Dr Walter Ladwig, Senior Lecturer of International Relations at King’s College London, emphasized in an interview with news agency ANI that Washington’s long-standing goal has been to cultivate India as a key Indo-Pacific partner, and regional conflict undermines that trajectory.
“When it comes to India, we have successive US administrations going all the way back to George W. Bush that have been seeking to cultivate India as an important partner in the Indo-Pacific, in part as a counterweight to China,” Dr. Ladwig said. “It’s not in the American interest for there to be a conflict between India and Pakistan insofar as that distracts India’s attention away from bigger picture issues in Asia.”
His comments come in the wake of India’s precision military operation — Operation Sindoor — conducted on May 7 against terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoJK), in response to the deadly terror attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people.
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India also effectively countered Pakistan’s subsequent aggression by striking key airbases, marking a shift from defensive posturing to an assertive counter-terrorism strategy.
“India’s growth is soaring, growing at an impressive just under 7% a year, but needs to grow faster to meet all of the development targets,” Ladwig noted. “All of those things will be put at risk by a protracted conflict or stalemate with Pakistan — so that’s clearly not in America’s interest.”
On recent ceasefire efforts, he said the de-escalation was driven more by the will of the two nations rather than foreign mediation.
“India and Pakistan had reached an understanding for stopping military action and firing. That was a lot about the desires of the two parties involved and wasn’t brought about by pressure or mediation in the way US President Donald Trump has described in the past,” he clarified.
Ladwig also praised India’s precision capabilities during Operation Sindoor and noted a significant shift in New Delhi’s policy toward cross-border terrorism.
“In the past, we saw governments feel the need to assemble a dossier or provide evidence of linkages,” he said. “Now, there’s a move to a policy stance of saying that a failure to prevent groups from having safe haven in your territory is enough to bring about a military response.”
On the ground impact, Ladwig said India outperformed Pakistan in operational effectiveness and public messaging.
“I think India was successful in striking a much wider range of targets and executing more successful missions than the Pakistan side, which explains why there’s so much more information, images and so forth in the open domain that appear to corroborate the majority of the Indian claims,” he said.
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