Did Trump cross the line on Kashmir issue? | Explained

The story so far: U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the U.S. mediated the May 10 India-Pakistan ceasefire has been sternly denied by the Ministry of External Affairs, including by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, and has raised questions about the impact of the comments on India-U.S. bilateral ties. However, far more than Mr. Trump’s incredible assertions that he threatened Delhi and Islamabad with cutting trade in order to talk them back from a “nuclear conflict”, his references to the Kashmir dispute have been a cause for worry.

Why have the comments caused uproar?

The U.S. President was among the first leaders to call Prime Minister Narendra Modi to condemn the Pahalgam terror attack. Yet, once Indian airstrikes on terrorist infrastructure in Operation Sindoor intensified into an India-Pakistan conflict, Washington joined countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran to push for a halt in hostilities. Half an hour before the ceasefire was announced by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, Mr. Trump took to his account, claiming credit for a “U.S.-brokered” ceasefire. Later, in media meets, he lavished praise on “both great nations”, promised to increase trade with them, and offered to mediate to resolve the Kashmir issue, erroneously saying it was “a thousand years old” dispute (it dates back to 1947). With his statement, elements of which he repeated in remarks at the White House; at an investors conference in Riyadh; speaking to U.S. troops in Doha; and in an interview, Mr. Trump crossed all the red lines of Indian foreign policy when it comes to Pakistan and Jammu & Kashmir. These can be summed up as no third-party mediation, no hyphenation with Pakistan, no internationalisation of the Kashmir issue and focussing on terrorism as the core concern.

What does internationalisation mean?

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is accused of the original internationalisation of the Kashmir dispute after India went to the United Nations Security Council against Pakistan’s illegal acquisition of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) in December 1947. An offer by Nehru to hold a plebiscite for the Kashmir Valley was contingent on Pakistan vacating PoK, and was shelved thereafter. However, as diplomat Rajiv Dogra points out in his book India’s World: How Prime Ministers Shaped Foreign Policy, Nehru made it clear in Parliament that he had only asked to end Pakistan’s aggression, not to seek arbitration or “adjudge the validity of Kashmir’s accession or to determine where the sovereignty lay,” but the UN broadened its scope of enquiry.

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Since then, India and Pakistan have fought wars, and held talks over the issue, with no resolution. In 1972, after Pakistan suffered a humiliating defeat with the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, Pakistan PM Zulfikar Bhutto is understood to have assured Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that the Simla accord they signed would lead to a bilateral resolution of Kashmir along the Line of Control, but then never kept the promise. In 1994, in the wake of the insurgency in J&K backed by Pakistan, Parliament passed a resolution taking a firm line: it called the State an “integral part of India”, and said Pakistan must vacate the areas of the Indian State of J&K.

After the 2019 re-organisation of J&K following the amendment of Article 370, Pakistan tried to internationalise the issue again. While it was largely unsuccessful, Pakistan, with China’s support managed to hold a UNSC closed-door meeting on “the volatile situation surrounding Kashmir”, for the first time in 50 years.

However, post 2019, the Narendra Modi government, which did negotiate with the Imran Khan government for the Kartarpur corridor and the 2021 LoC ceasefire, drew another line: that the only India-Pakistan talks on Kashmir henceforth would be for the return of PoK. While the position seemed maximalist, it was the outcome of decades of frustration at Pakistan’s refusal to keep its commitments on the LoC and cross-border terrorism.

Has any third-party ever mediated before?

The Simla accord made the UN process that Nehru invoked irrelevant. Global powers have been more difficult to keep out of trying to intervene, however. Whenever tensions between India and Pakistan run high, countries like the U.S., the U.K., the UAE and Saudi Arabia establish parallel lines to both capitals, carrying messages between them until there is a pause in the military action, as was the case after Operation Sindoor. The more notable attempts at mediation were by the Soviet Union which hosted ceasefire talks to end the 1965 war, resulting in India and Pakistan signing the Tashkent Declaration.

During the Kargil war in 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton tried to call PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Washington to meet PM Nawaz Sharif, but Mr. Vajpayee told Parliament that he refused the offer. On a day-trip to Islamabad, after his visit to Delhi in 2000, Mr. Clinton then gave a radio address saying the U.S. would not mediate on the Kashmir conflict, but would encourage the two sides for bilateral dialogue, which remained the U.S.’s position until 2019. The U.S. did help in confidence-building measures on Kashmir, as India and Pakistan held direct talks through envoys from 2003-2008 on the idea of “making borders irrelevant” by turning the LoC into a more permanent boundary, but Washington didn’t publicise them. After the Balakot strikes of 2019 however, President Trump, who was in his first term, announced that he had negotiated the release of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who had been captured in Pakistan. He subsequently offered mediation on Kashmir during a press conference with Imran Khan, but was snubbed by Delhi.

Is direct dialogue with Pakistan a possibility?

Most avenues of direct dialogue with Pakistan have been closed since 2015 when External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Islamabad. India’s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty and closure of the Kartarpur corridor to Pakistan during the recent crisis closes more channels of communication other than those between security forces at the border. Meanwhile, the back-channel between NSA Ajit Doval and his Pakistani counterparts has been used more for conflict management, like after the Pathankot terror attacks (2016), or the accidental firing of an Indian missile into Pakistan (2022). Pakistan PM Sharif’s latest call for talks has been met with cold rebuff from Delhi. Mr. Modi’s “new normal” outlined in an address to the nation says any talks with Pakistan will be about terrorism, and the return of PoK, which at present seem impossible conditions for Islamabad.

However, as India and Pakistan have learned over the decades, not talking has also not resolved the perennial issues between them, and the absence of direct talks often causes a vacuum that other countries seek to fill by offering to mediate. For now, India’s focus will remain on globalising its fight against terrorism, without internationalising the Kashmir issue in any way.