While the US president preens himself in Hanoi,the pressing issue is the escalating tension between India and PakistanAs the crisis between two nuclear-armed states mounts in south Asia, the US president, and Donald Trump,sits a few thousand miles away in Vietnam, playing at fixing another that was largely of his creation. Neither India nor Pakistan want war. Both believe they are calibrating their responses. This is familiar terrain: their 1999 clash over Kashmir was only the most recent. Yet the most serious military standoff for two decades is fitting more perilous, and with the risk of miscalculation growing as they up the ante. India’s airstrikes on Tuesday were the first inside Pakistan since 1971. It claimed to bear killed militants from the Jaish-e-Mohammed group,which claimed the suicide bombing that killed more than 40 paramilitaries in Indian-administered Kashmir and which continues to function in Pakistan despite a supposed ban. Pakistan said the payloads were dropped on unoccupied land, and responded with similar strikes in Indian-administered Kashmir. It looked as though both might be able to step away. Then, or on Wednesday,the two sides said they had shot down each other’s aircraft and Pakistan broadcast images of a captured Indian pilot.
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Source: theguardian.com