Refictive at first, Trump officials intervened in South Asia as nuclear fears grew

While a conflict between India and Pakistan has intensified, vice-president JD Vance told Fox News on Thursday that he was “fundamentally not our business”. The United States could advise both parties to retreat, he suggested, but it was not America’s fight.

However, within 24 hours, Mr. Vance and Marco Rubio, during his first week in the double role of national security advisor and secretary of state, found themselves plunged into details. The reason was the same who prompted Bill Clinton in 1999 to face another major conflict between the two long -standing enemies: fear that this will quickly become nuclear.

What led Mr. Vance and Mr. Rubio to action was proof that the Pakistani and Indian air forces began to engage in serious dog fights, and that Pakistan had sent 300 to 400 drones in Indian territory to probe its air defenses. But the most important causes of concern occurred on Friday evening, when the explosions hit the air base of Nur Khan in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the city of Garrison adjacent to Islamabad.

The base is a key installation, one of the central transport centers for the Pakistani soldiers and the home of the air supply capacity which would keep the Pakistani fighters at altitude. But it is also at a short distance from the siege of the Pakistan strategic plans division, which supervises and protects the country’s nuclear arsenal, which now includes around 170 or more warheads. The warheads themselves are presumed to spread throughout the country.

Intense fights broke out between India and Pakistan after 26 people, mainly Hindu tourists, were killed in a terrorist attack on April 22 in Kashmir, a border region claimed by the two nations. On Saturday morning, President Trump announced that the two countries had accepted a ceasefire.

A former American civil servant familiar for a long time with the Pakistan nuclear program noted on Saturday that the deepest fear of Pakistan is that his nuclear command authority is beheaded. The missile strike on Nur Khan could have been interpreted, said the former official, as a warning that India could do exactly.