Washington

What Washington Can Do About India-Pakistan Escalation

Published

11 months ago

May 1, 2025

What Washington Can Do About India-Pakistan Escalation

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where we’re still processing the news that U.S. President Donald Trump has removed National Security Advisor Mike Waltz from his post and moved him over to become Trump’s nominee to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Read more on that here.

Meanwhile, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Washington’s options to manage an India-Pakistan military crisis, U.N. fears about a dwindling two-state solution in the Middle East, and Russia’s foot-dragging on a Ukraine peace deal.

Under Pressure

Tensions between India and Pakistan remain on a knife edge in the wake of a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 civilians last week. New Delhi has accused Islamabad of backing the militants who carried out the attack and vowed to retaliate militarily. (Islamabad has denied involvement.) Pakistan’s information minister cited “credible intelligence” on Wednesday indicating that an Indian attack would take place within 24 to 36 hours.

One big question right now is what role Washington might play as a key partner to both countries.

Whither Washington? The United States, like most other countries, has a keen interest in ensuring that the saber-rattling between the two nuclear-armed South Asian countries does not escalate into an all-out war. But Washington may have more levers than most to curb such an escalation.

The messaging thus far from the Trump administration has been mixed; U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke to both Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar on Wednesday, urging both to “de-escalate tensions” and “maintain peace and security” in the region. Trump, however, had said in the wake of the attack that both countries would “get it figured out one way or the other.”

The U.S.-India relationship, particularly in the area of defense, has deepened in recent years and flourished under the Biden administration, with deals for the joint production of fighter jet engines and the sale of U.S. drones to India signed during Modi’s 2022 visit to Washington.

But Washington’s military relationship with Islamabad dates back much further, with U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets and weapons making up the backbone of Pakistan’s arsenal—though U.S. concerns about Pakistani support for terrorism have caused more than a few hiccups in the past.

Leverage. The Trump administration reportedly exempted a $397 million package for Pakistan’s F-16s from its massive foreign aid cuts earlier this year, which allegedly included a monitoring program to ensure that the jets were used for counterterrorism and not against India. It is not clear the extent to which that is official policy, and Pakistan’s use of the jet against India in 2019 did not yield any real consequences from the previous Trump administration.

The Pentagon declined to comment to SitRep on details about the monitoring of Pakistan’s F-16s. The State Department did not offer a comment.

Trump had denied Pakistan F-16 upgrades during his first administration, citing the terrorism concerns, but the Biden administration reversed course in 2022 and signed a deal worth up to $450 million. But U.S. officials have previously expressed displeasure at the jets being used against India, and doing so again could jeopardize future upgrade and sustainment packages.

Lindsey Ford, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia and the senior director for South Asia on the National Security Council under the Biden administration, told SitRep that other levers Washington could use to pressure Islamabad include adding Pakistan back to the Financial Action Task Force’s “gray list”—which heightens scrutiny of countries accused of money laundering or terror financing and impacts their ability to attract foreign investment—or removing it from the U.S. International Military Education and Training Program, which Pakistan is the largest beneficiary of.

Right to self-defense. India, meanwhile, may benefit from a bit more latitude in Washington in its response—albeit with limits.

“I think we have to acknowledge that India has a right to defend itself, and it will expect the same acknowledgment of that fact as the United States and other partners gave to Israel when Israel was attacked,” Ford said. “Of course, if you’re looking at the Israel analogy, there will also be a strong concern among partner nations [about] what the response looks like.”

A former U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to speak candidly about intergovernmental discussions, summarized the likely U.S. message to India thus: “Yes, we’re here to help you, let us know how we can be useful, but let’s also not go down a path that blows this thing up in a way that becomes a long-term drag on everything that we’re trying to achieve in the Indo-Pacific.”

Let’s Get Personnel

Republican Sen. David Perdue of Georgia was confirmed on Tuesday as the new U.S. ambassador to China. Perdue will assume the role amid historic tensions between China and the United States on issues ranging from trade and tariffs to Taiwan. Ahead of the confirmation vote, Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch emphasized the contentious state of affairs between the two countries and the challenges that Perdue will face as a result. “Sen. Perdue, you have a heavy work cut out for you,” Risch said.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Can a two-state solution be saved? U.N. chief António Guterres on Tuesday called for countries to “take irreversible action towards implementing a two-state solution” to the Israel-Palestine conflict “before it is too late.” Guterres’s comments came ahead of a U.N. conference in June that will focus on a two-state solution, which France and Saudi Arabia are set to co-host. French President Emmanuel Macron recently signaled that France could soon move to recognize a Palestinian state, possibly at the June conference.

It’s widely agreed that a two-state solution is virtually impossible as things stand, with the war in Gaza ongoing and the current Israeli government opposed to Palestinian statehood.

