President Donald Trump, File Photo. / Reuters

American analysts contend that any American efforts to resolve the India-Pakistan differences will be swayed or marred by “block politics” of the U.S. and China in South Asia and their competitive posturing in the Asian continent.

They also raise a controversial issue, in this context, that what India strictly considers a bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir should be seen as a trilateral dispute that includes China. They claim that the India-Pakistan Kashmir dispute is connected to the India-China border dispute as well.

These analysts feel the U.S. administration under President Donald Trump is caught between its need to disentangle the country from external conflicts and the urgency to take care of its domestic interests by promoting beneficial trade with other countries, especially India. 

These assertions are part of a group discussion recently organized by American think tank Stimson Center on the fallout of the United States’ role as a “regional crisis manager” in what Trump calls the brokering of a ceasefire between India and Pakistan following the May 7 military escalation in South Asia through India’s Operation Sindoor in retaliation to the Aprill 22 attack in Kashmir’s Pahalgam in which terrorists infiltrating from Pakistan gunned down 26 people. 

The discussion, moderated by Elizabeth Threlkeld, Senior Fellow & Director, South Asia Program, Stimson Center, followed this agenda: How might this diplomatic re-entry shape Washington’s relationships with New Delhi and Islamabad? What risks and opportunities does it pose for regional stability and for navigating China’s influence in South Asia?

Discussing the implications of renewed U.S. engagement in the India-Pakistan conflict and the China question, assessing U.S. policy options in this complex environment, and considering possible end states following the ceasefire and what they may mean for long-term U.S. strategic interests in the region were Stimson Center analysts, Asfandyar Mir, Senior Fellow, South Asia Program, Yun Sun, Senior Fellow & Director, China Program, and Dan Markey, Senior Fellow, South Asia & China Programs.

Threlkeld kicked off the discussion, saying Trump has demonstrated “a level of personal investment in South Asia that we haven’t seen from U.S. president for quite some time”. She argued that “in recent decades Washington has shown relatively little appetite for facilitating bilateral engagement beyond more of a reactive diplomacy to manage crises” and “this administration’s public and vocal intervention (in the latest India-Pak conflict) perhaps signals a shift”. 

Daniel Markey held the view that the American involvement could suggest two things: “The real question as we look at this most recent crisis in 2025 is whether the United States is now still in this place of trending more pro-India in its tilt in management or whether it’s actually recalibrated and shifted in some ways to a greater focus on restraint. And I think there’s evidence pointing in both directions…. The jury’s still out.” 

Asfandyar Mir sought to throw light on the current Trump “doctrine”, while agreeing that “the U.S. relationship with India is extremely vital for U.S. prosperity, long-term strategic interests in Asia” while the “relationship with Pakistan has certainly shrunk”. 

President Trump doctrine is about “a foreign policy of realism-guided restraint”. He elaborated: “It is heavily shaped by the view that American power has been strained by past and ongoing wars and conflicts in the world. There’s also fiscal reality of foreign policy that I see the administration reckoning with more than India’s past. Do we have the monetary resources to engage in ways which exposes us to entanglements? It’s trying to reduce American burdens, but it’s also seeking not to be entangled in conflicts that don’t serve American interests.” 

Assessing the Chinese role in the conflict, Yun Sun stated: “I think this time we are definitely seeing a more questionable approach from Beijing. Before May 7 if you look at China’s record of the interaction was almost entirely with the Pakistani side. The message was that China will support Pakistan to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and also support Pakistan to pursue its national security….And there was very little doubt in China that India had no interest in accepting Chinese mediation because India does not see China as being either neutral or impartial.” 

Sun was of the view that “Chinese concern about escalation potential increased since May 7 and it further increased on May 10 and May 11 after the Indian attack on Pakistani air force assets”. That’s where Sun thinks “the Chinese message…returned to the more traditional line that tension needs to be de-escalated and China’s willing to play the role and both sides needs to exercise restraint”. 

Daniel Markey suggested that any resolution of the India-Pakistan conflict in the future is complicated by the geopolitical positioning of the U.S. and China in Asia. He explained: “This block politics with the United States seeming to be more and more on India’s side, China seeming and really being more and more on Pakistan’s side, the impulses against peace building go beyond the region itself and extend to the global geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing. And in some ways this region is going to be unfortunately more divided by that political competition or geopolitical competition than united by it. So deeper peace is I think likely to be elusive.”

