News analysis Why the US stepped in to arrest escalating South Asian crisis

Spectre of nuclear war on sub-continent forced White House to play peacemaker

- Bhagyashree Garekar

WASHINGTON - It took the possibility of a nuclear war breaking out on the Indian sub-continent to jolt the Trump administration into rushing to play peacemaker in a conflict that it had dismissed as "none of our business" just a day earlier.

The path that the conflict took from escalation to a ceasefire midwifed by the United States was predictable to analysts who follow the region.

Although India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appeared more aggressive towards Pakistan than the previous governments, the country remains primarily a status quo defensive power.

And the US, despite its stated reluctance to play global policeman, is seen as the only player with purchase over both India and Pakistan.

The sequence of events as pieced together by American media, quoting anonymous officials in the hours after a sudden ceasefire agreed on May 10 broke 96 hours of escalating cross-border tensions, went something like this: Faced with a barrage of strikes from India on its military bases, Pakistan waved the nuclear card. Islamabad knew this would rouse the White House into action.

And India, too, estimated that Pakistan would flash the nuclear card and that the global community would spring to rein Islamabad in, so New Delhi could escalate its conventional military actions without the possibility of triggering a nuclear war.

It was a high-stakes game of chicken that has, for the time being, allowed each nation to claim a victory.

To India, as its Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri put it in a late night presser on May 10, the US put pressure on Pakistan, after which Pakistan's military commander called his Indian counterpart.

Pakistan's version is that India initiated the call.

The pattern of bravado and counter-claims would seem less than rational to outsiders, but it is not strange in the context of the sub-continent or to those who study it.