Elizabeth Threlkeld: Good morning and good evening. Thank you to all of you for joining us. We will just give folks a couple of minutes here to join the event. All right. It looks like we are getting critical mass. A warm welcome to you all for joining us here this morning or evening, wherever you are tuning in from. My name is Elizabeth Threlkeld and I’m the director of the South Asia program at the Stimson Center. It is really a privilege to be hosting this event and especially joined by such a wonderful group of colleagues.
Looking forward to this morning’s conversation. For those of you who are not familiar with Stimson, we are an independent, nonpartisan organization that promotes international security and shared prosperity through applied research and independent analysis global engagement and policy innovation. And today’s discussion, I think is a representation of that and something that is bringing together both the South Asia program and the China program. So looking forward to exploring a variety of aspects of this important issue.
And what we are here today to talk about is the events that have taken place in South Asia over the course of the last month, major crisis between India and Pakistan, and the ensuing political and diplomatic events that have unfolded. And as many of you will be aware, president Trump recently announced a ceasefire between India and Pakistan and the aftermath of the crisis that had played out beginning with the Pahalgam attack on April 22nd. Since then, he has spoken frequently about the situation demonstrating a level of personal investment in South Asia that we haven’t seen from U.S. president for quite some time.
U.S. involvement in Indian Pakistan tensions has varied over the years, but in recent decades Washington has shown relatively little appetite for facilitating bilateral engagement beyond more of a reactive diplomacy to manage crises. This administration’s public and vocal intervention perhaps signals a shift. This morning’s panel will explore that question and more broadly, what this moment tells us about U.S. foreign policy under the Trump administration, both generally and on South Asia, as well as possible pathways for future U.S. approaches in the region and how the events of the past month could impact U.S. policy priorities more broadly in an era of strategic competition.
Now, our program, the South Asia program, has done quite a bit of work on this issue and has sought to elevate a variety of perspectives from the U.S., from the region and beyond. I do want to take a moment to highlight some of that work and would really recommend that those of you in the audience who haven’t seen it would check it out. South Asian Voices, which is our online policy platform, has debuted a really robust series of analyses from across the region and beyond on the crisis and its aftermath.
Our strategic learning initiative has sought to shed light on some of the more academic or technical concepts that are underpinning what has played out, things like escalation deterrence and has developed both an explainer to make those terms a little bit more legible as well as a series of video interviews. Those links have been shared so again, would encourage you all to check those out. Now, coming to today’s discussion, I will briefly introduce our panelists here before we dive in. We also have a Q&A box that is available, so we will welcome taking on your questions.
I will be going through those and we will try to work as many as we can in towards the end of the conversation. We have a lot to cover. So without further ado, let me introduce especially two new colleagues here at the Stimson Center that we are really pleased to have with us, both Dr. Dan Markey and Dr. Asfandyar Mir. So welcome Dan and Asfandyar. I’m sure many of you know both of them already, but Dr. Dan Markey is a senior fellow with both the South Asia and China programs at the Stimson Center. He is a seasoned expert on South Asia and China’s regional policies with over two decades of experience in government, academia, and think tanks.
At the Stimson Center he brings a cross-regional approach to research on South Asia, China’s regional role and broader strategic competition. He is previously worked at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Council on Foreign Relations and Johns Hopkins SAIS, where he is also a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute. He also served at the U.S. Department of State’s policy planning staff where he advised on Indian and Pakistan strategy and is the author of two major books on U.S. strategy in Asia. Dr. Asfandyar Mir is a senior fellow for South Asia at the Stimson Center and is a political scientist and leading voice on South Asian security, counterterrorism and U.S. foreign policy.
At Stimson, his work centers on the international relations and strategic dynamics of South Asia with a particular focus on a Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. He is held fellowships at Stanford University and the U.S. Institute of Peace where he led a senior study group on U.S. counterterrorism strategy. His scholarship has been widely published in top political science journals and major outlets including foreign affairs in the Washington Post. Dr. Mir earned his PhD from the University of Chicago. And I should also add to our reading recommendation list an op-ed that Asfandyar wrote in the New York Times in the midst of the crisis, which I think draws out many of the elements that we will be unpacking today. So perhaps we can share that link as well.
And then last but very much not least, my colleague Dr. Yun is senior fellow and director of the China program at Stimson. She is a recognized on Chinese foreign policy, U.S. -China relations and China’s engagement with developing countries and authoritarian regimes. At Stimson she directs the China program and co-directs the East Asia program, leading analysis on Beijing’s strategic decision-making and its regional impact. Her prior roles include serving as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and is a China analyst at the International Crisis Group in Beijing. She has deep experience in Chinese policymaking towards conflict reasons, particularly in Asia and Africa. Dr. Sun earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins SAIS.
So, without further ado, I think we can get into the meat of this discussion here. And we have tried to segment this conversation in three parts or so. So this first segment will literally try to understand the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis, what played out, and how we can understand it in context both of previous crises, but also as it’s viewed from the lens of other key third parties. And here I think Beijing is top of mind.
So the major question I would like us to focus on as a group is what do we make of the Trump administration’s approach to India-Pakistan tensions over the past month? How have they managed the crisis and its immediate aftermath so far? And Dan, I’ll start with you, and I wonder if you could offer a bit of a comprehensive perspective here. So how unusual would you say is the level of U.S. involvement that we saw in this crisis? How does it compare to what we have seen in past crises, for example, in Kargil 2001, 2002, or maybe even more recently in the 2019 crisis?