The second Trump administration has also broken from decades of U.S. policy by not backing a two-state solution. Trump’s push for the United States to take over Gaza is fundamentally at odds with this goal. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, also has a long record of opposing a two-state solution.

Along these lines, Guterres warned on Tuesday that “the promise of a two-state solution is at risk of dwindling to the point of disappearance.”

Moscow tells Trump to slow down. As Trump continues to push for a rapid end to the Russia-Ukraine war, Moscow is effectively telling the White House to pump the brakes.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to a peace deal but added that it’s not going to happen as quickly as Trump wants because the conflict is too complicated.

There are reasons to be skeptical that Putin genuinely desires an end to the war, despite Russia unilaterally announcing a three-day cease-fire for early May. Russia continues to pummel Ukraine with devastating strikes and reject Kyiv’s calls for an unconditional cease-fire.

Trump appears to be growing impatient with Russia as the fighting rages on, recently stating that Putin might be “tapping” him along and raising the possibility of new economic penalties on Russia. The Trump administration has also signaled that it could soon abandon its efforts to achieve a peace deal if there’s not more progress ASAP.

That said, the United States and Ukraine signed a minerals deal on Wednesday, which is seen as a positive sign in Kyiv in terms of shoring up future support from Washington. The agreement, which Trump pushed for as a way to recoup the billions in assistance that Washington has given to Kyiv, grants Washington preferential access to Ukraine’s mineral resources and establishes a joint investment fund for the country’s reconstruction. Future U.S. military assistance to Ukraine will be treated as a contribution to the fund.

Though the deal does not contain explicit security guarantees, it links Trump to Ukraine’s future, opens the door for further U.S. assistance, and comes with tougher rhetoric toward Moscow from the White House after months of rocky relations between the new administration and Kyiv. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the agreement sends a clear signal to Russia that the Trump administration is “committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine.”

The U.K. joins in on U.S. bombing of Houthis. The U.K. military launched airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen on Tuesday as part of a joint operation with the United States. This marked the first time that British forces have conducted strikes against the Iran-backed group since Trump returned to the White House.

The Houthis have been targeting merchant vessels in the Red Sea since the Israel-Hamas war began in late 2023, prompting a military response from Washington and its allies that the Trump administration dramatically escalated last month.

Meanwhile, there are growing questions over the effectiveness of the intensive bombing campaign that the Trump administration launched in March, which has cost a pretty penny. Lawmakers in Washington have also raised concerns about civilian casualties.

Snapshot

A drone view of detainees forming the letters “SOS” with their bodies in the courtyard at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility, where Venezuelans at the center of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling are held, in Anson, Texas, on April 28. (Paul Ratje/Reuters)

Put On Your Radar

Saturday, May 3: Australia is set to hold federal elections.

Singapore is poised to hold early parliamentary elections.

Sunday, May 4: Romanians are set to head to the polls in the first round of a presidential election rerun.

By the Numbers

52: The percentage of Americans who agree with the statement that “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy,” according to a new survey from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. On the other hand, 44 percent agree with the statement that “President Trump is a strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness.”

Quote of the Week

“I’m not afraid of you.”

— Mohsen Mahdawi in a message to Trump after his release from detention in Vermont on Wednesday. Mahdawi, a Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian activist, was detained during his U.S. citizenship interview on April 14 as part of a Trump administration crackdown on immigration and support for Palestine on college campuses.

This Week’s Most Read

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

We hope you’re having a better week than the U.S. Navy crew that accidentally let a roughly $67 million fighter jet fall off the edge of the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier and into the Red Sea. The FA/18E Super Hornet and a tractor towing it both fell overboard and sank after the crew “lost control of the aircraft,” the Navy said in a statement, adding that the service members moved out of the way in time and only one sailor sustained minor injuries.

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Washington

Love Actually? Washington’s current relationship with Britain is more like Contempt Actually | Timothy Garton Ash

Published

6 hours ago

March 21, 2026

Press Room

Love Actually? Washington’s current relationship with Britain is more like Contempt Actually | Timothy Garton Ash

“A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the president should be prepared for that.” Thus spoke Hugh Grant, playing the British prime minister confronting the US president in a famous scene in the romcom Love Actually. Real-life British prime minister Keir Starmer has attempted to stand up ever so slightly to the current bully in the White House over the latest US war in the Middle East. Despite the British government’s right-royal efforts to flatter Donald Trump ever since he was elected US president, his response to Starmer’s little attempt has been a torrent of contempt. So the reality is not Love Actually. It’s Contempt Actually.

