In the wake of Operation Sindoor, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he mediated the ceasefire between India and Pakistan on May 10, 2025. He has also spoken about the US helping out both India and Pakistan to arrive at a resolution of their problems, including the Kashmir issue. India holds dear the principle that there is no room for a third party in resolving any of its problems with Pakistan. The Indian government has issued terse, structured statements contradicting President Trump. The claims and denials come at a time when India and the US are negotiating a trade deal. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s army chief General Asim Munir has been promoted to Field Marshal.
Lisa Curtis, a foreign policy and national security expert at the Washington, DC-based think tank Center for a New American Security, where she heads the Indo-Pacific Security Program.
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Courtesy: Center for a New American Security
In this episode of Latitude, Frontline spoke to Lisa Curtis, a foreign policy and national security expert at the Washington, DC-based think tank Center for a New American Security, where she heads the Indo-Pacific Security Program. Curtis has worked earlier in the US government for many years in important positions, and during Trump’s first term, she served as his deputy assistant and as a senior director at the National Security Council for South and Central Asia. During that time, she was a key contributor to the Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework. She coordinated policies relating to the Quad and to strengthen the US-India partnership. Edited excerpts:
India’s Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs was told on May 20 that the US did not broker or mediate the ceasefire between India and Pakistan. This was yet another contradiction of US President Donald Trump’s many claims. What do we make of it?
Well, it does seem that the US played a role in helping the two sides to come to a ceasefire agreement. We know that Vice President [J.D.] Vance talked to Prime Minister Modi the day before the ceasefire came into effect. This may be a case of differences in wording. President Trump has been using the word “mediating” [and] “brokering”, terms that India does not like. It implies that there’s some international role for intervening in the Kashmir dispute. And of course, India’s position has long held that there is no role for international mediation on the Kashmir dispute.
But I want to make the distinction between US involvement in helping the two sides to back away from the brink of all-out war. I’ve been in the US government during various crises between India and Pakistan, going back to the Kargil conflict, the 2001-02 crisis, and in 2019 when I was at the National Security Council (the Balakot crisis). And in each one of those crises, the US did play an important behind-the-scenes role in getting the two countries to step back from the brink. And this has traditionally been an important US role. But this is different from the idea that the US could play some role in mediating a long-term solution to the vexed Kashmir dispute. And that is where President Trump has been making statements that have really been angering and frustrating the Indian government.
In Delhi, there is a sense of disappointment over what is being seen as a betrayal by the US, as in the US has equated India and Pakistan, and also by President Trump’s suggestion that the two sides should work together to resolve their differences and talk to each other. There is also anger that the US has failed to recognise that Pakistan has used terrorism once again to achieve its strategic objectives against India, and that the US is pandering to Pakistan’s craving for international attention to the Kashmir issue. From your vantage point, is all this going to affect the larger India-US relationship?
It is troubling that President Trump has not talked more about what provoked this military conflict between India and Pakistan, which is the April 22 terrorist attack by a group that looks like it was an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based US-designated terrorist group. And unfortunately, President Trump hasn’t been mentioning that horrific attack in his remarks. Now, [US] Secretary of State [Marco] Rubio had mentioned in the last couple of weeks [that] he had talked about the terrorism issue and had called on Pakistan to crack down on terrorists on its side of the territory. So if we look at Rubio’s involvement during that period where India and Pakistan were exchanging barrages of missiles and drone strikes, if we look at the State Department statements that were coming out about his phone calls with both Indian and Pakistani officials, they send the right message.
But where things started going wrong was with President Trump’s tweets on May 10, taking credit for brokering a ceasefire. And then he went even further, where he said I’m going to get involved in helping to resolve the Kashmir dispute, which he said had been going on for a thousand years—of course, clearly exaggerating. But still, his intent seemed clear that he was going to try to intervene or insert himself. Now, if he had stopped there and recognised the faux pas that he had made, things would be fine. But the problem is he did not. He has continued to talk about this to congratulate his role, and he’s been equating India and Pakistan without mentioning Pakistan’s support for terrorism and the horrific terrorist attack. So, this is straining US-India ties, and it may not show up immediately, but we will see an impact in certain ways.
How exactly do you see this impacting US-India relations? They are negotiating a trade deal right now. Could it impact that, or will it be elsewhere?
The impact will be elsewhere when we’re talking about security and strategic relations, because Prime Minister Modi understands how important reaching a trade deal with President Trump is. And they’ve already started these negotiations, which are progressing and doing pretty well. They already have a timeline for when they want to complete the negotiations and will continue on their own track.
