Insider : Around the World in 80 Ways: Planning the President’s Trips : When the Chief decides to take a trip, the White House springs to action. Its mission: Making sure rival nations get equal time, so no one feels slighted.

So, you’re the President of the United States and you want to go to India. Fine. Tell the secretary of state to set it up. Tell the Air Force to plan the route. Tell the Secret Service to arrange the security. Tell the Indian government you’re on the way.

But what are you going to tell the Pakistanis?

That, in essence, is the dilemma that faces the Administration’s foreign policy establishment each time it contemplates a presidential trip overseas. Given George Bush’s proclivity for travel--he has left the country 10 times during his nearly 17 months as President--it is a dilemma that arises frequently. And if the horns of the dilemma are not India and Pakistan, they are Turkey and Greece, or perhaps China and South Korea, or pairs of countries just about anywhere on the globe.

On every continent, economic, political or security rivalries complicate the lives of White House travel agents--otherwise known as professional diplomats and senior National Security Council staff members.

Late last year, for example, when rumors abounded that Bush was contemplating a journey in 1990 that would take him to western Asia, it went without saying that if he landed in India, he would stop next in Pakistan. Or vice versa.

What would happen if he went to one without spending an equal amount of time in the other, and with the trip precisely balanced in terms of high-level meetings, touring, wreath-laying and state-dinnering?

“They would wonder about the United States and would think dark thoughts, and would see it as intentional whether it was or not. Unless you’re a fool, you don’t do it that way,” said Robert Hunter, a former member of the National Security Council staff who helped plan President Jimmy Carter’s travels to Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe.

Even more specifically, a visit to Pakistan without being balanced by a similar visit to India would raise concerns in New Delhi that the United States was tilting toward Islamabad. The likely result, an Administration official said, “would be to give the Soviets more Brownie points” in India, which they have long courted.

As it turns out, the worry was for naught. The trip, so to speak, never got off the ground.

But the President is planning a trip in September to South America.

He wants to go to Argentina because of his “keen interest in the economic reform program” and his “very close personal relationship” with President Carlos Menem, according to a White House official.

But if he’s going to Argentina, he must also go to Chile, a longtime rival. And if he is going to go to Argentina and Chile, he can’t slight Brazil. And if he’s going to be touching down in those three nations, it is felt he can’t avoid stopping in Uruguay. Nor can Venezuela be overlooked.

“Venezuela took such a major lead in helping us in the Panama situation that you have to make that stop,” a White House official said, referring to Caracas’ efforts before the U. S. invasion last December to persuade strongman Manuel A. Noriega to step down. .

“Brazil sees itself as the major player” in South America, he added. Another “must” stop.

“Argentina is in a dispute with Chile,” he said, referring to a low-key border conflict. Low-key or not, however, the rivalry remains. Add them both to any presidential itinerary. Or cut them both out. Just treat them equally.

Uruguay? “Uruguay is a pit stop,” he said.

The result is something akin to trying to order a Big Mac without the hamburger. Take it all, or forget about it.

So, the President will go to Argentina. And Chile. And Brazil. And Uruguay. And Venezuela. (When Vice President Dan Quayle made a similar tour in March, skipping only Uruguay, he added a stop in Paraguay just to make sure no feelings were hurt there because Bush would be unable to visit Asuncion--a definite diplomatic backwater--during the autumn journey).

Who keeps track of such matters?

“Anyone who does regional affairs at the State Department understands this. This is what those guys get paid for--to make sure no one’s feathers get ruffled,” the White House official said. They even pay strict attention to the order in which a series of countries are visited, the first stop being given the implied position of honor.

“The White House and the State Department put a great deal of effort into staging and sequencing of foreign travel,” said Hunter. “The very fact of alighting in a country sends a signal. Others take it seriously even if the American people don’t know the President has left the country.”

Occasionally the rivalries are so serious that entire trips are canceled. Such was the case in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan was contemplating an Asian journey. The itinerary included Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines. But Ferdinand E. Marcos’ political problems were growing, and security concerns mushroomed even as the advance team scouted out hotels and meeting sites in Manila.

“As a result, we were not going to go to the Philippines. But if we told them we weren’t going (but were including all the other countries on the tour), they’d get their noses out of joint. The end result: We had to cancel all the South Asian countries,” said a former Reagan assistant who was involved in the trip.

The official reason given at the time was that Congress was likely to remain in session longer than expected and that this would keep the President in Washington.

Since that cancellation, no President has made it to Manila. But the next time Reagan was in the region, he did make an informal stop in Bali, both to rest up during the trans-Pacific journey and to soothe the insulted Indonesian government.

“We probably still owe them a state visit,” the former aide said.

Then there was the time that Reagan decided to spend an Easter holiday in Barbados. Precedent plays an important role in working out the details of diplomatic visits, even if they are mostly for vacation. In the case of Barbados, the closest precedent for a U.S. President’s visit was a trip made by George Washington before the American Revolution. The fact that this visit occured more than 200 years earlier did not faze the Barbadians.

Vacation or not, they decided that the 40th President of the United States was entitled to proper recognition, including a 21-gun salute. Lacking the correct weaponry, the Barbadian authorities instead set off 21 sticks of dynamite.

The miniature blasts caused a grass fire, which sent up clouds of smoke. But somewhere in the haze, mostly obscured, stood the President and his hosts, hewing to the proper protocol for a visiting head of state.