What The Hell America!

IF THERE IS EVER A TIME WHEN the world needs sane, capable leadership from Washington, it is when India and Pakistan rattle their nuclear sabers at each other. The April 22 terrorist attack in Kashmir that killed twenty-six tourists immediately sparked a new Indo-Pakistani crisis and raised fears of a wider war. It remains an open question whether the Trump administration is equipped to play a helpful role.

There is a worrisome precedent for this sort of crisis. In 2016 and 2019, India responded to terrorist attacks with military operations against Pakistan. In 2019, Indian airstrikes on Pakistani soil were followed by the downing of Indian aircraft, the capture (and return) of an Indian pilot, Pakistani counterstrikes in India, an Indian friendly-fire incident, and threats of impending missile attacks. That the entire episode did not blow up further can be attributed mainly to dumb luck. An errant bomb, an unintended missile launch, or any number of other events could have pushed the two sides further up the ladder of nuclear escalation. Mistakes do happen: In March 2022 India accidentally shot a supersonic BrahMos missile into Pakistan.

According to the accounts of Trump administration officials working in 2019—many of whom were initially distracted by separate high-level meetings then underway with North Korea and the Taliban—it took some time for U.S. diplomats to encourage restraint from both New Delhi and Islamabad.

Washington’s approach reflected conflicting U.S. interests. On the one hand, American officials were sympathetic to the plight of its strategic partner in India and fully cognizant that the United States would, if attacked as India had been, also want to lash out against terrorists and their backers. On the other hand, as the crisis wore on, they appreciated that India lacked low-risk military options to solve its security problem, that Pakistan was certain to respond to India with tit-for-tat attacks, and that the whole situation could quickly spiral into a major war.

In retrospect, that second problem should have been apparent at the start. This does not mean that Washington should have undermined India’s ability to deter or punish, but it does mean that everyone should have looked at least two moves ahead. What, for instance, would green-lighting an Indian air or missile strike on Pakistani soil lead to next? And after that?

In 2019, the Indian readout of a call between then–National Security Advisor John Bolton and his counterpart in New Delhi read, “Ambassador Bolton supported India’s right to self-defence against cross-border terrorism. He offered all assistance to India to bring the perpetrators and backers of the attack promptly to justice. NSA Doval appreciated U.S. support.” Whatever Bolton meant to convey by his words, in the region his comments were widely interpreted as a green light for India to strike Pakistan.

If Washington had actually meant to forestall India’s punitive airstrikes (which came almost two weeks after the terrorist attack), the White House could have clarified its position publicly. Only after India hit Pakistan, Pakistan downed an Indian jet, and—as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo records in his 2023 memoir—Washington heard that both India and Pakistan feared the other side was readying its nuclear forces did American diplomats more seriously assert themselves as go-betweens to calm nerves and help to bring the crisis to an end.

Today the situation looks even more volatile than in 2019. Anger and anguish in India—both for the loss of life and the disruption to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s high-stakes political project of pacifying Kashmir—is running high. Modi switched from Hindi to English in a recent speech, emphasizing to global audiences his vow that India would “identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers” (meaning Pakistan). Both India and Pakistan have conducted missile tests, and there have been significant violations of the ceasefire implemented in 2021. India has “put in abeyance” a water-sharing agreement with Pakistan that dates to 1960, and Pakistan has similarly threatened to suspend a 1972 bilateral agreement on border management.

Perhaps in an ideal world, India could exact targeted revenge against the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (a persistent threat and the most plausible backers of the April attack), as Israel did last year against Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hasan Nasrallah in Lebanon, while also defending itself against likely Pakistani counterstrikes, also as Israel—with U.S. help—did from Iran. But this seems far-fetched; India does not appear to enjoy Israel’s military superiority, either in terms of intelligence about its enemies or its defenses against counterstrikes.

Now would be the time for Trump administration officials to speak with one clear voice, to urge India to think several steps ahead as it fights terrorists without prompting a war that no one wants and that might even create vulnerabilities for India against hostile Chinese forces deployed along their contested border. The United States holds no brief for anti-Indian terrorists and should have no patience for Pakistan’s continued support to them. The question, however, remains how best to go about improving security and deterrence. If the answers were easy, India would have found them already.

Thus far, however, Washington looks as if it may be internally divided over its policies. Vance and Rubio speak as if they are trying to balance public support for India, condemnation for the terrorists, and concerns about the dangers of escalation. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reverted to language that is being interpreted in India very much like Bolton’s 2019 comment that effectively endorsed India’s reprisals against Pakistan. Worst of all, a clearly preoccupied President Trump seems to believe he can somehow remove himself from this crisis, stating that “they’ll get it figured out one way or the other,” and repeating a deeply misinformed quip that “there have been tensions on that border for 1500 years.”

We can hope that even more constructive work is being done behind the scenes. But for now, the situation continues to unfold, slow-motion-train-wreck style, with little evidence of the sort of creative, pro-active American leadership that might help avoid another war.

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