But what we may see is more hesitance on India’s part when it comes to the strategic and security relationship. Certainly, India is going to shut down any approach by Trump to try to talk about Kashmir or mediate Kashmir. They simply won’t talk about the issue. So we certainly can expect that at the least.
The other concern is that this could impact India’s reliance on the US for future military deals and other kinds of strategic cooperation, because the US has been looking to India to play an important role in countering China’s rising influence. Unfortunately, Trump’s comments about mediating on Kashmir have made that a bit more difficult for the US. We could see some cooling off in the strategic relationship.
Hopefully, it won’t impact the Quad, which is an extremely important group, and there are plans for a Quad summit in New Delhi this fall. So the hope is that it moves forward, but we may see hesitance in cooperating within the Quad on security related or strategic issues.
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The other denial that India has issued, which also came at the parliamentary panel briefing on May 20, is that there was absolutely no nuclear signalling by Pakistan, which some reports in the US press and the Western media have made reference to. And you referred to this alarming intelligence that the US received, which is speculated to be that this conflict is going to escalate into a nuclear conflagration. What is your own assessment?
First, I think we saw that the day before India’s retaliation on May 7—the nine Indian retaliatory strikes against what India refers to as terror infrastructure inside Pakistan— the Pakistan Defence Minister basically said we’re ready if India is going to take military action, [but] we won’t use nuclear weapons so long as Pakistan’s existence is not threatened, which raised alarm bells. Even talking about the nuclear option is something that is not helpful in these situations. But I think he recognised that and did not talk about that again.
But in terms of the intelligence or information that the US received on May 9, it is unclear exactly what that was. There has been informed media speculation here in the US that it was the sheer fact that that India struck Nur Khan airbase, which was close to where Pakistan’s Nuclear Command Authority resides, and that the Pakistanis could read that as a message that India was capable and could take [that] out, which would constitute one of Pakistan’s red lines. So that got close enough to concerns that there was the possibility of nuclear exchange or that was getting closer. That could have led to the alarm in Washington, DC, and the phone call by Vice President Vance to Prime Minister Modi. That alone could have been what precipitated the US intervention.
The situation was escalating. You had barrages of missiles and drone strikes not only in Kashmir, but deep inside the territory of the other country. There was the fog of war happening at the same time. There was not an expectation that India was going to hit a key Pakistani military base in Rawalpindi and when something like that happens, the US became very concerned.
There is an argument that by showing interest in resolving the Kashmir issue—and in a sense internationalising it—there is a risk of incentivising more terrorist attacks against India. Do you agree?
Absolutely. I wrote this in a Foreign Affairs article that I published about a week ago, and I raised this very fact that not only does raising the prospect of international mediation on Kashmir irritate India, it also can provoke more violence in India and India-administered Kashmir because it gives sort of false hope to Pakistan and the terrorist groups. It supports that somehow things could start moving in their favour when it comes to the Kashmir dispute. So, by the US even hinting that it’s going to try to get involved and putting a spotlight on that in a way rewards the terrorist attack that happened, but it also could lead to more violence. It’s Pavlovian—if the terrorists get a reward from their activity, they’re going to do more of it.
So it’s really crucial that the US not talk about mediating Kashmir ever, but especially right after you’ve had this massive terrorist attack and conflict between India and Pakistan. It’s extremely unhelpful. And this isn’t the first time—unfortunately, in 2019, when former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was visiting and they were meeting at the White House, President Trump said that Prime Minister Modi had asked him to mediate on Kashmir, which was not true, but that was not helpful. And a couple of weeks later, India revoked Kashmir’s autonomous status. I don’t know whether it was directly related to President Trump’s mediation comment, but I think it could have been. The Indian government could have partly been motivated to send a strong signal that Kashmir—Indian Kashmir—is an integral part of India, and there’s no role for any outside involvement. Of course, the BJP platform had long called for the revocation of Article 370, but the timing could have very well been related.
You said earlier that the India-US strategic and security ties could be impacted by President Trump’s claims and his offer to help India and Pakistan mediate the Kashmir to help India and Pakistan resolve the Kashmir issue. But it is not just the US, is it? India was virtually isolated during its military retaliation against Pakistan for the terrorist attack at Pahalgam. None of the world powers supported that decision, though everyone did express solidarity with India when it happened. India was a little taken aback by the absence of support. Were you surprised?
