When U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted, on May 10, that India and Pakistan had agreed to a cease-fire, the world breathed a sigh of relief. The two nuclear-armed neighbors had teetered perilously close to all-out war as they fired missiles and drone strikes at each other’s military installations and religious sites over the previous three days. The stakes grew especially high after the Indian military hit Pakistan’s Nur Khan air base, close to the country’s nuclear command forces. It was an attack that could have provoked uncontrolled escalation—and that pushed Washington to intervene even after senior officials had insisted the administration was disinclined to do so.
But although the guns have now fallen silent, the danger remains high. The two sides continued to fire at each other for hours after the cease-fire had taken effect, and no one should be under any illusion that these adversaries will resolve their fundamental clash over Kashmir anytime soon. The dispute over this divided mountainous territory goes back to the 1947 partition of the subcontinent; since then, Kashmir has held symbolic resonance for both countries and shaped how they perceive their national identity. As a country created to be a homeland for Muslims in South Asia, Pakistan believes it is justified in claiming the Muslim-majority region. Indian officials reject this argument and view it as an integral part of their state, especially since the original leader of pre-partition Jammu and Kashmir (a Hindu) acceded to India.
India and Pakistan have fought two wars, battled in a border conflict, and experienced multiple military crises over the status of Kashmir. New Delhi’s response to terrorist provocations on its side of the line of control—the de facto boundary between the two countries—has grown increasingly intense since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government came to power in 2014. The current Pakistani army chief, Syed Asim Munir, has a reputation as a hard-liner, evident in his vitriolic, mid-April remarks about Kashmir and Hindu-Muslim differences. Each country, then, has a domestic incentive not to back down from its maximalist positions.
Trump, a self-styled dealmaker, may be tempted to try to permanently resolve the status of Kashmir. But he should resist the urge. Any effort by Washington to strike a final deal could encourage Pakistan to fuel further terrorist attacks against India. It will needlessly strain U.S.-Indian relations. And it will almost certainly not work. The United States can push Pakistan to reduce its support for terrorism, and it should call on both sides to respect the line of control. But Washington should mostly stick to its role as a crisis manager, which it has a unique responsibility to fulfill. It should not try to fix an unfixable issue. India and Pakistan’s dispute over Kashmir is a clear example of the kind of foreign policy challenge that can be neither solved nor neglected and thus requires ongoing work to prevent it from spiraling out of control.
The spark for the current Indian-Pakistani conflict was all too familiar, mimicking a pattern that has prompted military crises between the two countries over the last 25 years. On April 22, terrorists killed 26 civilians, mostly Indian tourists, in Indian-administered Kashmir. New Delhi claimed that the attackers were operating at the behest of the Pakistan-based, U.S.-designated terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, and then retaliated on May 7 by striking the group’s headquarters in Muridke along with eight other sites in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and Pakistan’s Punjab Province. India said its targets were “terrorist infrastructure,” and whether all those sites fit that bill remains unclear. But one of the dead is Abdul Rauf Azhar, a U.S. Specially Designated Terrorist Leader involved in the 1999 hijacking of India Airlines Flight 814. (To end the hijacking and secure the safe release of the passengers, India was forced to release terrorist leaders, including Omar Sheikh, who in 2002 kidnapped the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl; Pearl was then brutally murdered.)
What transpired after India’s May 7 military response was the most serious incident between India and Pakistan since the 1999 Kargil border conflict. In that brief war, Pakistani regular army units, disguised as militants, took over portions of territory on India’s side of the line of control, precipitating a two-month battle that resulted in at least 1,000 deaths of Indian and Pakistani soldiers. But even the Kargil conflict was limited to one specific area of Kashmir. Last week’s fighting occurred along the line of control, across the two countries’ international boundary, and deep into each side’s territory outside Kashmir. The countries used drones and missiles against both military and civilian religious sites, adding unpredictability and risking uncontrolled escalation.
At first, Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance demonstrated little interest in getting involved in the fight between India and Pakistan, even though U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been working the phones with Indian and Pakistani officials. “They’ll get it figured out one way or the other,” Trump said on April 25. “It’s fundamentally none of our business,” Vance said on May 8. But after India struck Nur Khan on May 9, Washington began to seriously worry that the two sides might entertain nuclear war. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif had said earlier that Pakistan would exercise the nuclear option if “there is a direct threat to our existence,” and U.S. officials worried that India’s Nur Khan strike signaled that New Delhi could decapitate Pakistan’s nuclear command structure, a step that would likely cross Pakistan’s nuclear red lines. The Trump administration then finally brokered a cease-fire, surprising and relieving everyone.
A few hours later, Trump said he would increase trade with both nations and help them permanently resolve the vexed Kashmir dispute. But the differing Indian and Pakistani reactions to the cease-fire announcement suggest this will be a quixotic task. Both sides have been jockeying to control the narrative about the cease-fire: India denied that Washington had a substantial role in the negotiations, while Pakistan’s prime minister thanked Trump for his involvement. India also rejected the notion that it had committed to bilateral dialogue on a broad array of issues, which Rubio had asserted in his statement about the cease-fire and Pakistan had affirmed.
