The India-Pakistan Crisis Needs Steady Diplomacy

The Trump Administration Sleepwalks Into a Crisis

India and Pakistan have had a fraught relationship for much of the 20th century. Since gaining independence, both countries have fought four wars against each other and have engaged in numerous cross-border skirmishes. This latest crisis represents the most significant period of conflict between these two nuclear powers and presents the possibility of a fifth Indo-Pakistani war.

On April 22^nd, tourists in the Indian town of Pahalgam were attacked by a group of militants belonging to “The Resistance Front,” an insurgent group active in Kashmir along the border of India and Pakistan. The Indian government directly implicated Pakistan in the attack due to The Resistance Front’s ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani Salafist group with ties to the Pakistani military intelligence agency “Inter-Services Intelligence”. The government of Pakistan has formally denied these allegations.

In response to this diplomatic row, the Indian government expelled Pakistani citizens and suspended the “Indus Waters Treaty” - a crucial water-sharing agreement that ensures the uninterrupted flow of water from India to Pakistan. As an arid, water-poor country of nearly 250 million people, the long-term suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty presents an existential threat to Pakistan.

The Chenab Dam on the now-dry Chenab River

India and Pakistan have spent the past weeks redeploying artillery towards their shared border and escalating threats of military action towards one another. As of two hours ago, India has launched multiple ballistic missiles at nine sites located in Pakistan-controlled parts of Kashmir. At least three fatalities have been reported. Additionally, Pakistan has reportedly downed three Indian military aircraft following the strikes in Kashmir.

It’s difficult to overstate just how cataclysmic a war between India and Pakistan would be. Both India and Pakistan possess substantial nuclear arsenals, and both states have spent much of the past two decades modernizing their militaries. A shooting war between both countries would be a major departure from the decades of nuclear brinksmanship between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War and set a course of escalation to nuclear war. Pakistan, with its substantially smaller military, has stated that it will use its nuclear arsenal in response to a conventional military threat and India is open about its willingness to conduct retaliatory nuclear strikes. When we consider the length of the shared border and the population of both states (Pakistan at 247 million people and India at 1.4 billion), it is safe to say that a war between India and Pakistan would represent the largest mobilization and interstate conflict in human history.

At the time of writing, the Trump administration has yet to launch an effort to moderate the rapidly escalating conflict. The U.S. has had an on-again-off-again relationship with Pakistan, having historically provided American-made weapons to Pakistan before the relationship ruptured over the Pakistani government’s backing of the Taliban and other terrorist networks. Additionally, Pakistan’s willingness to support terror cells fighting against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan while simultaneously allowing the United States to route supplies and troops needed for the Afghan war through Pakistan complicated this bilateral relationship. Today, Pakistan enjoys an expansive trading relationship and considerable military support from the Peoples Republic of China. India, an ally of the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War (despite its membership in the non-aligned movement), has gradually grown away from Russia’s sphere of influence and has emerged as a strategic partner of the United States. As the world’s largest democracy, India is a massive economic market and a potential strategic partner against China in the Asia-Pacific. Despite the massive scale of this conflict, the White House is preoccupied with creating its own political crises, engaging in a needless trade war, and alienating traditional friends while siding with old enemies as this crisis unfolds.

Unlike the Israel-Hamas conflict or the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, a war between India and Pakistan would not be an instance of the current administration inheriting a crisis as much as it would be Trump and his team mismanaging a new conflict through their incompetence. Hegseth’s radical cuts to the Department of Defense and Rubio’s hollowing-out of the State Department seem particularly foolish in an era of unprecedented instability. Trump has burnt every bridge we had through his “America First” agenda and the “brilliant” negotiating teams sent to Iran and Russia have nothing to show for their efforts.

The United States should be playing a central role in mediating a peaceful solution to this issue. The U.S. has leverage in the region and has historically played a role in deescalating previous diplomatic rows and armed skirmishes. The Trump administration may be unable to do so in this dangerous moment because we lack the leaders, diplomats, and moral authority to mediate given our recent experiences handing the Ukraine-Russia conflict, the Iran nuclear negotiations, and a dozen other needless fights that Trump has picked. Our diplomatic presence today is smaller, weaker, and demoralized from ongoing attempts to destroy it from the top of the executive branch.

The India and Pakistan relationship scrambles our current notion of alliances in the international system. Pakistan is supported by Azerbaijan, China, and NATO-member Turkey, while India is supported by Russia, Israel, and potentially Japan and Australia. This is a headache for any administration and certainly too much for a National Security Council in turmoil and an intelligence community enveloped in chaos. We could have managed this better if Trump had not spent the past three months decimating the American civil service corps, the United States military, and our intelligence community.

Given the grave danger of nuclear war, I hope that cooler heads prevail. If a war is averted, there is a good chance that a settlement will be reached without American input. India has extracted retribution and may now be willing to deescalate this crisis. Pakistan’s leadership must now decide whether to respond with mutual rapprochement, or escalate and retaliate. This is a political decision that the Pakistani government must make based on the calculations of whether or not internal constituencies will allow India’s strikes to go unanswered.

Adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran may use the vacuum left by America’s withdrawal from the international community and broker a peace that contains conditions unfavorable to American interests. There is also the possibility that the absence of American diplomacy leads to war. Both possibilities share the same root cause: the Trump administration’s malicious pursuit of short-sighted isolationism at a critical time of need.