I think that’s true. But for India to expect it would get sort of proactive support for its military retaliation against Pakistan, when the world fully knew that it could lead to broader conflict, that is a little bit too much. The most that India can expect is that there’s no criticism of its military retaliation. So, the international community was not criticising India for its retaliation. And then, also the fact that it quickly went from a focus on India’s military retaliation to actual conflict between the two countries, because very quickly thereafter, the missiles and drone strikes started flying back and forth. So there wasn’t really even enough time to think about or comment on what India had done. And then the focus became, how can we stop this conflict from escalating any further?
But your question—can India rely on the US—well, of course. Let’s not forget the first Trump administration: how much was invested in the US-India relationship, the US supported India during its conflict with China (the Galwan border crisis), and the Quad really took off during the first Trump administration. And then fast forward to the beginning of the second Trump administration: Modi was one of the first foreign visitors to the White House. They had a great meeting and talked about increasing their military relationship, continuing the strong technology cooperation, reaching a trade deal, and increasing trade. So, things have been going very well. And the hope is that President Trump will stop talking about mediating Kashmir and they can get back to focussing on the US-India bilateral relationship.
And this is possible. I talked about President Trump’s mediation comment [in 2019], but then he understood afterward that that was not helpful. And he never talked about it for the rest of his first tenure. And the US-India relationship didn’t miss a beat and continued to improve. And you had a very successful Trump visit to India in February 2020. So, this could be a similar situation where the two sides recover from this and can move on and get back to focussing on the strategic partnership.
US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 21, 2025. Lisa Curtis says it was really crucial that the US not talk about mediating Kashmir ever, but especially right after the Pahalgam terrorist attack and the India-Pakistan conflict that followed.
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JIM WATSON/AFP
There is also a view here that this neutral position that the world took on this conflict, not criticising but not supporting India explicitly either, was a kind of payback by the West for India’s neutrality in Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Do you think that’s an assessment at all?
Absolutely not. That may be what the perception inside India is, but I can guarantee you that is not in the US thinking. I doubt it’s in the European thinking either. The way the US views the India-Pakistan conflict is they’re worried and they don’t want to see the situation escalate because both sides are states with nuclear weapon capabilities. So that is the main concern—about keeping these two adversaries from going to war. I’ve heard absolutely no one in US circles talk about this idea that somehow, because India was neutral on the Russia-Ukraine war, this means the US should be neutral on India-Pakistan tensions.
I think the main issue is Pakistan’s support for terrorism. Here we are in 2025, and you still have US-designated terrorist groups operating in Pakistan. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jaish-e-Muhammad—that’s unacceptable. And the focus will come back on these terrorist groups and what Pakistan needs to do to shut them down. You could see discussions restarting in the FATF [Financial Action Task Force]. Of course, Pakistan was grey-listed in the FATF from 2018 to 2022. You could see discussions at the UN Security Council to list Pakistan-based terrorist individuals or organisations. So there will be more conversation on Pakistani support for terrorism and how the world deals with that.
But there is also an interest in ensuring that the two countries don’t go to an all-out war, and probably there eventually will be people encouraging the two sides to have bilateral dialogue. I realise right now that it is not even a question for India, which is not in the mood to make any concession at all to Pakistan. Rightly so. But in the future, that is likely to be more of a focus. Right now tempers need to cool and the two sides need to focus on keeping that ceasefire in place.
In this context, let me talk about Pakistan: General Asim Munir is now the Field Marshal. Obviously, there is a sense of victory in Pakistan that they have come out well from this conflict with India, and the celebrations and his promotion show that the government of Shehbaz Sharif and he are really on the same page. How is all that going to have an impact on the ceasefire itself and on the possibility that there might be another attack? How does that affect the conflict from here on and any chances for dialogue?
Well, that is a danger because this is quite extraordinary that the Chief of Army Staff has been promoted to Field Marshal. This is something we haven’t seen in Pakistan for many, many years. And we did see President [Pervez] Musharraf, who was the authoritarian leader of the country for many years. And Pakistan’s never had a stable, strong democracy. But you at least had periods in Pakistan where the political parties and the civilian leadership had more of a power balance with the military. The military has always been the power behind the scenes, calling most of the shots, particularly when it comes to India-Pakistan relations and obviously the nuclear weapons programme.
