Sergio Gor’s remark, Pakistan’s protest, and the changing US stance on Kashmir

Gor echoing India’s right on Jammu and Kashmir is especially significant for two reasons. One, he is considered very close to Trump. Second, he is not just the US ambassador to India, but also the Special Envoy for South and Central Asian Affairs, in charge of overseeing US foreign policy with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Since January 2025, the post of US ambassador to Pakistan has been vacant.

What exactly is the US’s “well-documented position” on Jammu & Kashmir? The answer has changed with every decade, depending on Washington’s strategic goals.

The early years: Kashmir as an international dispute

When the 1947 war broke out between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, the US position had been to favour bilateral resolution but to support UN involvement if the need arose. When, on Governor-General Lord Louis Mountbatten’s advice, India did take the Kashmir issue to the United Nations, the US and UK were sympathetic to Pakistan, to India’s shock. The five members of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan were Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Colombia, Argentina, and the USA.

As Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru noted in January 1948, in a cable to N Gopalaswami Ayyangar, head of India’s UN delegation, “…US approach to Kashmir issue would be influenced less by intrinsic merits… America is pursuing policy of support to Middle Eastern states from Greece to Iran in hope that they would, by providing bases and otherwise, assist America in event of hostilities with USSR. If Pakistan should be willing to cooperate similarly with the USA, it is to be expected that the USA would try to befriend Pakistan in solution of her dispute with India over Kashmir.”

For much of the Cold War, this remained true. India’s policy of non-alignment made Washington suspicious of New Delhi. Pakistan, meanwhile, was important because of its geographical position — military and spy bases here could cover the Soviet Union, China, and the Persian Gulf, with its recently discovered oil riches. Pakistan thus joined US-backed military alliances and began receiving American arms.

Washington broadly accepted the Pakistani position that Kashmir remained a disputed territory and supported efforts at the UN to keep the question alive, including proposals involving a plebiscite.

JFK and Ayub Khan at the White House on July 13, 1961. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

In July 1961, Pakistan’s President Ayub Khan (the only Field Marshal before Asim Munir), visited the US and met his counterpart John F Kennedy. Ayub pressed the Americans to pressure Nehru, due for a US visit in November, on Kashmir. Archival files from the US Department of State show that Kennedy “felt the US to be not all that influential with Nehru on Kashmir” as it was “a bone-deep issue”, but would nevertheless try.

During the 1962 India-China war, Washington provided military assistance to India. Kennedy also stopped Pakistan from opening another front against India. But in return for this, the US pushed New Delhi to negotiate with Pakistan over Kashmir. Six rounds of talks followed, without producing an agreement.

The 1965 India-Pakistan war made it clear to the US that it could not maintain close strategic relationships with both countries while also trying to manage the Kashmir dispute. With the Vietnam war dominating US attention, it maintained a lower profile in South Asia.

After the 1971 war, India and Pakistan signed the 1972 Simla Agreement, agreeing to resolve their differences bilaterally and to respect the Line of Control in Kashmir. The US became receptive to this approach.

The year 1985 was marked as ‘the year of India’ in the US. On June 13, 1985, PM Rajiv Gandhi became the first Indian Prime Minister to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. (Photo: US Consulate General Mumbai)

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 again made Pakistan strategically crucial to Washington, but in the 1980s, India’s ties with the US also warmed up.

End of the Cold War, and its strategic calculations 

Once the Cold War ended, the US largely gave up public support for calls of plebiscite. While the first Bill Clinton administration criticised India’s human-rights record in Kashmir, after the Kargil war, Clinton blamed Pakistan for the aggression, and became more receptive to India’s arguments.

Clinton’s visit to India in 2000 reinforced the change. He spent five days in India and only a few hours in Pakistan. He also addressed a joint session of Parliament, where he said, “Let me also make clear, as I have repeatedly: I have certainly not come to South Asia to mediate the dispute over Kashmir. Only India and Pakistan can work out the problems between them. And I will say the same thing to General Musharraf in Islamabad.”

Since then, India’s ties with the US grew stronger. It was Trump who in 2019 again raised the issue of mediation. Meeting then Pakistan Imran Khan in July of that year, he said he was ready to mediate between the two countries if they asked him to. India rejected this promptly, reiterating that this was a bilateral issue.

A US Congress document of 2020, after India had abrogated Article 370, said, “The long-standing US position on Kashmir is that the territory’s status should be settled through negotiations between India and Pakistan while taking into consideration the wishes of the Kashmiri people.”

Trump has repeated the mediation claim several times, even claiming he stopped the conflict after Operation Sindoor.