Daniel Markey: First of all, thanks Elizabeth. It’s great to join you and my new colleagues at Stimson. It’s wonderful to be a part of this just at I guess the beginning of week two during my time at Stimson. So how does this compare? Look, we could spend a lot of time on the history here and we could dive into a number of specific cases, but if we were to segment U.S. involvement in crises or diplomacy more broadly in South Asia, I would probably split it up according to different eras of involvement.
So if we go back all the way into the Cold War era, we can see that the United States, and at that time the Soviet Union, were involved in terms of the diplomacy of managing crises, conflicts, wars between India and Pakistan. But during that period what we tended to see was them taking different sides at times in this conflict. And even then the involvement was often limited to managing crisis and conflict, not to peace building or actual resolution of underlying disputes. And I’ll come back to that maybe a bit later in other parts of our conversation, but I think that’s important to recognize.
If we then shift to the post-Cold War era where some of the conflicts you identified took place like Kargil and so on, the United States then in many ways was the sole remaining superpower, but it shifted into a management role or a diplomatic role that tended to be a bit more neutral in terms of or even-handed in its approach to India and Pakistan.
So it didn’t really back one side or the other, tended to see that the resolution of disputes, and particularly after the two sides became nuclear powers, the resolution of the disputes themselves were critically important to U.S. interests and to regional and global peace and stability. I think we started to see a bit of a shift in that aspect later in the early 2000s when Washington started to tilt away from what it described as de-hyphenation, that is trying to have equal or balanced relations between India and Pakistan not defined by their conflict. And shifted into something that was a little bit more of a pro-India tilt.
And I think that’s been the defining feature or trajectory of the U.S. role in these regional crises ever since. So particularly after the war in Afghanistan and the frustration with Pakistan that was associated with that, but even in some of the years before that, and particularly in the context of seeing India as a useful counterbalance or counterweight to China in Asia, Washington gradually tilted and played its cards in crises 2016, 2019 in ways that I think were more beneficial to India than to Pakistan.
Pakistan was still engaged by Washington diplomatically, but the United States really didn’t have quite as much of a positive relationship with Pakistan as with India. Now more recently what we have seen is the emergence of other mediators or other would-be mediators in this. And so just as the United States has shifted from being clearly the sole superpower to being in a world that is trending more multipolar, other countries, particularly in this case Iran, Saudi Arabia, have wanted to become more engaged in the mediation process. So that’s another shift.
I guess the real question as we look at this most recent crisis in 2025 is whether the United States is now still in this place of trending more pro-India in its tilt in management or whether it’s actually recalibrated and shifted in some ways to a greater focus on restraint. And I think there’s evidence pointing in both directions, but I think as we look forward that’s the question we will want to watch. Was this a crisis that reinforced the trends that were already in play, that I’ve tried to identify or is this something of reversion to past practice where Washington will want to take a more even-handed approach? The jury’s still out. As I say, I think there’s evidence in both sides.
Elizabeth Threlkeld: Thanks, Dan. That’s really helpful. And I think it transitions us nicely then to Asfandyar what I hope you could explore is, can you place this crisis, its aftermath, the U.S. approach, within the context of what we might call the broader Trump doctrine as it’s emerging and evolving in terms of foreign policy. So what do you think this moment tells us about the Trump administration’s approach more broadly to international crises and geopolitics?
Asfandyar Mir: Sure. Thank you Elizabeth for the question and for convening today’s discussion. Delighted to be a part of this conversation with new and old colleagues. Dan and I were together at the U.S. Institute of Peace, so great to be reunited with him. And I am looking forward to working with both you in the coming months. Look, I will start with my assessment of President Trump’s involvement. I think he deserves a lot of credit for how he is managed this particular crisis or war, whatever you’d like to call it, especially in light of some of the trend lines that Dan outlined.
I think he did the right thing through a forceful and timely intervention to help broker the ceasefire. In the policy path that he is chosen since I think serves U.S. interests. He is doing the strategic thing, trying to put a lid on active India-Pakistan hostilities, I believe serves U.S. policy for Asia. And some of the guiding principles of this recent turn are not unique to South Asia. I think there are fundamental features of the Trump doctrine. But before I turn to what that doctrine actually is, let me just recognize that I think I saw, and perhaps others did as well, some ambivalence initially on how to be involved in the India-Pakistan standoff on part of the administration.
And I get that. I mean, again, echoing some of what Dan said, the U.S. relationship with India is extremely vital for U.S. prosperity, long-term strategic interests in Asia. U.S. relationship with Pakistan has certainly shrunk. Some have gone as far as saying that there isn’t much there. So those of us who work on South Asia I think can parochial at times. We can get stuck looking at South Asia through a lens of South Asian ebb and flows. Many of us do live in history. Our through lines are about say a frustration with Pakistan or what happened in Kargil or the Twin Peaks Crisis. I get that, but South Asia doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I think we have to recognize that. And it’s not separate from broader foreign policy and international political considerations for the American leadership. And I think President Trump in particular, but also Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio, ended up seeing the crisis not through this historical lens that we have in the South Asia community, but through a frame of the world we are in and the challenges U.S. foreign policy is currently mired in. And I think this certainly brought principles of the broader Trump doctrine to this issue that they are developing on how to manage global affairs.
