'Fears in Washington began to intensify when it was realised that subsequent Pakistani and Indian attacks on major military facilities -- which were significant in terms of geographic scope and intensity -- could rapidly take both sides to where neither actually wanted to go.'
'The US objective was to stop the fighting as soon as possible. Everything else was secondary.'
"The biggest surprises to me were the intensity of Pakistan-China military cooperation during the conflict and the remarkable effectiveness of China's weaponry. The latter has important implication for India and the United States," Dr Ashley Tellis -- the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Washington, DC think-tank, tells Nikhil Lakshman/Rediff soon after India and Pakistan consented to a cessation of hostilities on Saturday, May 10, 2025.
Dr Tellis -- who was born and raised in Mumbai -- played a stellar role during the negotiations on the India-US civilian nuclear treaty as senior adviser to the US undersecretary of state for political affairs at the State Department. He earlier served as senior adviser to then US ambassador Robert D Blackwill at the US embassy in New Delhi and prior to that was a member of the National Security Council staff as special assistant to President George W Bush and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia.
Just when it appeared that the Trump administration was reluctant to get involved with resolving the India-Pakistan standoff, voila, the US gets both countries to agree to a ceasefire just when it appeared that war was imminent. How did this diplomatic miracle-of-sorts happen in your assessment?
It appears like a diplomatic miracle because Vice-President J D Vance's misleading remarks obscured the extent of the anxiety within the US government and the efforts that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was making to defuse the crisis behind the scenes.
Rubio was in regular touch with India's External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and with Pakistan's Prime Minster Shebaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar. But circumstances obviously played a critical role.
The initial Indian decision to attack the LeT (Lashkar e Tayiba), JeM (Jaish e Mohammad), and HM (Hizabul Mujahideen) infrastructure was understandable.
Everyone understood the risks inherent in that action, but fears in Washington began to intensify when it was realised that subsequent Pakistani and Indian attacks on major military facilities -- which were significant in terms of geographic scope and intensity -- could rapidly take both sides to where neither actually wanted to go.
That's when US diplomacy intensified, leading up to Vance's call to Prime Minister Modi and Rubio's calls to Pakistani army chief (General Syed Asim) Munir, which set the stage for the calls between the Indian and Pakistan DGMOs (director generals of military operations) to implement the ceasefire.
Was Secretary Rubio's phone call to General Munir what turned the tide?
Would you see parallels with President Clinton reading out the riot act to another Sharif on Independence Day 1999?
That, of course, was followed by the architect of Kargil ousting Nawaz Sharif three months and 8 days later.
By presumably assuaging Munir's fears and balming his ego, did Rubio get him to back off?
Secretary Rubio's call to General Munir was obviously critical -- but it came toward the end of a sequence of calls made by Rubio to other principals on both sides throughout the crisis. It continued a tradition of previous US interventions in Indo-Pakistani faceoffs, although this time the US response was less frenetic at the beginning.
I don't think it involved reading out the riot act to Pakistan. Rubio saw his role as helping both sides to climb down from the precipice because neither really wanted to get there, although both insinuated that they were willing to take the risks if the other did not stop first.
In effect, he had to find a way to stop the game of chicken that both sides were playing.
Will it lead President Trump to be more involved in South Asia than he seemed inclined to do so at the start of his second term?
After all, we know how much he appreciates a win and is always keen to build on it.
I would be surprised if this success presages strikingly greater US involvement in South Asia beyond what circumstances demand. President Trump has ambitions that take him in a different direction -- at home and in the world. There are no wins to be had in South Asia that involve India and Pakistan.
India has already said that it will not have talks with Pakistan at a neutral venue, an assurance which was highlighted in Rubio's tweet.
Knowing India's reluctance to engage in talks with an adversary brokered by a third party, do you think the Americans got India's messages wrong?
The US understands all too well India's aims regarding Pakistan. The US objective was to stop the fighting as soon as possible. Everything else was secondary.
Rubio said what was necessary to persuade Pakistan not to up the ante after India's last round of strikes on Pakistan's airfields. From now on, both sides will have to sort out their differences bilaterally.
The US will help if asked by both, but no one in Washington is standing by the phone expecting that New Delhi will call even if Islamabad does.
What about Operation Sindoor surprised you most? Did you anticipate the drone warfare, the aerial without entering into the other's territory dogfights?
If you were to highlight 5 or 6 surprises about this brief conflict, what would they be?
The biggest surprises to me were the intensity of Pakistan-China military cooperation during the conflict and the remarkable effectiveness of China's weaponry. The latter has important implication for India and the United States.
The military operations themselves -- drone warfare, standoff attacks, etc -- were less surprising because they have been previewed before in the India-Pakistan context although less intensely.
That both sides doubled down on these operations was not surprising either because they were pursuing multiple objectives simultaneously: Punishing the other; using the best means available to attack their desired targets while minimising the risks to their own forces; applying enough force to get the other's attention, while readying to intensify the violence if needed; and avoiding any conspicuous losses, such as the capture of personnel, that might reduce political leverage.
Do you believe that Operation Sindoor signifies a major change in India's anti-terror doctrine -- that future terror attacks will be met by a continued, powerful military response, the kind we have seen in the last three days?
Yes, it represents an evolutionary, but display nonetheless a marked shift that will persist as long as PM Modi is in power. How effective it will be in solving the underlying problem, however, remains to be seen.
Also, did this brief conflict indicate a war by proxy -- where China was happy to test its weapons against the armaments India procured from the West?
Beyond this, did you see a greater Chinese involvement on Pakistan's side by transferring information from its satellites to GHQ Rawalpindi?
I don't think China set out to 'test' its weapons against India's Western systems but that did turn out to be the effect.
China will continue to support Pakistan through all means possible and that will include intelligence and operational military support beyond the political and diplomatic.
Both China and Pakistan see India as a dangerous and reckless enemy and their incentives to cooperate ever more strongly will only increase.
Will this ceasefire ensure a hiatus in ISI terror operations in the Kashmir Valley?
Will the discussions Rubio had with the Pakistanis guarantee this? Because if there is another attack like Pahalgam, India won't be content with attacking targets by air, the war could easily move to land.
I imagine the ISI will freeze operations against India in Jammu and Kashmir for a while, but Islamabad and Rawalpindi's grievances against India are too deep rooted for them to simply give up on resistance against New Delhi.
The US cannot produce nor guarantee a Pakistani exit from jihadi terrorism -- we've been having this conversation with Pakistan since 9/11, with only episodic success.
That means that future Indo-Pakistani crises will always be escalation prone, especially now that you have a muscular government in New Delhi and a persistently dissatisfied Pakistani military still ruling the roost across the border.
If both sides draw the lesson from this crisis that they can act with impunity, then I fear that we are condemned to more dangerous military interactions in the future.
Finally, was there any danger of this conflict acquiring a nuclear dimension, or were the threats issued by Pakistan Defence Minister Asif the sabre-rattling by an infirm mind?
Is Pakistan's nuclear doctrine -- enunciated by General Khalid Kidwai some years ago -- still robust? There is no danger of a mad mullah general pressing the nuclear button, is there?
It is easy to exaggerate the dangers of nuclear escalation in the subcontinent even though they are, by definition, ever present.
The Pakistan military, in recent times, has been a good steward of its nuclear weapons. I do not believe that unauthorised or mistakenly/authorised Pakistani nuclear weapons use is a realistic danger.
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