Kaush Arha, and James Himberger
The West won’t persuade India to share its view on Russian aggression if it continues to engage in false equivalencies between Pakistan’s terror attacks and India’s reprisals.
India, in the early hours of May 7, destroyed nine terrorist training facilities in Pakistan in response to a terror attack on April 22, killing twenty-six tourists in Pahalgam in India’s Jammu and Kashmir union territory. Subsequently, the two nations engaged in drone and missile exchanges with divergent claims of damage inflicted on the other. On May 10, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed a ceasefire agreement between the two nations.
On May 12, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation and asserted, “If there is a terrorist attack on India, a fitting reply will be given…on our terms.” The hopefully short-lived conflict holds important lessons for India’s relations with the United States, the Quad, and the growing Indo-Mediterranean trade network.
Concerns of uncontrolled escalation between two nuclear-armed nations are real and sobering. However, an all-out war appears unlikely as India does not want it, and Pakistan cannot afford it. Much depends on Pakistan’s internal politics, which couples a weak and unpopular prime minister (Shehbaz Sharif) and a powerful chief of army staff (General Asim Munir), both of whom allegedly conspired to imprison former prime minister Imran Khan and prevent him from contesting the 2024 election. Pakistan’s economy is in the doldrums and received another IMF loan on May 9—its twenty-fifth, making it one of the organization’s largest debtors.
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