The Indo-Pakistan crisis has highlighted the fiasco that is the management of America's State Department
savants had long worried about what Donald Trump’s administration would do when faced with its first global crisis. Yet when the metaphorical “3am call” came last month, relaying news of the slaughter of 40 Indian policemen by a Pakistani militant group, months away from an Indian general election, the administration’s initial response was to roll over and go back to sleep.
Previous crises, similarly sparked by attacks on India by jihadists connected to Pakistan, prompted high-powered American delegations to rush to both countries: for example in 2001 and 2008. They also involved the president directly—including in 1999 when Bill Clinton harangued Nawaz Sharif to end a small war Pakistan had launched in Kashmir. By contrast, neither Mr Trump nor Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, appear to have paid much attention to the early stages of the current crisis.
The Obama administration, whose South Asia policies Mr Trump has broadly continued, acted similarly. After jihadists killed 19 Indians in Kashmir in 2016, Mr Obama did not send a heavyweight delegation to the subcontinent either. And in a post-attack call to Mr Doval, Susan Rice, Mr Obama’s national security adviser, also omitted the traditional American call for restraint. Mr Obama had reached the limits of his patience with Pakistan.
That is logical: India resisted outside advice on Kashmir even when it was far more evenly matched with Pakistan than it is today. Yet the combination of passivity and partiality in the Trump administration’s response to this crisis also reflects its broader lack of interest in solving problems abroad.
The main downside to America’s retreat from problem-solving is that the world still needs its leadership. It also seems self-defeating. America’s efforts to keep the peace have tended to enhance its power. As Jake Sullivan, a Democratic foreign-policy expert, argues, America’s claim to have an exceptional responsibility for the global good has helped it win domestic support for the ambitious foreign policy its national interests require.
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