Asked about the British government’s subtle distinction between defensive strikes in the Gulf, which it now supports, and offensive ones, which it doesn’t, Maga ideologue Steve Bannon tells the New Statesman’s Freddie Hayward: “That’s diplomatic bullshit. Fuck you. You’re either an ally or you’re not. Fuck you. The special relationship is over.” Ah, the “special relationship”! It must be 40 years since I first heard former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt say: “The special relationship is so special only one side knows it exists.”

An American critic of Trump recently asked me the obvious follow-up question: “Why does your government keep grovelling?” More fundamentally, we must ask why so much of official Britain, and especially its security establishment, keeps clinging for dear life to the United States, behaving for all the world like someone stuck in an abusive personal relationship.

To be fair, a lot of other European leaders have spent much of the past year sacrificing their dignity as they suck up to Trump, condoning his trashing of everything that liberal Europe has stood for since 1945. Mark Rutte, the secretary general of Nato, would beat Starmer to win Private Eye’s premier satirical medal, the OBN (Order of the Brown Nose). The reasons for this sycophancy are obvious: Europe’s dependence on the US for supporting Ukraine, for our own security in Nato and, to a significant degree, for our prosperity. But there’s a particular, rather pathetic desperation about the way the British cling to Uncle Sam.

The explanation? History, of course. The US founding fathers grew up thinking of themselves as Englishmen. From 1776 to 1917, when the US entered the first world war, this was, as the historian Robert Saunders nicely puts it, not so much a special as a peculiar relationship. The US defined itself historically against Britain, but there was a mutual fascination. Following the brief but important military alliance in 1917-18, and the subsequent peacemaking in Paris, the US withdrew from Europe.

A special relationship really did exist between 1941, when Winston Churchill managed – with a little help from the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor – to bring the US into the war against Adolf Hitler, and 1956, when the US humiliatingly stopped Britain and France from retaking the Suez canal. The UK and the US were not equals, but this was still a real power partnership, jointly shaping Europe, if not the world.

Trump v Starmer: will the special relationship survive? – The Latest

France and Britain drew sharply contrasting conclusions from their humiliation over Suez. France, under president Charles de Gaulle, built its own independent nuclear deterrent and had already identified the goal that the current French president, Emmanuel Macron, calls European strategic autonomy. Britain, after a brief period of angry alienation from Washington, doubled down on prioritising its relationship with the US. If we could no longer be a great power ourselves, we would be “Athens to America’s Rome”.

Unlike France, Britain built a nuclear deterrent that was and remains technologically dependent on the US, and always put Nato before European construction. In many ways, the British-American relationship did get closer: in intelligence and military cooperation, in academia and media, in finance and the economy (today the UK is the top destination of US direct investment, just ahead of the Netherlands). But at the same time, Britain’s political influence in Washington was steadily diminishing. It clung to it all the more.

The late British Labour politician Robin Cook reported in his memoirs how, in a crucial cabinet debate in the run-up to the Iraq war, then prime minister Tony Blair said: “I tell you that we must steer close to America. If we don’t, we will lose our influence to shape what they do.” But how much influence was there really?

Today, Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell sits at Starmer’s right hand in 10 Downing Street, trying to do the same with the Trumpians. “We have those relationships so we can have those difficult conversations,” says an anonymous Whitehall source. But the conversations are not difficult for Washington. They are for London, because it has so little clout left.

This trend has been exacerbated by two other developments. The first is the decline of Britain’s armed forces. American soldiers who spent years fighting alongside the British now tell me, with something more like pity than contempt: “You barely have an army any more.” In the current conflict, France got a naval ship to Cyprus before Britain did, although it was a British military base on Cyprus that was attacked by Iran. This weakness, too, finds its echo in popular culture. In the latest season of the Netflix political soap The Diplomat, the saturnine US vice-president (brilliantly played by Rufus Sewell) riffs off the children’s book The Little Engine That Could to describe Britain as “the little island that couldn’t”. Ouch.

The second is Brexit. It’s just blindingly obvious that the UK is less important to the US than it used to be because it’s no longer part of a larger bloc. In Blair’s time, for all the long-term waning of influence, Britain still had two relatively strong legs: the transatlantic one and, as a member of the EU, the European one. In 2016, in what we can today see even more clearly was an act of monumental stupidity, Britain chose to cut off its own European leg. Now Trump is cutting the American one.

Here’s the other reason for Britain’s peculiar, rather pathetic desperation. Unlike France or Germany, it doesn’t have another leg to stand on.

For anyone who loves this country, it’s painful to see how it has reduced itself to being an object of contempt – or at best, pity. Fortunately, there is a path back to self-respect and being respected. While keeping the best possible relations with the US, Britain can set a strategic course towards being a core part of a stronger Europe. This means helping to build up European defence, especially through the Europeanisation of Nato, and it means – as London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has just usefully suggested – rejoining the EU. How this could be done, in a timeframe of five to 10 years, and whether it will be possible politically, on both sides of the Channel, are subjects for further columns. Watch this space.

