President Trump keeps claiming that he stopped the India-Pakistan fighting earlier this year. It is easy to dismiss him as a person who is prone to exaggeration and a vivid imagination, which can include terminological inexactitude, or in other words, Trump lies and repeats his lies. This writer believes that this approach does everyone a disservice. It fails to capture the nuances of high voltage diplomacy and it is concerned only about how things play out with domestic audiences. This writer therefore submits what seems to be an entirely plausible sequence of events which ends up with a win-win alternative that everyone can live with and which by some remote chance may in fact be the way conversations and events actually played out.
US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio keep making calls to Indian and Pakistani leaders urging them to “de-escalate”. They do not make much headway. India takes the position that we have only attacked terrorist camps, something which the US does quite often and it is the Pakistanis who are escalating. Pakistani leaders take the position that their heartland has been attacked and that a non-escalatory position would be simply politically unacceptable within Pakistan. The fighting goes on. President Trump is kept informed. His initial position is that the US has no stake in this matter and he is fine with India and Pakistan fighting it out.
The conversations continue with US leaders continuing to preach the de-escalation mantra. The Indians are quite clear: We have hit what we needed to. If de-escalation has to happen, it has to be at Pakistan’s initiative and through existing communication channels. The Pakistanis, as we know, love to indulge in rhetoric. They casually interject in their conversation with US officials that they have nuclear weapons, including tactical nuclear weapons, and that they are convening a meeting of their Nuclear Command honchos.
The US State Department folks promptly go on a heightened alert. They inform President Trump, who changes his position quite dramatically. This in his view is getting out of control and no longer a “distant” and “minor” matter. He instructs his Vice President and his Secretary of State to give dire warnings to the leaders of both India and Pakistan of trade retaliation unless they go in for an immediate ceasefire. We must take note of the fact that Trump loves “immediate ceasefires”. He imposed that on Israel and Iran just one day after a ferocious US attack on Iran. He imposed that on Israel and Hamas, even as dozens of issues remained open and unresolved. He tried to get Russia and Ukraine to go for it and is in some ways still trying to do that.
Vance and Rubio get on the phone. As it turns out, they do not need to make any threats. Pakistanis, for reasons of their own, want a ceasefire. Indians are sticking to their position of agreeing to pause the conflict if the formal initiative comes from Pakistan. All that the US interlocutors need from India is their confirmation that they will not react negatively if Pakistan makes a call. They get that reassurance. The American establishment makes it clear to the Pakistanis that they have to pick up the phone and make the call all the while telling them not to worry as the call will get a positive response. The Pakistanis then make the call through pre-existing formal channels. A time and a date are agreed for a pause to the conflict (like other initiatives in today’s world, no one believes this is a satisfactory end; it is a satisfactory pause!).
When the call is made and the response given and when a date and time are fixed for the cessation of current fighting, the US officials are kept informed (it is likely that officials of several other countries are also kept informed). Vance and Rubio promptly tell Trump that the deal has been struck. It is convenient for them not to let President Trump know, that at least on the Indian side, the deal was one that was always acceptable to India and did not require trade-related pressure or pressure of any other kind. Trump assumes that his emphatic words made the difference. Remember he has not spoken directly with Modi or with any Pakistani leaders. The deputies have been doing all the talking. While we know pretty much the Indian side of the story, we do not know what happened across the border. Given their love of loose talk and rhetoric, perhaps the Pakistanis did force the American hand to put great pressure on them. We may get to know in fifty years.
And then, the unexpected happened although a case can be made that it should have been anticipated. President Trump beat both the Indians and the Pakistanis in terms of timing. He merrily announced the development on social media and took credit for it. Once he had taken credit for it, it became pretty much impossible for his deputies to tell him that, at least on India, there was no pressure or indeed any need for pressure. Net-net President Trump continues to believe that it was his intervention that changed things decisively. And after some initial reactions, we too have chosen the wise path of silence. It is not in our interests to tell President Trump that his deputies have been less than forthcoming in their inputs. And it certainly does not help anyone if we directly confront Trump. So it rests.
In a few decades, we will get to know if this is what really happened.
Jaithirth ‘Jerry’ Rao is a retired entrepreneur who lives in Lonavala. He has published three books: ‘Notes from an Indian Conservative’, ‘The Indian Conservative’, and ‘Economist Gandhi’. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)