India, Pakistan And The Trumpian Turnabout

News18

23-05-2025

Last Updated:
US President Donald Trump has spoken of wanting to mediate in resolving the Kashmir issue, which has played into Pakistan's hands
The fall-out from India's retaliation against Pakistan for the horrific Pahalgam terrorist attack has been bilateral, regional and international.
At the bilateral level, a powerful signal has gone to Pakistan that henceforth India will not tolerate terror attacks engineered against India. Talk of zero tolerance of terrorism has moved from rhetoric to a robust military response, despite escalatory risks.
That Pakistan has nuclear weapons is no longer considered a deterrent to appropriate levels of Indian retaliation. India, in any case, has no reason to pose an existential threat to Pakistan. Just as India has to control the escalatory ladder, Pakistan too has to do, as India also possesses nuclear weapons. Pakistan's belief that under the nuclear overhang it can pursue the low-cost option of conducting terror attacks against India has now been severely challenged. As in the case of the proxy war in Ukraine between NATO and Russia, both having formidable nuclear arsenals, the scope of conventional warfare has been shown to be considerable. This would not be lost on both Pakistan and India.
It is difficult at this stage to determine whether Pakistan has learnt a hard lesson and will avoid the risk of staging terror attacks against India in the future. It may yet be tempted to organise small-scale terror attacks on Indian soil and test India's willingness to retaliate on a large scale. Pakistan has shown over the years that it can take the risk of playing the terrorist card even against its benefactors like the US, calculating that the latter would place self-limits on its response by weighing costs and benefits of a strong response. India too would have to consider whether a limited Pakistan-backed terrorist incident in the future would require a major military response.
Part of the reason why the Western narrative has been in Pakistan's favour is the West's concern that accepting that the Pakistani military failed to defend the country would have severe repercussions internally in a Pakistan already in the throes of a political and economic crisis, and even a security one with the activities of the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), the Pakistani Taliban. (TTP) and the Afghanistan Taliban. The absurd result of this make-believe success of Pakistan against India is the self-elevation of Pakistan's army chief to the rank of Field Marshal. This may well mean that a rabid, India-hating Islamist like General Asim Munir could well continue to believe that periodically bleeding India through terrorism is a realistic option. The Pakistani political class will now have even less control over a pumped-up Field Marshal.
At the regional level, the consequences of India's military action could well mean more attacks on Pakistani security forces and other targets by the BLF and the TTP as well. India has reached out to the interim Taliban government in Kabul at the political level for the first time, with India's External Affairs Minister speaking to the Taliban Foreign Minister. This conversation came days after the Taliban administration condemned the Pahalgam terror attack.
Iran strongly condemned the Pahalgam terror attack too, with its official statement locating Pahalgam in India. At the same time, somewhat surprisingly, at the level of its Foreign Minister who was to visit India, Iran publicly announced its desire to play a mediatory role between India and Pakistan, knowing well India's rejection of any third-party role in India-Pakistan issues. For Iran this was a way to balance its ties with India and Pakistan. Islamic solidarity with Pakistan is a factor. Both the Supreme Leader and the Iranian president have madereferences to Kashmir in the past to which India has objected.
India's major partners in the Arab world have all strongly condemned the Pahalgam terrorist attack. However, they have all advocated restraint and de-escalation of tensions, with Saudi Arabia sending its Minister of state for Foreign Affairs Affairs to visit India and Pakistan on May 8 and to 9 de-escalate tensions. Indonesia too has urged both parties to exercise restraint and prioritise dialogue in resolving the crisis. Malaysia's prime minister bought Pakistan's spurious line by affirming his country's support for an independent and transparent investigation to identify those responsible for the attack at Pahalgam.
Although Turkey too condemned the terrorist attack at Pahalgam, it supported Pakistan's call for an investigation into it. Turkey has been arming Pakistan and its drones have been used against India in the recent conflict. With Turkey being the only country to mention the Kashmir issue in the UNGA the backlash against Turkey has been severe this time, including the cancelling of the contract of its major airport handling company for national security reasons.
China, which is today Pakistan's biggest military and economic partner, has tried to play a complex balancing diplomatic act of going along with the UNSC's strong statement on the Pahalgam terrorist act but joining Pakistan to ask for an impartial international probe into it. China limited itself to calling India's military response 'regrettable". India's NSA thought it politic to reach out to China's Wang Yi. China no doubt assisted Pakistan in this conflict by supplying additional military equipment as well as intelligence inputs. One can foresee that China will bolster Pakistan's military capacity against India especially in areas where Pakistan's defence gaps have been exposed. The China-Pakistan nexus will continue to be a major security challenge for India.
At the international level, the EU and individual European countries had condemned the Pahalgam attack. After India's retaliation the EU, while recognising that every state has the duty and the right lawfully to protect its citizens from acts of terror, called on both parties to exercise restraint, to de-escalate tensions, desist from further attacks to safeguard civilian lives on both sides, and urged both sides to engage in dialogue. France expressed its wholehearted solidarity with India and its support for India in its fight against terrorist groups, but expressed its deep concern over the military developments and called for de-escalation and protection of civilians. Germany too followed a similar line. The G7 statement too called for immediate de-escalation and encouraged both countries to engage in direct dialogue towards a peaceful outcome.
President Donald Trump's position on the conflict has been the most unexpected. He has shifted attention away from the core reason why India had to finally change the paradigm in its response to Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism by hitting at the terror hubs on its soil. Trump should have found a way to allude to this in some way in his statements and supported India's step, as he has his own concerns about Islamic terrorism and extremism from which the US itself has suffered even at Pakistan's hands.
Instead, in his self-projection as a peacemaker, he shifted the focus to a ceasefire, as in the case of the Ukraine conflict. In the latter case he acknowledged the legitimacy of Russia's case and made his distaste of Zelenskyy known. In India's case, he has equated India with Pakistan, Modi with Pakistani leaders, heaping praise on the quality of Pakistani leadership, and calling Pakistan a great country which makes excellent products. He has promised to increase trade ties with. Pakistan.
Trump has embarrassed India on several counts. He said that he had mediated a ceasefire and chose to announce it even before India and Pakistan could, giving the impression that India succumbed to US pressure. He linked this pressure to trade. This has forced India to clarify that there was no mediation by the US or anyone else, that India made its position clear to the US and others that if Pakistan sought a ceasefire its general had to speak to his Indian counterpart. India also affirmed that trade did not figure at all in exchanges with the US.
Trump has spoken of wanting to mediate in resolving the Kashmir issue, which has played into Pakistan's hands, as this is what Pakistan has always sought. US mediation, in Pakistan's eyes, means territorial concessions by India. Trump has also claimed that he has prevented a nuclear war, and has. saved millions of lives. This too serves Pakistan's strategy of stoking fears in the international community about the danger of a nuclear conflict erupting in the subcontinent if India-Pakistan issues remained unresolved.
top videos
View all
During his recent meeting in the White House with the South African President, Trump was back at lauding Pakistan's great leaders, while also saluting Modi, an equivalence that boosts the status of Pakistan and its leaders, which even the Islamic countries and China as well do not do, and diminishes India and its leaders. When he said this the Pakistan army chief had declared himself a Field Marshal, no doubt emboldened by Trump's championing of Pakistan. While Trump had nothing to say about Pakistani political and military travesty, he is insouciant about the damage he is causing to US-India relations
Kanwal Sibal is a former Indian Foreign Secretary. He was India's Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
tags :
donald trump
Location :
New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
May 23, 2025, 17:28 IST
News opinion Opinion | India, Pakistan And The Trumpian Turnabout