parliament to go along is complicated — far more complicated than it was for China’s autocratic leadership.

In fact, U.S. officials recognize that there are limits to the relationship, and tensions remain on a number of issues. India continues to buy oil from Iran in defiance of U.N. sanctions. India didn’t vote in the U.N. to condemn Russia’s takeover of Crimea, a holdover of their ties to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And India has its own ties to China, however wary; the Chinese military entered a contested border region last fall just as Modi was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at a dinner in his hometown.

“When it comes to strategic partnership, the U.S. was long the ardent suitor, while Indians would say, ‘We like you, but we like lots of people’,” said Vikram Singh, vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.

In fact, despite a positive summit that Obama and Modi held in Washington last September and a World Trade Organization agreement reached on Obama’s last trip to Asia, the Indians have been unwilling to commit on many of the agreements that Washington has been pushing—even finalizing a sale of military helicopters that they very much want.

Ashley Tellis, an India expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Indians avoid the appearance that such visits include a “crude exchange.”

“If you have a big defense deal that you want to announce, particularly with countries like the United States, you do it before the visit or after the visit,” Tellis said.

However much the U.S.-India relationship develops, Americans should have realistic expectations, said Nick Burns, who served as undersecretary of state under Bush and is now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

“We have to become accustomed to a relationship where it’s not as close as the U.S.-Japan relationship, certainly not the U.S.-British special relationship, or even the U.S.-Germany relationship,” Burns said. “But it is going to be of great value to us.”

In a written interview with an Indian journalist ahead of the trip, Obama was asked what he considered essentials for a good relationship between America and India.

“On the most basic level, a good India-U.S. relationship has to be based on the same principles as our successful partnerships with our other close partners and friends around the world,” Obama responded. He didn’t say what those were.

Even so, there is a clear Indian desire to push the relationship with America to the next level. Modi himself took a big step by inviting Obama to be the chief guest at the parade, and getting him to accept is a big win that people familiar with India say can’t be understated. He’ll sit for hours at the parade, the longest time that his deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes could remember him ever staying in the open other than at his own inaugurations. He and the first lady will be guests at a state dinner. He’ll lay a wreath at the Gandhi memorial. Many expect that Modi will bring him on a surprise excursion to mark his investment in the relationship.

And the Chinese will be watching. In one sign of the centrality of India’s relations with both the U.S. and China, Modi is expected soon to name India’s current ambassador to the United States, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, his national security adviser. Before his assignment in Washington, Jaishankar was ambassador in Beijing.

And just as Obama has pivoted to strengthen relations with Asian countries, China has been reaching out to other countries in the Western Hemisphere — South America and Mexico. Chinese officials are even talking about building a second Panama Canal.

“They are upset by it,” Huntsman said. “They see it as the United States hemming in their growth and their global aspirations.”