US doesn’t seem to be bothered even as India-Pakistan tension soars, says American media

Washington, Feb 21: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, February 19, said that his administration will make a remark on the deadly attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on February 14 that saw 40 CRPF jawans martyred "at an appropriate time".

Trump added that it would be wonderful if India and Pakistan got along even though relation between the two neighbours has taken a sharp nosedive as war hysteria has intensified.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India would give a befitting reply after Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for the attack, his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan warned India saying any drastic step by it will see Islamabad retaliating.

Although White House condemned the Pulwama attack soon after it happened and the US in general tried to show its solidarity with India in the fight against terrorism, a Washington Post report said that the US administration is not too bothered about the tense situation between the two nuclear neighbours in South Asia.

Most experts feel people in the current US administration are not "just not focused" on India even as there were other international events like Munich Security Conference and the Warsaw Summit around the same time.

Although US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton have spoken on the Pulwama tragedy, yet the experts feel Washington did not do enough.

"I don't think I saw any sign that there was any comment about this potential escalation in South Asia, which is directly related to stability in Afghanistan," Alyssa Ayres, a senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations said, as reported by the Post.

'India tends to fall below radar'

Tanvi Madan, director of the India Project at the Brookings Institution said "India tends to fall below the radar" and felt the muted response by America's foreign policy analysts could partly be attributed to India's customary restraint shown against such attacks earlier.

Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that the Pulwama attack did not get a massive attention since it was the security forces who were at the receiving end and not civilians and attacks on them are not seen as something "irregular".

"The lack of greater public involvement from foreign policy officials in the Trump administration and from foreign policy experts in Washington more broadly could signal a worrying lack of attention," the Post reported.