Factors behind the US reversion to its old ways

India has been surprised and more than a little disappointed at Trump's equivocation during the brief flare-up between India and Pakistan.

- M.D. NALAPAT

Many are asking why it is that so many international channels and publications are essentially repeating the ISPR line in their portrayal of Op Sindoor. Why have so many fact-filled dossiers given by India failed to convince so many journalists and policymakers that what Rawalpindi GHQ is saying is a pack of untruths? Such doubters overlook the decades-long practice of the Pakistan military (and by extension the Pakistan state) to use not so much money traps but honey traps to get policymakers to do their bidding.

Flash back to the 1990s, when that close (let us not use the term "intimate") friend of the dashing Shafquat Kakakhel, Robin Raphel, was Assistant Secretary of State dealing with South Asia. It would be an error to believe that even matters of High Policy are framed at the top. Rather, they are formed in the middle rungs of the administrative ladder. From there, they are filtered to the top, which may or may not add or subtract elements. And it is to mislead elements in such rungs that young and beautiful women and young and handsome men find ways of attaching them, usually through cocktail and dinner parties hosted by socialites who would have been previously cultivated by them. Both China and Pakistan are maestros in the arts of honey trapping. In Washington, London and other consequential capitals, security agencies are understanding how big a risk such attachments are, and have begun taking measures to wean or warn targets off such liaisons.