So what is this doctrine? As I see this doctrine it is aspiring to a foreign policy of realism guided restraint. I’m not saying that they are there yet. I think it seems to be a work in progress, but I see that aspiration in several policy strands. It is heavily shaped by the view that American power has been strained by past and ongoing wars and conflicts in the world. There are two active large scale hostilities that the administration is constantly thinking about. Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Gaza. There’s also an impending prospect of an Israel-Iran conflict that the administration is grappling with.
There’s also fiscal reality of foreign policy that I see the administration reckoning with more than India’s past. Do we have the monetary resources to engage in ways which exposes us to entanglements? And I think the administration as a result of this fiscal constraint that they recognized, their intent on bringing more balance to America’s partnerships and alliances. So it’s certainly seeking reciprocity, it’s trying to reduce American burdens, but it’s also seeking not to be entangled in conflicts that don’t serve American interests. They don’t want to carry water for others, including allies and partners in ways that is not directly relevant for U.S. national security interests.
There’s a domestic consideration at play as well, which I think drives this Trump doctrine of realist restraint. President Trump has pledged peace and end wars and conflicts. Period. And that is undoubtedly an extremely popular position with the electorate. I think it draws a pretty disparate coalition in the United States in support of that position. What the United States from the administration’s point of view then needs is stability, which can be sustainable and doesn’t consume either American lives resources or attention. That’s the doctrine as I read it.
And I think when you bring that framework to an India-Pakistan crisis or war, it is a no-brainer that the administration wants to pursue a policy that not only seeks de-escalation, especially amid runaway escalation towards a nuclear war exchange, but also systematic mitigation of tensions between India and Pakistan. And I’ll state this plainly, this crisis could have been the Trump administration, Ukraine getting invaded by Russia moment or something broadly analogous to the October 7th moment in the sense that October 7th pushed the Middle East into this vortex.
Those are tremendous burdens the previous administration decided to shoulder and in the process placed the cost of those conflicts on the American people. We saw a backlash against that. And I think the Trump team is deeply aware of that and therefore wants to adopt choices that do not trigger another vortex, especially when they are trying to bring all of these other conflicts going on around the world to a close. I think there was, and still is a path before this administration which it can pursue that could entangle the U.S. more deeply in an India-Pakistan crisis.
Now in the future, I think there’s a version of the South Asia policy, for example, one that was elements of the policy pursued by the previous administration would certainly raise the risks of. I can use a word from realism theory, chain-ganging the United States on the side of India in a war with Pakistan, but it seems to me President Trump and the broader MAGA, the America first movement, are aware of the perils of being chain-ganged. And I think that’s where the Trump approach on South Asia fits very neatly in an overall doctrine around realist restraint.
Elizabeth Threlkeld: Thanks Asfandyar. Very interesting. And I’m sure we will come back to some of those themes as we go through the hour. But actually that brings us nicely Yun to you because while as Dan mentioned, the U.S. in the post-Cold War era really was the sole superpower trying to manage crises in playing a diplomatic heavyweight role, China has certainly come to the fore over the past couple of decades. And I wonder if we can expand the aperture a bit and bring in a comparative perspective. So help us understand how Beijing responded to the recent India-Pakistan tensions and how you think China is viewing Washington’s approach to the crisis this time around.
Yun Sun: Thank you, Elizabeth. That’s a great question. That’s something that I have been grappling with since late April. Because if you look at China’s historical record in terms of India-Pakistan crisis, at least let’s say since 1998, China has or had tried in different cases, different occasions, tried to play a constructive role. Tried to play a role of mediator and try to exercise its influence in order to push for a relatively speedy resolution of the crisis. That happened in 2001. That happened in 2008.
There’s some debate as for whether China was helpful or not in 2019, but I think this time we are definitely seeing a more questionable approach from Beijing. And in the discussion with Chinese interlocutors, I think the distinction was made before May 7th and after May 7th. So before May 7th if you look at China’s record of the interaction was almost entirely with the Pakistani side. The meetings with the Pakistani leaders, the phone call between Chinese foreign policy leader and Pakistani leaders and also the message that came across in the public statements about those interactions.
The message was almost entirely focused on China is solid iron clad, all weather friends of Pakistan, China will support Pakistan to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and also support Pakistan to pursue its national security. So that message is almost entirely one-sided I would say. There is a calling for restraint, there’s calling for de-escalation of tension, and calling for reason and ration, but if you look at the overall prioritized message from before May 7th, it was a very heavily, I would say dwelled message on China’s solid support of Pakistan.
And I think from that experience it also came quite clear. I think there is an understanding, very sober understanding in China that because China is not seen as neutral, China is unlikely to be accepted as a mediator. And there was very little doubt in China that India had no interest in accepting Chinese mediation because India does not see China as being either neutral or impartial. You don’t have to be neutral to be impartial because there’s a distinction, but in this case, I think the Chinese message was quite clear.
I think the Chinese concern about escalation potential increased since May 7th and it further increased on May 10th and May 11th after the Indian attack on Pakistani air force assets. And that’s where I think the Chinese message we could see that it’s returned to the more traditional line that tension needs to be de-escalated and China’s willing to play the role and both sides needs to exercise restraint. So that’s more the traditional message from the Chinese perspective on India-Pakistan. And then it gets into the question of why this is the case? Why the distinction? What has changed?
