Trump Public Validation of Kashmir as International Dispute

Trump’s Public Validation of Kashmir as International Dispute

The fact that Donald Trump has publicly recognized Kashmir as a territorial conflict and is willing to engage in arbitration between India and Pakistan is causing geopolitical tremors across South Asia and threatening to topple over the foundations of India regarding their traditional foreign policy discourse. This scene which Indian government was desperately spinning to present as a meaningless oddity of a capricious American President actually triggered a seismic rage in the world of international affairs which was felt all the way back to Washington and New Delhi. Trump did not only upset how India is positing itself internationally but he also broke the illusion of control that Prime Minister Narendra Modi holds back at home. India has been asserting and maintaining with all the aggression of some decades that Kashmir is purely a problem between India and Pakistan or any international mediation is an attempt to take the word of the mouth of India which has every right over the land of Kashmir. Trump has upset this narrative by proposing mediation and by agreeing that Kashmir is a conflict of generations and granting recognition to an international audience of what New Delhi has long considered fringe issues or foreign meddling.

The calls of the opposition leaders of the civil society frenzied when the Modi government was caught in a tangle of trying to tame the diplomatic fall out. The most out spoken of Modi critics, Rahul Gandhi summed up the national mood in a caustic turn of phrase which would be emblematic of row, Trump said stop, “PM Modi stopped… Narender… Surrender“. The political catch phrase (slogan) became popular very quickly gaining meaning in the variety of political force and the youth becoming disappointed in the system. The creation of the Surrender Modi hashtag which became a trend in India and around the world demonstrated level of citizens dissatisfaction and the metaphoric destruction of the tough guy image of Modi.

In the meantime, the media in India tried to lower the importance of the statements made by Trump. Columnists and those anchors who bear fealty to the government contrived discourses of the statements as endearing improvisations or mistranslations. But this story did not work because it could not bear the burden of international press coverage that viewed the incident not as a side note in the history of diplomacy but as a turning point. Kashmiri separatist fighters in Europe and the Middle East claimed that the intervention was the tipping point to restore sanity to the Kashmiri debate by foreign outlets in the US, Europe and the Middle East. As analysts explained Trump had somehow possibly unconsciously become the same disruptor that India feared most a global game changer who by eliminating the delusion that Kashmir was internally governed not only forced the world of international affairs to reconsider the region in terms of justice and international law but also forced the international community to look at the region through a different lens, that of national sovereignty that India found especially comfortable.

When Trump called Kashmir a generational dispute, he was not simply using a rhetorical dose. It was a half-baked acceptance that brought the matter right into the global agenda following decades of tactical execution by big powers. The US officials and analysts responded to the remarks of Trump by reaffirming that meaningful and inclusive role in resolving the Kashmir question is the only way one can bring peace to South Asia. This was a victorious moment to Pakistan. Over years Islamabad had contended that Kashmir was not merely a bilateral problem but a multilateral having great humanitarian and strategic concerns. The statements of Trump confirmed that stance, gave it the weight of the US presidency and created a space of further dialogue, advocacy and possible multilateral engagement.

Kashmiris have long maintained a state of militarization abuse of their human rights and political marginalization, therefore when Trump spoke against the state, it gave them some promise of international concern and recognition. Advocacy organizations especially in Europe and North America started demanding once again a United Nations led project in probing human rights violations and institute dialogue. Some former diplomats wrote opinion pieces and policy briefs to suggest new multilateral action on Kashmir citing the failure of the old forms and the critical need to open up new and inclusive processes. Trump under this time was rather an eccentric game changer a controversial character who somehow, was able to penetrate the silence that surrounded Kashmir in the course of past couple of years. His colorful tonality which many people have called erratic proved to be a two-edged sword, where prudent statesmen approach the topic with caution Trump provided a big foot into the picture bringing it back to the center stage of the global mind.

The efforts by the Indian government to make the story work as a spin continued the credibility crisis of the government. Explicit defenders went as far as to insist on the fact that either Trump misunderstood the position (or mispresented it to the entire world) he had simply spoken out of the turn, nonetheless it was later reasserted by the US authorities that the offer to mediate was actually brought up with the representatives of the Indian leadership. This was a dilemma which put New Delhi in an awkward diplomatic position. Hence its transparency and level of strategic thinking was in doubt.

But behind these headlines and hashtags there was reckoning too in the international policy arena as a result of Trump intervention. The renewed interest in Kashmir surfaced again in the think tanks, universities and human rights organizations which hosted webinars and published reports as well as launched advocacy campaigns. Similar to an agent of momentum the comments made by Trump became a catalyst that united some rather different groups who were long advocating on the out skirts of the world agenda. Suddenly Kashmir was no longer only a volatile area between two nuclear armed neighbors it was once again on the agenda as an open international dispute with far reaching consequences to peace, justice and regional stability. States that had earlier on bowed to the bilateral stand of the Indian position were now reviewing their own referential towards the issue and this was especially when the humanitarian interpretation of the war scenario appeared more pronouncedly.

In the end the public confirmation of Kashmir as an international conflict by Donald Trump revealed the paradoxes in the center of the Indian foreign policy. It laid open the distance between rhetoric and reality between projection and policy. Although Modi had put great stress on manufacturing an image of India being a new powerful nation with having great and effective leaders the words by Trump, acted as an obnoxious break that the narratives created on the basis of oppression and denial are forever at risk of being shaken. And even though India tried to sweeping the moment under the rug as an aberration, the world reaction is contrary evidence. The position of Kashmir is changing. The slogans are more vocal. Reflectively, this break in diplomacy could be termed as a landmark not only on the Kashmir conflict but on the how global discourses are constructed and re-constructed. Trump either accidentally or purposely created a fault line that other people are fueling. Whether Kashmir is a bilateral problem or not is no longer important, the question now concerns why the international community took so much time in voicing their opinions on this issue. And as the argument rages, the words of an infamous by far US President resonate beyond the borders of Kashmir is unfinished business.