He thought India, too, would be less inclined, as it has already stated, to agree to a dialogue (with Pakistan) beyond terrorism as “that would be seen as somehow a concession to Pakistan at precisely a time where they feel like they have put up a stiff fight and punished Pakistan and Pakistan-based terrorists for what they perceive as having been a direct attack on Indian civilians”. 

The analyst introduced the China factor into the discussion: “So where would the United States have sufficient leverage to bring India to the table if it doesn’t want to be at the table for those kinds of talks? And would it have sufficient interest for forcing that on India at a time when Washington does see India as an important partner in broader set of issues, particularly having to do with counterbalancing China in Asia?” 

Asfandyar Mir, contrary to India’s stated position that the Kashmir is purely a bilateral issue with Pakistan, argued that it is a “tripartite” dispute. “There’s so much focus on India and Pakistan that it can be easy to forget that Kashmir is actually a tripartite dispute. So, China controls part of Kashmir known as Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract and also claims part of Ladakh. So how does Beijing see these repeated statements from President Trump on mediating the Kashmir dispute? And how do you anticipate that they will move forward and potentially respond if we do see some effort towards talks?” 

Analyst Sun echoed the same sentiment: “The solution, if there is a solution, a mediation regarding the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, is innately and intrinsically linked to the issue of China-India border disputes. 

Just imagine hypothetically that somehow there is a potential solution to the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, will China support that solution without a solution of the China-India border? Will Beijing link these two together? Will Beijing see the latter as a precondition of the former or at least to see that these two will have to happen simultaneously?”

According to Sun, China’s role might become the key factor in resolution on Kashmir. “Given the strategic alignment between China and Pakistan and how Pakistan has been seen as a gatekeeper or at least a partner of China in terms of countering India aggressiveness in the Line of Control and Line of Actual Control, I think it will be highly unlikely that China will move forward to support a solution between India-Pakistan without some resolution or some potential resolution of the China-India border disputes.”

Sun threw up a question that would draw Trump attention: “That’s a much deeper and a much bigger issue that I’m afraid the U.S. will have to resolve if there is an intent to mediate on the Kashmir dispute between and Pakistan. But is the U.S., with the great power competition in the back of our mind and also with the China-India border dispute as a useful context for our India policy, are we willing to go into that direction?”

Daniel Markey considered the importance of the Trump administration’s need to “appreciate how to balance India-Pakistan issues against India-China issues”. This was his view: “And ultimately for the United States, the India-China relationship is more geopolitically relevant. Now the two can’t be completely separated, but if you leave the India-China relationship sort of hostage and create some hostage to Pakistan and prioritize the India-Pakistan relationship in U.S. policy, I think that’ll be a setback.”

The discussant raised an important question at this juncture, related to how India has always reacted whenever the international community has tried to internationalize Kashmir. 

In the context of India dismissing the assertion that Trump mediated the ceasefire in May, Markey pointed out: “What India is most concerned about. The question is whether the recent experience will open or create vulnerabilities in the India-U.S. relationship for long-term political damage. And I think ultimately that’s going to depend on just how upset the Modi government is over Trump’s focus on Kashmir and rekindling some kind of Kashmir talks, whether this blows over relatively quickly or whether it stays something that appears to be a priority for the administration.”

 Asfandyar Mir also did not believe Pakistan would be interested in Trump’s mediation. He said: “I also don’t see the Pakistanis having particularly high expectations of the U.S. mediation offer. Many put a lot of stock in the theory that Pakistan’s fundamental strategy to solving Kashmir is internationalization of Kashmir to force India’s hand, loosen India’s grip. That getting the U.S. involved has been Pakistan’s ticket to solving Kashmir. Again, I don’t buy it. we are not in the 1980s and 1990s. The Pakistanis have somewhat moved on as well. They want the spotlight, they like it, they want to catalyze it, but I think they also appreciate Indian power and their own limits.”

Sun pointed out that as far as China has concerned, the May 7 conflict perhaps proved beneficial to the Asian giant in one respect. The Chinese weapons system (used by Pakistan) certainly came out as a beneficiary from the interactions or from the crisis this time around. What’s more interesting is that it will position China as a more credible and potentially more popular weapons provider or arm seller on the international market.”