It is no surprise that India downplayed U.S. involvement in brokering the cease-fire. New Delhi has long shunned the idea of third parties mediating its disputes with Pakistan, and it is particularly sensitive to any hint of international involvement when it comes to Kashmir. Islamabad, on the other hand, wants to bring international attention to the issue and convince Washington that resolving the dispute is essential to avoid an Indian-Pakistani war that could potentially go nuclear. India is the status quo power, and Pakistan is responsible for sparking most of their crises by either sponsoring terrorist attacks or trying to wrest territory through direct force, as it did during the Kargil conflict. Following that war, U.S. President Bill Clinton declared that the two countries should respect the line of control and that neither country’s land could change hands through bloodshed, a statement India endorsed.
Given the fraught history of the Kashmir dispute and Indian sensitivities to outside involvement, the Trump administration must exercise caution if it wants to keep building a strategic partnership with India and discourage Pakistan from supporting terrorists. There is a tremendous difference between getting the two countries to step back from the brink of war and facilitating a permanent solution to an 80-year dispute. The former is something Washington has, historically, done well. But the latter is something only India and Pakistan can accomplish.
Trump should know this. He has fallen into the Kashmir mediation trap before. In July 2019, standing next to then Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan at a press conference, Trump said that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to mediate over Kashmir. It was a tremendous confabulation that anyone who follows South Asian politics knew was untrue. At the time, I was the deputy assistant to the president and the National Security Council’s senior director for South and Central Asia, and it marked one of the worst days of my stint at the NSC. Two weeks after Trump’s statement, India revoked the autonomy afforded the state of Jammu and Kashmir and divided it into two territories in what may have been an attempt by New Delhi to signal that it would not discuss changing Kashmir’s territorial status. Following subsequent briefings, Trump never broached the issue of Kashmir mediation again during his first term, and it would be a mistake for him to revive the idea now.
The reason why is simple: raising the specter of international mediation encourages Islamabad’s unrealistic expectation that a final settlement will give Pakistan a greater share of Kashmir. Such fallacies perpetuate Pakistan-based terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, whose leader claimed to have lost several family members during India’s recent strikes. These expectations may also incite outright Pakistani attacks. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf used the 1999 incursion into Kargil to try to raise the international profile of the Kashmir issue, and it is possible that the Pakistani military leadership encouraged the latest attack to again garner greater international attention.
The White House must resist the temptation to get directly involved in the Kashmir dispute.
To stop Pakistan from elevating the profile of Kashmir, Trump must not play into the country’s hands by offering to mediate the dispute. He can affirm the sanctity of the line of control. But he should then focus on aims that are achievable—such as sustaining the current cease-fire. Neither India nor Pakistan can afford to allow military escalation to ratchet back up. They have already come too close to all-out war. The U.S.-brokered cease-fire has provided an opportunity for both to claim victory and climb down the escalatory ladder, and Trump should see to it that they do. To that end, American officials must closely monitor the cease-fire and call out violations. Rubio should continue to work the phones and counsel military restraint with both parties.
Next, Washington should pressure Pakistan on the issue of terrorism. Although analysts do not yet know whether Pakistan had any role in the most recent attack, the country’s involvement in various other terrorist atrocities, such as the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist strikes, puts the onus on Islamabad to crack down on terrorists that reside in its territory. For instance, Pakistan could move the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed from house arrest to a prison. Doing so would help weaken the organization and show that the government is serious about cracking down on the group.
Most important, Washington must better position itself to act as a crisis manager. It can do so, in part, by cultivating strong relationships with both India and Pakistan. India is more important to the United States, given its fast-growing economy, military, and technological prowess; its role in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (known as the Quad, a partnership with Australia, Japan, and the United States); and its desire to balance against rising Chinese power. But Washington also has an interest in maintaining good ties with Pakistan, partly to compete with China’s influence in the region. U.S. officials cannot wean Pakistan off China entirely, and U.S.-Pakistani relations will never return to the heights reached following the September 11 attacks (when the United States provided billions in economic and military aid to the country). But Washington can provide trade, economic investment, educational opportunities, and other types of assistance to Pakistan. It would certainly be unwise for the Trump administration to ignore the country. The only way Washington can play the role of honest broker during times of crisis between India and Pakistan is if it maintains ties to both.
None of this means that Trump can’t encourage the two sides to sit down for talks. But the White House must resist the temptation to get directly involved in the Kashmir dispute. If American officials seek to meddle in this sensitive, intractable issue, they will sacrifice India’s trust and partnership, which is fundamental to the United States’ broader Indo-Pacific strategy, and fuel terrorist elements inside Pakistan that seek to provoke conflict and threaten regional stability. It is better, then, for Washington to recognize the narrow parameters of its influence and stick to preventing war rather than aiming to achieve a lasting peace.
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