Trump’s Kashmir Offer Shows the US Still Doesn’t Get India-Pakistan
May 11, 2025
By any diplomatic yardstick, U.S. President Donald Trump’s offer to mediate between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is misplaced. It rests on one of Washington’s most enduring and dangerous misconceptions—that Kashmir is the core problem between the two countries, a notion his predecessor Barack Obama also held.
Trump’s remarks, made on his social media platform Truth Social, came just hours after Pakistan reportedly breached a ceasefire agreement with India. The ceasefire was meant to halt four days of intense cross-border hostilities that erupted after the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, which killed 26 civilians.
Trump declared that the U.S. had helped broker the ceasefire and that the situation could have spiralled into a catastrophe “where millions of good and innocent people could have died.” Then came a pledge to “work with you both” to solve the Kashmir dispute after “a thousand years” of conflict.
It echoed Barack Obama’s offer in 2010 during his visit to New Delhi, when he expressed willingness to assist India and Pakistan if asked. I had then argued in an op-ed for The Guardian that the well-meaning but naïve American gesture revealed a serious misunderstanding: that resolving the Kashmir issue – if one can at all – would end hostilities between India and Pakistan. Fourteen years later, the core argument stands: Kashmir is not the real bone of contention. It never was.
If America wants to understand why India and Pakistan remain locked in perpetual hostility, it needs to look beyond the map and into the barracks of Rawalpindi. The Pakistan Army and its intelligence wing, the ISI, have consistently undermined peace efforts with India not because of Kashmir, but because of a deeper institutional logic that thrives on conflict. Kashmir is simply the most visible stage on which this theatre plays out.
The roots lie in 1971, when with India’s support, East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. Pakistan’s military establishment has never recovered from the humiliation of that defeat. Since 1947 (Partition), Pakistan had two separate and non-contiguous parts: West Pakistan (the area we today call Pakistan) and East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh), separated by about 1,600 km of Indian territory. So, from Pakistan’s point of view, New Delhi under Indira Gandhi exploited East Pakistan’s geographical isolation and took advantage of its proximity to the region.
After 1971, Pakistan stepped up its activities in Kashmir, leveraging its geographic proximity to the region. After the defeat in the war and the loss of East Pakistan, Kashmir became a symbolic and strategic front where Pakistan could continue to challenge India.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Pakistan’s involvement evolved from diplomatic and political support for Kashmiri separatists to active backing of insurgency. This included the training, arming and infiltration of militants across the Line of Control. The Kargil War in 1999—when Pakistani soldiers and militants crossed into Indian territory in Kashmir—was one of the most visible escalations. The idea was not just to internationalise the Kashmir issue but also to keep the Indian military engaged and to weaken India’s control over the region.
The yearning for strategic parity with India—despite the vast gap in economic and military strength—has been a central obsession of Pakistan’s army. It’s not just about a piece of land in the Himalayas—for Pakistan’s army, it’s more about a narrative of revenge and relevance. A peace deal over Kashmir, no matter how favourable to Pakistan, would not change that.
Time and again, the pattern has played out. When India makes overtures for peace, Pakistan’s military responds not with diplomacy, but with provocation. In 1999, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee launched a landmark peace initiative, including the Delhi-Lahore bus service. General Pervez Musharraf answered by launching the Kargil war just months later. In 2001, after more diplomatic progress, came the attack on the Indian parliament. In 2008, after President Zardari of Pakistan made surprisingly conciliatory statements about India, came the Mumbai terror attacks.
Each of these incidents wasn’t random. They were precise interventions by a military-intelligence complex intent on keeping Indo-Pak hostility alive. Why? Because in Pakistan’s civil-military balance, India as an ever-looming threat justifies the army’s disproportionate power and budget.
While Pakistan is officially a democracy, the military continues to exert considerable influence over foreign policy, internal security and even civilian governance. The army has directly ruled Pakistan for about half of its existence since independence in 1947 through coups and military regimes. Even during civilian governments, the army has remained the de facto authority on key matters, especially India policy, nuclear strategy and Afghanistan relations.
If peace broke out, so would demands for democratic control over the military—a scenario Rawalpindi cannot afford.
So, Trump’s offer to mediate on Kashmir comes across as a well-meaning misfire from afar, made by those who still haven’t understood the script.
You have just read a News Briefing by Newsreel Asia, written to cut through the noise and present a single story for the day that matters to you. Certain briefings, based on media reports, seek to keep readers informed about events across India, others offer a perspective rooted in humanitarian concerns and some provide our own exclusive reporting. We encourage you to read the News Briefing each day. Our objective is to help you become not just an informed citizen, but an engaged and responsible one.
