Most Americans don’t pay much attention to either Pakistan or India, but they are both nuclear armed, they are in a geopolitically vital area, and they have been at loggerheads for decades. From Brian Cloughley at strategic-culture.org:
Biden and his hawks should pause to think where they’re trying to take the world, and consider an approach that could lead to compromise.
India and Pakistan share a long border and do not get along well, to put it mildly. The main cause of disagreement is the divided territory of Kashmir which as long ago as 1948 necessitated UN Security Council attention, resulting in a Resolution determining, among other things, that there should be a “free and impartial plebiscite to decide whether the State of Jammu and Kashmir is to accede to India or Pakistan.” This has not happened and the seemingly insoluble dispute could well lead to a fourth war between the countries, both of which are nuclear-armed.
It might be thought that in such circumstances the world’s “best-educated, best-prepared” nation that President Biden also declares has “unmatched strength” would apply at least some of its education, preparation and power to encouraging India and Pakistan to engage in meaningful negotiations and move towards rapprochement.
Not a hope.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman recently visited India and Pakistan, but rather than attempting to coax and persuade her host nations to reduce bilateral tension and confrontation she publicly insulted Pakistan and urged India to cooperate militarily even more closely with the U.S. She widened the chasm of polarisation in a public speech in India’s commercial centre, Mumbai, by declaring “We don’t see ourselves building a broad relationship with Pakistan, and we have no interest in returning to the days of hyphenated India-Pakistan. That’s not where we are. That’s not where we’re going to be.” Not content with demonstrably taking sides and thus stoking fires in a tinder-box region, she said that when she went on to Pakistan next day her discussions there would be for “a very specific and narrow purpose”, and everything that was discussed would be passed on to India because “we share information back and forth between our governments”.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 