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Washington

Polymarket opening ‘Situation Room’ pop-up bar in DC. See when.

Published

18 hours ago

March 20, 2026

Press Room

Polymarket opening ‘Situation Room’ pop-up bar in DC. See when.

Prediction betting market platform Polymarket is opening a “Situation Room” pop-up bar in the nation’s capital that will be “dedicated to monitoring the situation.”

The company announced its latest business endeavor in an X post on Wednesday, March 18.

“Imagine a sports bar… but just for situation monitoring — live X feeds, flight radar, Bloomberg terminals, and Polymarket screens,” the company’s statement said.

The bar opens to the public in Washington, DC, on Friday, March 20, and will operate until Sunday, March 22. The Situation Room will open on 8 p.m. on March 20 and at 11 a.m. on March 21-22, according to Polymarket. The company did not specify how long the bar will remain open; however, Proper 21 K Street, where the pop-up is taking place, closes at 12 a.m. ET Monday-Sunday, according to its website.

Last month, Polymarket opened a free supermarket in New York City to promote free markets. Polymarket donated $1 million to Food Bank For NYC as part of its endeavor.

“Free groceries. Free markets. Built for the people who power New York,” the company said in an announcement.

What is Polymarket?

Polymarket allows users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events, everything from who will win the Academy Award for best actress to when the United States will confirm the existence of aliens.

Top trending bets on the platform on Friday, March 20, included whether the United States would invade Cuba in 2026 and who the 2028 Republican presidential nominee would be, among others.

Betting platform under scrutiny over ‘Situation Room’ name, more

Polymarket has come under intense scrutiny since its launch in 2020. In January, the Nevada Gaming Control Board filed a civil enforcement action against the company. In the complaint, the Board asked the court for a declaration and injunction to stop Polymarket from offering unlicensed wagering in violation of Nevada law.

However, Nevada isn’t the only entity trying to take the platform to court. Brett Bruen, the chief executive of the Global Situation Room, a public affairs agency, called the company out on X for allegedly using the organization’s trademarked name.

“We have @GlobalSitRoom & related terms trademarked (checks notes) …for tracking situations around the globe,” Bruen wrote. “Flattered, really – it’s a great name. But, no, you can’t use it. Yes, my lawyers will be in touch.”

Global Situation Room also sent a cease and desist letter to Polymarket, alleging that the company’s use of the “Situation Room” name gives a false impression that Global Situation Room is “somehow connected or associated with Polymarket’s services,” CNBC reported, citing a letter from the public relations agency.

“Indeed, there are obvious overlaps in the uses of GLOBAL SITUATION ROOM and THE SITUATION ROOM such as both marks include ‘SITUATION ROOM’ and allow consumers to monitor and act on global affairs,” the letter, written by Shane Delsman, an attorney at Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based law firm Godfrey & Kahn, reads. “In fact, the marks are so similar, Global Situation Room has already witnessed actual confusion in the form of press requests to comment on the opening of the new THE SITUATION ROOM bar.”

USA TODAY reached out to Polymarket for comment on March 20.

Michelle Del Rey is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at mdelrey@usatoday.com

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Devils Head to Nation’s Capital | PREVIEW | New Jersey Devils

Published

1 day ago

March 20, 2026

Press Room

Devils Head to Nation’s Capital | PREVIEW | New Jersey Devils

THE SCOOP

The Devils opened their five-game road trip with a 6-3 victory at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night. New Jersey’s faces Washington on the second leg that includes stops in Dallas, Nashville and Carolina.

New Jersey is now 7-2-0 in its past nine games. The Devils are enjoying an offensive explosion of late. During their past nine games, New Jersey has totaled 4.11 goals per game. And they’ve scored 10 power-play goals on 24 opportunities (42%).

The Caps head into the back half of their season-long four-game homestand on Friday night when the New Jersey Devils make their second visit of the season to DC. Washington has earned at least a point in each of the first two games of the homestand, taking a 3-2 shootout loss to the Bruins last weekend before beating the Senators by a 4-1 count on Wednesday.

Wednesday’s win still leaves the Caps with less than a 10-percent chance of slinking their way into the Stanley Cup playoffs. With just 13 games remaining on the season, the Caps will likely need to win at least nine – and likely 10 or 11 – of those games to have a viable chance of getting in.

Rookie Cole Hutson, who made his NHL debut Wednesday night, also picked up his first career NHL goal with an empty-netter. Hutson was a second-round pick (43rd overall) in 2024.

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