The violent crisis between India and Pakistan is exactly the kind of international emergency that would once have prompted a full-on US diplomatic drive to cool tempers and head off a wider war.
But this latest fighting over and beyond Kashmir, the disputed Muslim-majority region, may become a test of the Trump administration’s bandwidth and limited aspirations for global convening — and for the world without American leadership.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday offered a passive initial response to the fighting, set off by a terror attack on Indian tourists that New Delhi blames on Pakistan-backed militants. “It’s a shame,” Trump said. “I just hope it ends quickly.” On Wednesday, he went a little further, offering his good offices without showing much enthusiasm for becoming involved. “I get along with both, I know both very well, and I want to see them work it out,” Trump said. “They’ve gone tit-for-tat. So hopefully they can stop now. … If I can do anything to help, I will be there.”
Apart from the reticence of the Trump administration to play a traditional US global leadership role, there are other reasons why past diplomatic strategies may be less effective in a more fractured and volatile world order.
One impact of the Kargil crisis in 1999 was to draw the United States closer to India, an increasingly powerful, assertive and wealthy nation. Every administration since has followed Clinton’s lead. And Trump is personally and politically close to Modi, a fellow nationalist.
The shocking nature of the attacks on unarmed tourists in Kashmir also has garnered sympathy for India — not just in Washington — and a sense it has the right to defend itself, even if there are qualms in much of the world over Modi’s crackdown on Muslims in Indian Kashmir in recent years. Pakistan has denied harboring terror camps from which the attacks were planned on its territory.
Meanwhile, US capacity to pressure Pakistan has eroded since the end of the countries’ uneasy alliance in the war on terror and with the US exit from Afghanistan. Pakistan has now reverted fully to its longtime political allegiance with China, meaning each of the South Asian rivals has a superpower ally.
Willasey-Wilsey argued that creditors of Pakistan, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, had the leverage to impose restraint on Islamabad, as Pakistan is in the middle of a deep economic crisis.
But unless the situation gets much worse, international efforts to end the crisis are unlikely to be led by the United States.