I think we are clearly in the Chinese mentality what has changed is in the past seven, eight years that the growing environment or the growing narrative of great power competition coming to South Asia and this perceived emergence of a bipolarized South Asia subregion with U.S. and India on one side and China and Pakistan on the other side. I think that’s the primary driver of China’s, I would say, more biased approach in this crisis in particular. And what is the Chinese reaction to the de-escalation of the crisis?
I think the Chinese certainly saw the de-escalation as a blessing. It was good news. I don’t think there was any intention on the Chinese side for this crisis or for this tension to be protracted. They wanted to be over relatively quickly. But when they saw that the U.S. comments, and especially from U.S. top leaders about the role that U.S. has played in the de-escalation of the tension, what we saw, what I saw from the Chinese community, the policy community is a tendency to downplay the role that U.S. has played.
There’s a very clear emphasis on, for example, the Pakistani statement that more than 30 countries participated in the maneuver, in the mediation and also the Indian comment from Jaishankar, for example, that basically pushes back the U.S. claim that U.S. was the one that created this ceasefire with the de-escalation of the tension. But I think also other than citing the Pakistani and Indian pushback on the U.S. claim of credit, I think in the Chinese analysis of the de-escalation of tension, there is also another emphasis which is well literally translated one operation, two interpretations.
This term particularly resonates with the Chinese foreign policy wonks because one China two interpretations is like the going seen for China for cross-strait relations. So when you talk about one operation, two interpretations, the message I think for the tacit understanding in the Chinese policy community is that while India and Pakistan developed different narratives based on one result of this crisis or of these operations, that both claim to be the victorious party.
It’s very interesting to see how the Chinese are observing that on the Indian side there’s this active campaign to portray Indian success with Indian victory. And also on the Pakistani side there is a similar effort which in the Chinese understanding is good news or it’s a positive sign because it means that both sides are trying to take a face-saving exit to climb down that ladder. Both sides are trying to portray the end or the ceasefire or the de-escalation as something that they have successfully concluded.
So if both sides can leave this with their face saved, that will give them much less incentive to come back and take revenge. So I think that’s an interesting Chinese observation that I don’t know whether it is broadly shared outside China, but I think it is a key element of the Chinese assessment of the ending of this roundup crisis. But it also further takes credit away from the United States. And this is not a U.S. creation. Thank you. I’ll stop there.
Elizabeth Threlkeld: Fascinating Yun. Thanks so much for unpacking that. And I think that the claims of victory on both sides is an element of this crisis that we have seen in past crises as well. This was part of what played out in 2019, though perhaps it’s even more emphasized this time around. And that actually brings us nicely to what will be the next segment of the conversation, which is looking at future trajectories and options for U.S. policy.
I think we are just over a month out from the original trigger attack from this crisis and a couple of weeks since the most intense fighting ended. The ceasefire has largely held so far. But I think there are real questions about where we go for here? How sustainable the current moment is? Notably, I’m sure many of you have followed some pretty intense rhetoric coming both from India and from Pakistan. Certainly the bilateral blame game continues and I think there’s some questions about what that means for U.S. policy going forward to be sure.
So in this round if we can all circle around the question of looking ahead, what should the U.S. role be as we consider policy trajectories? What do we expect will happen in the weeks and months ahead and what should happen? Noting that those might not be the same. And Dan, I’ll start with you again. One key question that I think analysts have taken on since the crisis is, whether there is any realistic role that the U.S. could play in supporting as both national security advisor and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in his tweet, talks on a broad set of issues between the two sides, or if Washington should just stick to traditional crisis management.
And one thing that I’ve been thinking about is that latter more limited option assumes in some way that crisis management will continue to be effective in the future even as both sides take more escalatory military actions as we have seen. So do you think that limiting U.S. to crisis management will continue to be viable? Is that still wise? Or does Washington need to take a more active role in some way in facilitating dialogue?
Daniel Markey: Great question. And I’ll sort of bottom line up front. Whether we like it or not I’m convinced that crisis management may be the most realistic way to manage things certainly in the near term. In some ways I would observe based on what Asfandyar was talking about earlier. The Trump administration may have successfully interfered or intervened in this crisis in ways that were robust and ultimately brought it to an end. At the same time, it also raised certain expectations about what we might see going forward.
And while I expect those expectations will be unmet, and I can explain why, I think that that suggests that a more robust approach in the way that he described, which may be consistent with a Trump doctrine, has some problems when it meets reality, ground reality in this region. And I would say that in three ways. One is, it’s going to struggle to deal with the practical problems of actual peacemaking, and I’ll explain that a bit more. It’s even going to have trouble with what you’ve described as broad-based dialogue building.
And it might manage to crack over the bar in terms of improved crisis management efforts, both with the countries of the region and possibly also in coordination with countries outside the region. So why am I skeptical about peace building that first level? I think I joined many colleagues, and it’s not just a matter of past history, but we have seen a past history where U.S. diplomacy has been disappointed time and again in terms of trying to push forward projects that are more ambitious on Kashmir, on India-Pakistan more generally.
The two sides are deeply divided over these issues. And there’s no reason to believe that their current leaderships are any less divided. If anything, they are more so than at other times in our history. So where we have seen maybe marginal or even significant progress under different leaders of India and Pakistan, Prime Minister Modi and now Field Marshal Asim Munir are not such leaders or are not looking to be such leaders, at least not at the present moment.