But now we’re in a situation where the civilian leadership seems very comfortable allowing the military to take the helm. And you have this sort of unholy alliance now between the military and the PML-N [Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz] and the PPP [Pakistan People’s Party], and they’re in agreement to keep Imran Khan and his PTI [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf], which is very popular in Pakistan, out of the mix. And this is not good for democracy in Pakistan and for the future of the country. It’s going to stifle not only democracy but probably economic development.
We just talked about Pakistan relying on the 30-odd IMF bailouts that it has had to take. Nothing’s changing with regard to becoming economically stable and self-sufficient. And so these are bad habits that Pakistan is getting into. The fact that the military seems to so clearly have the upper hand when it comes to the civil-military balance right now is certainly not helpful for the US-Pakistan relationship, for US-India relations, and for India-Pakistan relations either. So this is a worrisome situation.
If you go back to the 1999 Kargil conflict, where Musharraf, before he became President, when he was Chief of Army Staff, had basically sent Pakistani soldiers dressed up as militants into the heights of Kargil on the Indian side of the Line of Control, precipitating a two-month border conflict between the two. But then he eventually had to pull back forces, and the Pakistanis needed a face-saving way out of that crisis. And they didn’t come out looking good from that. However, it seems that this time around, Asim Munir’s reputation has been bolstered by the way Pakistan handled the conflict. So this is something new and unexpected, and I don’t think it’s going to be helpful to regional stability.
In what way would it impact the US-Pakistan relationship? Because there are reports in the Indian press that Pakistan has bought influence with President Trump, given that he is known to be the big deal maker and everything is the “art of the deal”. And there are reports that the Pakistan government has struck a deal with President Trump’s family-owned crypto company. Do you think that is plausible?
Well, that would be extremely troubling if true. And look, Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation. There are many terrorist groups operating in that country, and very dangerous things are happening. This is the country where the Taliban found haven for 20 years while the US tried to carry out its mission in Afghanistan. So, it’s important to deal with Pakistan where it is and not to have any illusions about the dangers that can come from that country and can end up impacting US national security. These are issues of grave importance to the security and stability of the region [as well].
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There was some expectation among the supporters of Imran Khan that President Trump would probably put pressure on Pakistan for his release and for his return to politics. Do you think that is going to happen?
I seriously doubt it. If Asim Munir just made himself Field Marshal, that doesn’t bode well for democracy or for Imran Khan being able to freely participate in the democratic process, because he is very popular. It’s possible that if Imran Khan is desperate to be released from jail, they make some kind of deal. But from the military’s perspective, I doubt they’re feeling much pressure right now because the conflict between India and Pakistan seems to have bolstered Munir’s reputation and position.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the ceasefire as a pause, saying that Operation Sindoor has not ended. How are you reading that statement?
What Prime Minister Modi is doing is leaving the option for India to be able to respond militarily if Pakistan violates the ceasefire. I don’t read it as India has any more plans to take aggressive military action on its own volition. But he wants to make it clear that if Pakistan does something that is provocative and constitutes a violation in India’s eyes of the ceasefire agreement, then India has the right to respond. So, he’s leaving space, and it reflects his doubt about Pakistani intentions. There’s a complete lack of trust or confidence in Pakistan and its willingness and ability to maintain the ceasefire. His comments indicate this is a pause rather than a full-fledged ceasefire.
Modi also said that the way India responded to the terrorist attack is the “new normal”, which could mean that if there is another terrorist attack, the same kind of conflict could follow, except that it would start at a higher level of escalation. Does that worry observers in the US?
Absolutely. They are very worried that this is not over, that we have a pause. We are certainly in a better place than we were on May 9. But the concern is that yes, there could be another terrorist attack, there could be serious violations of the ceasefire that’s in place, and that things could escalate further.
It’s like a tinderbox now that we’re sitting on because you just had this major conflict. India is angry about some of the US’ statements. Pakistan and Asim Munir are feeling bolstered. So we’re in a dangerous place right now, and it would behoove the US to quietly get Pakistan to take some steps that show it is reining in terrorist groups, that it’s serious about that, and even make that contingent on the US moving forward with its relationship with Pakistan. That has to be part of the conversation with Pakistan and then with India. The US should get back to focussing on the bilateral relationship and stop talking about mediating Kashmir. Let India deal with its Pakistan challenge and focus more on the US-India strategic partnership and pick up where that had been left off before April 22.
Nirupama Subramanian is an independent journalist who has worked earlier at The Hindu and at The Indian Express.
