WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will reach a half century this week in terms of countries he has visited as head of government following his landmark trips to India's south east Asia neighborhood, taking in first-time stops in Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia.
When President Obama meets Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Phnom Penh on the sidelines of the Asean gathering — their eighth encounter by one count — they can also compare notes on their world travels in course of their continuing economic and geopolitical outreach.
Singh, who has had a four-year headstart over Obama at the helm of government, is batting on 46 not out in terms of countries visited, with a much slower strike rate. Cambodia will be the 47th country he would have visited as Prime Minister. For Obama, Cambodia would be the 50th.
Obama could become the first US President to strive for a century although no American president has gotten anywhere close.
George Bush and Bill Clinton, both of whom served two terms in the White House, hold the joint record, having visited 74 countries each. Together they visited 94 different countries accounting for 85 per cent of the world population, though China and India would account for 50 per cent of that.
US presidential travel has come a long way since Woodrow Wilson traveled by ship and spent more than six months in Europe in the aftermath of World War I. Teddy Roosevelt was the first US president to travel abroad; he and his wife went to Panama in 1906 to visit the Panama Canal.
However, Ulysses Grant, the 18th president, went on a world tour after he left the White House in 1877, including stops in what were then Bombay, Agra, and Calcutta, before going on to Rangoon and Bangkok on his way to China.
The first presidential trips by airplane were the four World War II conferences, three attended by Franklin Roosevelt (in Casablanca, Tehran, and Yalta) and one by Harry Truman (Potsdam).
US presidential international travel increased dramatically in the 1990s after the introduction of the souped up Air Force One, a Boeing 747 with 4000 square feet of space that could also serve as a command and control center, an air wing of the White House.
India is headed in a similar direction with the upgrading of Air India One as an "office-in-the-sky" with the acquisition of three new business Boeing jets (BBJ) with special protection suit (SPS).
Both President Obama and Prime Minister Singh have exchanged one state visit each to New Delhi and Washington DC respectively, but there is no second visit on the horizon just yet. Officials say Washington might want to wait till after India's general election to ramp up ties, while attending to more pressing matters.
Meanwhile, Singh will continue to meet Obama on the sidelines of numerous multilateral engagements, having done so some half-dozen times already, with the possible pow-wow on the margins of Asean being the latest.
PM Manmohan Singh's foreign trips (including bilateral and multilateral visits):
Cambodia, Iran, Mexico, Brazil, Burma, South Korea, Russia, Indonesia, Singapore, Maldives, France, South Africa, USA, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Canada, Bhutan, Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, Egypt, Italy, United Kingdom, Oman, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Nigeria, Philippines, Finland, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Mauritius, Laos and Netherlands.