And for the reasons that we described, and that Yun got into in terms of the sort of structural components of the region, that is block politics with the United States seeming to be more and more on India’s side, China seeming and really being more and more on Pakistan’s side, the impulses against peace building go beyond the region itself and extend to the global geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing. And in some ways this region is going to be unfortunately more divided by that political competition or geopolitical competition than united by it. So deeper peace is I think likely to be elusive. Even broad-based dialogue or what we used to call composite dialogue will be difficult at this moment.
And the reasons for this again, have to do with leadership, but they also have to do with the practical problem that I think India is very inclined not to want to reward what it sees as terrorism against India with talks. And India’s leadership and I think more broadly India’s people are less inclined to want to engage even in those composite dialogues that would include topics beyond terrorism because that would be seen as somehow a concession to Pakistan at precisely a time where they feel like they have put up a stiff fight and punished Pakistan and Pakistan-based terrorists for what they perceive as having been a direct attack on Indian civilians.
So where would the United States have sufficient leverage to bring India to the table if it doesn’t want to be at the table for those kinds of talks? And would it have sufficient interest for forcing that on India at a time when Washington does see India as an important partner in broader set of issues, particularly having to do with counterbalancing China in Asia? So that leaves us with this third category of potentially crisis management and resolution. You are suggesting, I think by the way you frame the question, that this is maybe not sufficient and I would say no, not sufficient indefinitely or forever, but maybe the best that we can do.
And certainly essential given the possibility that we could be back in another crisis very soon. So what does it look like? It looks like having serious conversations as much as we can, certainly with the United States, having those conversations with India to the extent that we can possibly have some quiet conversations even with China and certainly with Pakistan, about ways to avoid heading down the same path, this spiral to violence in ways that ultimately are very risky and somewhat unpredictable.
These things are all to be welcomed. And to the extent that we can get back or even bring in certain types of mechanisms that would slow that process if we find ourselves after another terrorist attack or another kind of India-Pakistan incident, all of that would be to the good. So if those things can work, then maybe we buy ourselves enough time to climb back up the ladder to a broader comprehensive dialogue or something like that. And then someday when the politics of the region are more propitious, open the door to real peace conversations.
Elizabeth Threlkeld: Thanks so much, Dan. That’s really helpful. Asfandyar I will come to you because I would like to actually ask you to take on that same question. I am getting the sense there might be a diversity of use, which is great and I think we should hear that out because it’s important to note that this is not just in the region, but here in Washington a issue that people see from a variety of different perspectives.
And so Asfandyar, I wonder how do you respond to Dan’s framing of that? How do you see the pros and cons of either a more limited or perhaps a more forward-leaning U.S. approach? And if Washington does want to move forward and encourage some sort of direct dialogue, what advice would you give bearing mind the challenges that Dan outlined?
Asfandyar Mir: Sure. So look, Elizabeth, I agree with a lot of what Dan said. I think his fundamental diagnosis on the challenges here are right. But I think I’m approaching it not in terms of the mediation offer only, as I think about the risks and opportunities in President Trump’s instincts, I’m comparing them to where we have been at in the last few years. When I look at, for example, President Biden’s approach to the region, his administration’s approach, I think I can draw some straight lines to some of the risks that contributed to the crisis that we just saw.
There was, for example, no real policy effort over the last few years. Forget solving. Solving it is a pipe dream, and I’ll get to that in more detail. When containing India-Pakistan tensions I think there was an assumption that if you ignore the rivalry it will maybe just fade away. And that was not exclusively in an India-Pakistan issue, I think it was a feature of the broader foreign policy approach of the last few years. There was of course a push to downgrade disengage from Pakistan, which I believe reduced U.S. leverage an incentive for Pakistan to exercise strategic restraint towards India.
And then there was a separate strand of dwindling attention to militancy and terrorism beyond core, very narrow set of U.S. counter terrorism equities globally. And I think that had an impact on how the U.S. saw and understood anti-India militancy and terrorism that may be emanating from Pakistan and Afghanistan. And so I think President Trump’s instincts actually improve on all of those counts. I think the president himself is recognizing, centering the structural reality that predisposes this rivalry to bouts of violence and therefore telling his people that it demands sustained policy attention, not indifference. That’s good. There is an attempt to preserve leverage with Pakistan, including for bilateral equities that I can speak to later on.
And then there is a stepped up focus on counterterrorism. I think the pendulum swing in a direction that it shouldn’t have gone in, and we are now going to see more resources, slightly more attention than we have seen in years past. That’s where the promise is in President Trump’s instincts. On the side of limits, I think the strategic argument is there, that if you can somehow solve India-Pakistan rivalry, that’s actually good for the U.S. -China strategic competition.
If the rivalry goes away you free up India militarily and politically in ways that is unimaginable right now. But it is truly a moonshot endeavor and I am completely with Dan that it is too big for the U.S. policy effort to take on. So I think the risk with a forward leaning approach of true mediation is that the U.S. can get bogged down. And a lot of structural variables, as Dan was alluding to the domestic politics in both India and Pakistan, the incentives of key leaders, they will never be responsive to the whims of U.S. policy.
