Trump claims credit for India-Pak ceasefire…the reality is interesting
When Donald Trump announced “a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE” between India and Pakistan, he claimed credit for bringing an end to days of intensifying fighting between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
A nervous world exhaled.
Should we be lauding Mr Trump for his diplomacy and tact?
He claimed that it was “after a long night of talks mediated by the United States” that India and Pakistan decided to cease and desist, a decision that uses “Common Sense and Great Intelligence.”
Is it really possible that the US played globocop once again? Just days ago, Mr Trump’s deputy, JD Vance, had said his country would not intervene in the conflict because it was “fundamentally none of our business”.
Mr Vance had also said the US did not want be in the middle of a war that had “nothing to do with America’s ability to control it”. The US could force neither side to lay down their arms, he continued.
It was a rather downbeat assessment of the ability and will enjoyed by Trump’s America to influence developments in different parts of the world.
And yet Mr Trump all but indicated on Saturday, May 10 it was the US that won it. It was America that deflected India and Pakistan from a sharpening military engagement, which must certainly end in a nuclear conflagaration.
Might that be true?
According to some news reports, one of the reasons the US may have had leverage at this point of time was that India and Pakistan were both talking to Washington, D.C. about trade and finance. Pakistan was desperate for the International Monetary Fund – in which the US has pivotal influence – to extend a key loan worth billions of dollars. Meanwhile, India was trying to negotiate a trade deal with the US administration in order to counteract the punitive tariffs imposed by President Trump.
So I guess, in some ways, it was the US and indeed Mr Trump who was unwittingly responsible for the ceasefire.
