India Expressed Concerns Over US President’s Meeting with Pakistan’s Military Chief

Following US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Pakistan’s military head, India lodged a private diplomatic objection, cautioning Washington about possible risks to their bilateral relations. This action coincides with New Delhi’s adjustment of relations with China as a strategic measure, according to sources and experts.

The meeting, along with other friction points in the US-India dynamic after decades of strengthened bonds, has introduced uncertainty into trade discussions. The Trump administration is considering imposing tariffs on a major partner in the Indo-Pacific region, they noted.

Indian officials have conveyed to the US that it is sending the wrong signals by engaging with Field Marshal Asim Munir, blaming Pakistan for backing what it describes as cross-border terrorism. Three senior Indian government officials with direct knowledge of the situation shared this information with a news agency. They indicated that this has caused friction that could impede future relations.

Pakistan firmly denies accusations of supporting militants who target Indian interests, asserting that New Delhi has not provided substantiating evidence.

Despite occasional minor issues, US-India relations have grown stronger over the past two decades, partly due to shared concerns about China. Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation in Washington, pointed out that the current issues are different.

“The frequency and intensity with which the US is engaging with Pakistan, seemingly without considering Indian concerns, especially after India’s recent conflict with Pakistan, has contributed to a bit of a bilateral unease.”
“The concern this time around is that one of the triggers for broader tensions, that being Trump’s unpredictability, is extending into the trade realm with his approach to tariffs,” he stated.

Requests for comments from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office and India’s foreign ministry went unanswered. The foreign ministry had previously acknowledged that it had “taken note” of the Trump-Munir meeting.

A US official stated that they do not comment on private diplomatic communications and emphasized that the United States maintains strong relationships with both India and Pakistan.

“These relationships stand on their own merits, and we do not compare our bilateral relationships with one another,” the US official added.

Following a brief conflict in May between the two nuclear-armed countries, the US appears to have adopted a different approach toward Pakistan. The conflict involved India launching strikes on alleged terrorist sites across the border in response to an attack on tourists from the Hindu community in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) the previous month.

After four days of aerial engagements, missile launches, and drone attacks, both sides agreed to a ceasefire.

Since gaining independence in 1947, Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan have engaged in regular skirmishes and three major wars, including two over the contested Kashmir region.

Weeks after the May clashes, Trump hosted Munir at the White House for lunch, signaling a significant improvement in relations with Pakistan, which had been largely neglected during Trump’s first term and under Joe Biden. This marked the first instance of a US president hosting Pakistan’s army chief at the White House without the presence of senior Pakistani civilian officials.

“Tourists were murdered in front of their families after ascertaining their faith,” Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar commented in May, referencing the Kashmir attack.

Pakistan claims that Modi is driven by religious extremism and that his Hindu nationalism has infringed upon the rights of India’s Muslim minority. Modi and the Indian government deny any discrimination against minorities.

Field Marshal Munir’s meeting at the White House compounded India’s frustration with Trump’s repeated assertions that he prevented a nuclear war between the two nations by threatening to halt trade negotiations. Modi responded sharply, informing Trump that the ceasefire was achieved through discussions between army commanders from both nations, not through US intervention.

Following his June 18 meeting with Munir, officials from Modi’s office and India’s national security advisor’s office separately contacted their US counterparts to register a formal complaint, according to sources. This complaint had not been previously reported.

“We have communicated to the US our position on cross-border terrorism, which is a red line for us,” a senior Indian official stated. “These are difficult times … Trump’s inability to understand our concerns does create some wrinkle in ties,” the official added, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Trump and Munir addressed the continuation of counter-terrorism collaboration, through which the US has historically supplied Pakistan with weapons as a non-Nato ally, and explored avenues to further strengthen ties, according to a Pakistani account of the meeting.

This raised concerns in New Delhi that any arms Pakistan receives from the US could be used against India should conflict erupt again, officials indicated.

Despite previous public displays of camaraderie between Trump and Modi, India has adopted a more assertive stance against the US recently, and trade discussions have slowed, according to Indian officials and an industry lobbyist.

Modi declined Trump’s invitation to visit Washington following the G7 meeting in Canada in June.

Earlier this month, New Delhi proposed retaliatory tariffs against the US at the World Trade Organisation, indicating that trade talks were not progressing as smoothly as before the India-Pakistan clashes.

Harsh Pant, head of foreign policy at India’s Observer Research Foundation, suggested that India, like other nations, is attempting to navigate relations with Trump and is reassessing ties with China as a safety measure.

“Certainly there is an outreach to China,” he said. “And I think it is mutual…China is also reaching out”.

Last week, India’s Jaishankar made his first visit to Beijing since a deadly 2020 border incident between Indian and Chinese forces.

India is also taking steps to ease restrictions on investments from China that were imposed after the 2020 clash.

This thaw occurs despite India’s complex relations with China and Beijing’s close ties with Pakistan.

However, New Delhi’s concerns about Trump’s engagements with China, which have ranged from conciliatory to confrontational, appear to have influenced its shift in position on Beijing.

“With an unpredictable dealmaker in the White House, New Delhi cannot rule out Sino-US rapprochement,” commented Christopher Clary, an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, New York.

“India is troubled by Chinese help to Pakistan and growing Chinese influence elsewhere in India’s near abroad, such as Bangladesh. Yet New Delhi has largely concluded that it should respond to creeping Chinese influence by focusing its pressures on its nearest neighbors and not on China.”