One more thing because I think it has come up both in your questions and some of the other discussion and the broader conversation that we are hearing on the issue. I fundamentally disagree that the president is hyphenating or bringing equivalence to Indian Pakistan. Semantically sure he mentions Indian Pakistan in the same sentence, but I mean what is the big deal in that? The American president shouldn’t have to sort of bend to South Asian sensibilities in how he talks about foreign policy problems. But then look at the substance of engagement and policy momentum, which I think really reflects actual direction.
The president hosted Prime Minister Modi for a state visit within the first 30 days of his administration and launched personally an extremely ambitious agenda of U.S. India bilateral cooperation, which by all accounts the administration remains deeply committed to. Sure, he is cut into some of the strategic altruism by pushing on trade and where supply chains ought to go. There’s a tweet this morning on where Apple ought to be building iPhones. But I think he is also put strategic firepower in the mix if India reciprocates. He is put the F-35 on the agenda, which I think after this crisis becomes a timely conversation. So let me stop there and yeah, over to you.
Elizabeth Threlkeld: Thanks Asfandyar. I’ll turn to Yun now. And actually it’s always timely when an audience question aligns with one that I was already thinking about asking. So we will combine those here. And Yun, I would like you to help us understand how China fits into this mix. There’s so much focus on India and Pakistan that it can be easy to forget that Kashmir is actually a tripartite dispute. So China controls part of Kashmir known as Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract and also claims part of Ladakh. So how does Beijing see these repeated statements from President Trump on mediating the Kashmir dispute? And how do you anticipate that they will move forward and potentially respond if we do see some effort towards talks?
Yun Sun: Good question, and I agree with Asfandyar that President Trump has great instincts, but I think in terms of the relationship with China what we often have seen is that those instincts run into reality. And the reality turns to be so much more complicated than the original assumption. Like with the trade wars what the assumption China’s economy is weak, so therefore if we impose a prohibitively high tariff they are going to vote. Well, they didn’t vote and then we had to resolve that escalation.
I think similar here that when the Chinese hear the United States and President Trump talking about U.S. will move forward with mediation to solve the Kashmir crisis, I think the Chinese is, wait a minute, we are also part of that Kashmir dispute. So what are you talking about? Do you realize that China also has to be involved if you actually aim to resolve this? But I think it goes to another question. So the solution, if there is a solution, a mediation regarding the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, is innately and intrinsically linked to the issue of China-India border disputes.
And within that framework, it is about the western sector in Kashmir, the eastern sector in Arunachal, but also the central sector. So if you are aimed to solve the issue, the dispute in, for example, between Ladakh and Aksai Chin then you have to have some package deal regarding the issue of Arunachal, which is a much bigger piece of the dispute, which means that I think it’s a curious question that will China be on board? Just imagine hypothetically that somehow there is a potential solution to the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, will China support that solution without a solution of the China-India border? Will Beijing link these two together? Will Beijing see the latter as a precondition of the former or at least to see that these two will have to happen simultaneously? If you ask me, given the strategic alignment between China and Pakistan and how Pakistan has been seen as a gatekeeper or at least a partner of China in terms of countering India aggressiveness in the Line of Control and Line of Actual Control, I think it will be highly unlikely that China will move forward to support a solution between India-Pakistan without some resolution or some potential resolution of the border China-India border disputes.
But we also know that part of the disputes have been lingering on for more than seven decades with occasional, or you would say, regular eruption of localized attention. So that’s a much deeper and a much bigger issue that I’m afraid the U.S. will have to resolve if there is an intent to mediate on the Kashmir dispute between and Pakistan. But is the U.S., with the great power competition in the back of our mind and also with the China-India border dispute as a useful context for our India policy, are we willing to go into that direction? I think that’s a deeper question for our strategic thinking. Thank you.
Elizabeth Threlkeld: Exactly. So if India-Pakistan over Kashmir was not complex enough we have to add in the China element too and the to-do list gets a little bit longer. But your last point is a great transition to our final segment here today which is, considering those broader geopolitical impacts in this era of strategic competition. So the in India-Pakistan crisis and Washington’s response will certainly have implications for a wide range of U.S. policy priorities around the globe. Maybe we can unpack a bit what we expect and what those implications will mean for Washington’s approach going forward.
And again, fortunately, we have a lot of audience interest in these questions. Yun you were just asking about how Washington is thinking about balancing its priorities in the bilateral relationship with India, and that’s one that several audience members have written about. So Dan, I’ll turn to you with that question and try to group some of these together. So a key question mark is what recent events will mean for the U.S. -India partnership. We should recall that vice president JD Vance was in India at the time of the attack and that was just the latest sign of the Trump administration’s focus on engaging New Delhi that Asfandyar referred to earlier. So what do you think we can expect in U.S. -India ties going forward after this crisis?
Daniel Markey: Great question. I want to pick up on some of what Asfandyar was getting at because I think he previewed some important pieces of the U.S. -India relationship here. I think he was right in his look back at some of the ways in which the handling of this relationship by the Biden administration may have created vulnerabilities that opened the door to some of what we have just experienced over the past few months. Because the India-Pakistan relationship really couldn’t be wished away, the problems in that relationship couldn’t be ignored.
There were dangers to effectively putting them aside. And I think that the Biden administration tried to do all of those things. Basically took India’s lead in accepting that somehow Kashmir and the relationship with Pakistan, the less said about those things, the better. And effectively the U.S. -India relationship was all about China and all about geopolitical competition there. And I think it would be right for the Trump administration to reassess that. But where I would differ maybe a bit with in terms of prioritization is that the Trump administration still does need to appreciate how to balance India-Pakistan issues against India-China issues.
