However, after a brief period of optimism, relations turned sour once more when India canceled talks with Pakistan’s foreign minister in August 2014 after the Pakistani high commissioner in India met with Kashmiri separatist leaders. A series of openings continued throughout 2015, including an unscheduled December meeting on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. In 2014, after India’s then newly elected Prime Minister Modi invited then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to attend his inauguration, there were hopes that Modi's government would pursue meaningful peace negotiations with Pakistan. An uptick in border skirmishes that began in late 2016 and continued into 2018 killed dozens and displaced thousands of civilians on both sides of the Line of Control.
Both sides accuse the other of violating the cease-fire and claim to be shooting in response to attacks. Although both countries have maintained a fragile cease-fire since 2003, they regularly exchange fire across the contested border, known as the Line of Control. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch.Territorial disputes over the Kashmir region sparked two of the three major Indo-Pakistani wars in 19, and a limited war in 1999. Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. This is the sort of uncertainty that can veto military action and makes a war between Washington and Islamabad an absolute conflict of last resort. forces or targets in some way later in the campaign. It would also be forced to proceed under the assumption that some Pakistani nuclear weapons would survive a sustained effort to destroy them, to be used against U.S. war with Pakistan would be extremely difficult to wage and fraught with difficulty. It’s worth remembering that the last time Chinese forces fought Americans was after the U.S.-led United Nations forces advanced into a state neighboring Beijing.Ī U.S. puppet state in neighboring Pakistan would diminish China’s power and influence abroad. China might, on the assumption that a U.S. But it isn’t, and it’s not clear that China would risk direct conflict with the United States if Pakistan in some way overreached. China and Pakistan enjoy warm relations, and the rhetoric between the two countries suggests a relationship nearing that of a mutual defense pact. joining an Indian-led coalition against Pakistan.Īnother power that could join such a conflict is China. India’s cooperation would largely depend on the circumstance, the most likely being the U.S. India has seldom cooperated with the United States in military operations, declining to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, among others. The question is whether or not India would join a U.S.-led coalition against Pakistan. Indian ground forces have a far shorter route to Islamabad and overmatch Pakistani forces on the ground. fighter bombers to operate from, or even contribute its own airpower. India could help with an air campaign, providing runways for U.S. needs, including local air bases and a large army, navy, and air force, already positioned in the theater with well-sketched battle plans: India. Of course, there is one regional power that can provide everything the U.S. forces would be qualitatively superior, it would be a grinding fight that could be interrupted at any time by Pakistani nuclear weapons. invasion route would actually pass through many of Pakistan’s forward-deployed forces. Much if not most of this force is arrayed against the border with India, but the U.S. The Pakistani Army consists of nearly 800,000 active-duty personnel, with significant reserves totaling more than a half-million.