And ultimately for the United States, from my perspective, the India-China relationship is more geopolitically relevant. Now the two can’t be completely separated, but if you leave the India-China relationship sort of hostage and create some hostage to Pakistan and prioritize the India-Pakistan relationship in U.S. policy, I think that’ll be a setback. And we can already see that. So Washington and Trump may not be re-hyphenating India-Pakistan, but this constant litany and reference to Kashmir is more than grading for Indian ears. It is the kind of thing that recalls a history of the United States being in Indian terms, an unreliable partner.
This unreliability issue cuts to the core of U.S. aspirations for trying to, among other things, sell more defense equipment to India and for building a deeper military to military relationship across the board that would be relevant to, again, counterbalancing China. So there is a direct cost, certainly in the way that India frames it, to the more the United States focuses on Pakistan. So just as Asfandyar is right, you can’t ignore Pakistan, you need to factor that into your relationship. You also can’t permit that to become the priority from the U.S. perspective in the region.
And I think that’s what India is most concerned about. And the question is whether the recent experience will open or create vulnerabilities in the India-U.S. relationship for long-term political damage. And I think ultimately that’s going to depend on just how upset the Modi government is over Trump’s focus on Kashmir and rekindling some kind of Kashmir talks, whether this blows over relatively quickly or whether it stays something that appears to be a priority for the administration.
But if you add that frustration to what India may have learned from this crisis which is, in terms of military equipment, Russian-supplied defense equipment, that is S-400 air defense systems, were absolutely critical to its success. And this is going to reinforce a broader Indian perspective that diversification of defense supply and not relying too heavily on any strategic partner will be essential. And that’s something that Washington has worked very hard to push back against over time to inject itself more and more into the Indian defense relationship and defense thinking. That’s going to be even harder to do after this crisis. I would expect, however, that this will move back to where we were, as Asfandyar mentioned, with the accelerated partnership shortly after Trump took office, Modi’s visit to Washington, and all of those things which would incline the United States to be a closer partner to India. That’s what I would expect. But there is a possibility after this crisis that some of that will be derailed or slowed. And I think that would ultimately be detrimental to a broader set of U.S. strategic interests.
Elizabeth Threlkeld: Thanks so much, Dan. That’s really helpful. Asfandyar, I’ll turn to you with a similar question, but on U.S. -Pakistan ties. So we’d seen some perhaps surprising momentum in the relationship between Washington and Islamabad under President Trump, including a focus on CT cooperation critical minerals. I think it’s important to note here that Pakistan is deeply concerned with its own challenges in terrorism with attacks in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. We have seen statements just in the last day or two pointing the finger at India for those attacks. So this is a complex issue in general and a bilateral relationship that I think is worth a look here. So how do you see recent events shaping U.S. -Pakistan ties? And how do you think the U.S. should think about its policy priorities in Pakistan going forward?
Asfandyar Mir: Thanks for that, Elizabeth. I think the only thing I’ll add first to Dan’s response is, I again agree with him on the potential of some damage here, but I get the sense that the relationship with India, the India-China dynamic remains the north star for overall policy. And the only thing that may be done differently is how much the India-Pakistan dynamic is weighted going forward. Certainly I don’t see it becoming as the main organizing principle of U.S. policy on South Asia or a fundamental factor in how the U.S. approaches its bilateral times with India. I just don’t see it happening despite the president’s ongoing interest and some of his mentions of mediation interest.
But let me turn to Pakistan. President Trump has indeed spoken more extensively about Pakistan in the first five, six months than I guess any U.S. president ever. Maybe I need to go back and look at the second Bush administration. Maybe there was more of a mention of Pakistan. And it seems that the president likes Pakistan. He is born of the country or if not the country it’s people.
And now contrast that with the sentiments of former president, President Biden, who I think came to develop starker negative view of the country. And he was certainly shaped by the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s role there, adversarial role as he saw particularly damaging and personally let down as well because he led some of the efforts to boost the U.S. -Pakistan relationship in the late 2000s. And the president then stayed on with Orthodox war on terror assumptions. It’s the most dangerous place in the world. Nukes can fall to terrorists.
President Trump doesn’t appear burdened or scarred by some of those assumptions. I think his own personal experience dealing with Pakistan even in the first term seems to have been different. He did cut off all assistance to Pakistan and since then I mean the U.S. has provided remarkably little to nothing to Pakistan on the security front. But then he asked the Pakistanis to deliver the Talibs for peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan, and they did and I think he remembers that. And then most recently the Pakistanis delivered on one of his key campaign promises of bringing to justice the plotters, the terrorists involved in the Abbey Gate attack.
And then we know from how he is going about Syria, he can be forward-looking. He believes in giving second chances. So I think all of that is different in how say the White House is approaching Pakistan. And this instinct again may result in a policy of pragmatically trying to cooperate with Pakistan going forward at least for a period of time. The Pakistani side or calculus is I think important to consider as well. I get the sense that there is a respect toward an admiration of President Trump and a degree of fear of him as well. People see him as a strong decisive leader who can make big calls.
And I think the Pakistanis learned that from how he went about the Afghanistan withdrawal and the deal with the Taliban. And I didn’t see that sense of respect or even fear for the U.S. presidency the last four years or so. So I think that explains why say Pakistan extradited this ISIS-K operative. I think it also explains why the Pakistanis took as many phone calls as they did during the course of the crisis. And I see the argument that maybe the Pakistanis are playing the administration. I don’t think so. I think they fear ending up on the wrong side of President Trump because that can result in a lot more pain for Pakistan.
I also don’t see the Pakistanis having particularly high expectations of the U.S. mediation offer. Many put a lot of stock in the theory that Pakistan’s fundamental strategy to solving Kashmir is internationalization of Kashmir to force India’s hand, loosen India’s grip. That getting the U.S. involved has been Pakistan’s ticket to solving Kashmir. Again, I don’t buy it. we are not in the 1980s and 1990s. The Pakistanis have somewhat moved on as well. They want the spotlight, they like it, they want to catalyze it, but I think they also appreciate Indian power and their own limits.
And they understand that moving Indian Kashmir is ultimately exceedingly challenging, if not impossible, even with U.S. mediation. Where I see real impact of the mediation offer is actually not on the India-Pakistan dynamic, but on Pakistani strategic suspicions of the United States going back to the Bush era. I think it alleviates some institutional strategic anxieties that Pakistanis have developed about the United States ranging from say, U.S. interest in regime change to an emerging U.S. -India nexus.
I think the president’s posture may mitigate the demand signal and push for strategic developments that can present risks to the United States. Looking ahead, I think the U.S. interests will be served by being clear-eyed about U.S. interests in Pakistan, which are narrower than say the India relationship most certainly from counter-terrorism, strategic issues, critical minerals, Chinese influence and transactions are good. A spirit of reciprocity is even better. That’s the currency the administration values. And I think Pakistan will understand that approach as well and may continue to reciprocate.
Elizabeth Threlkeld: Thanks so much. Yun, I will turn to you for our last question here. And we haven’t focused too much on the military aspects of the crisis specifically, but I think one aspect of this crisis that has gotten a lot of notice is the success that Chinese-origin fighter jets and missiles reportedly achieved against Indian planes in one of the initial rounds of military action here. Of course that was facilitated by the deep China-Pakistan defense partnership that has come up a couple of times on this event already. So in that context and more broadly, can you help us understand where you see the crisis positioning China both in terms of its role in the region and perhaps more broadly?
Yun Sun: Thank you. I think one thing that has been a morale boost in China this time around is the performance of the Chinese weapons system in China. And not only the Chinese experts were pleasantly surprised by how well the Chinese systems performed, I think we also saw that there was almost a celebration among the Chinese general public, especially the online madness and there’s some quite offensive videos that you could observe. So I don’t think that’s what China intended, but the Chinese weapons system certainly came out as a beneficiary from the interactions or from the crisis this time around.
I think what’s more interesting is that it will position China as a more credible and potentially more popular weapons provider or arm seller on the international market. And I do see that the Chinese media is picking up different signals on which countries are now expressing more interest in the Chinese weapons system since what happened between India and Pakistan in the past couple of weeks. But I think the deeper geopolitical influence here we are looking at is in the Chinese assessment, this round of crisis actually has acted as a boost of Pakistan’s internal, what’s the better word? Maybe not nationalism, but internal confidence about Pakistan’s ability and the capability of the Pakistani military. We know that in the Chinese assessment Pakistan has not done well. And the same assessment is also shared here in Washington. Pakistan is in deep trouble, budgetarily, domestic development, you name it. But this time around, I think there is a very clear string of thought in China that this crisis actually is good news for Pakistan because it tightens or strengthens internal cohesiveness or the coherence of the Pakistani government, the military, and the society.
And this could act as something that’s more positive that will lead to… Well I’m personally not optimistic. What is the future solutions to Pakistan’s debacle or their problems lies at. There’s also the implication for China-India relations. We know that since last October, China has intended to improve or renormalize their relationship with India. It was signified by President Xi-Modi meeting in Kazan last October, and also consolidated by the fact that actually the two militaries disengaged in the disputed border.
So we were looking at basically the past six months China and India, or at least on the Chinese side, they are trying to build a positive momentum that would potentially lead to the improvement of relations with India. So from that perspective, I think this time around this crisis really happened at a very unfortunate time for China because they are ready to move in to build better relationship, repair some of the damage since 2020. But then with this round of crisis, like I mentioned, with China unequivocally supporting Pakistan from the very beginning, that has done significant damage to China-India relations that I think Beijing will have to take much more effort to repair from here. Thanks.
Elizabeth Threlkeld: So helpful Yun. And that brings us to a close for today’s discussion though I think this is a topic that we will certainly keep close watch of going forward. And indeed, two questions that are top of mind for me, is this the end of the crisis? Have we successfully brought this round to a close? And will that stability hold for at least the near to medium term or is there a risk that a crisis could reoccur sooner than later which would raise some of these challenges again in terms of crisis management and perhaps more? And then second, how actively will the Trump administration pursue any potential talks?
We have discussed the pros and cons, the immense challenges there, but that question in the timeline as well of whether or not we are going to see a shift away from this focus seems like another really important one to keep an eye on going forward. So this is an important moment and it’s one with a great deal of gravity when we have two nuclear armed states and rising great power competition in play. So safe to say that the choices the U.S. makes now will reverberate for quite some time. But with that, I just want to say thank you to our panelists, Dan, Asfandyar and Yun.
