President Trump has long been eager to stop armed conflicts. Last week he succeeded. But with two asterisks.
First: He has worked hardest – playing the role of neutral mediator – to end the brutal war of aggression Russia has been waging against Ukraine for more than three years. I see no progress yet.
Second: While it's no mean feat to bring about a "full and immediate ceasefire" between nuclear-armed Pakistan and nuclear-armed India – which the president accomplished with the assistance of Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio – don't confuse a temporary cessation of hostilities with making peace or even paving a "path to peace."
Before I explain further, I want you to note that Russia, which has long had close relations with India, did nothing to help resolve this crisis. Nor did China, which has long had close relations with Pakistan.
Though Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping were together in Moscow last week watching a military parade, they apparently had other matters on their minds.
What about the international community? As I've often said, there is no such thing. There are only empires, nation-states, failed states, and territories ruled by terrorists, thugs and gangs. What do Mexico, Montenegro, Myanmar, Malaysia, Monaco, and Mozambique have in common? They all start with the letter "M." That's about it.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres did issue a call, through a spokesman, for "maximum military restraint from both countries." He sure earned his pay!
Now back to the subject at hand.
The mainstream media has reported that India and Pakistan are quarrelling over Kashmir, a territory in the northernmost region of the Indian subcontinent. That's correct.
They therefore infer that this is a territorial dispute. That's misleading.
They also imply a moral equivalence between India and Pakistan. That's dead wrong.
The current conflagration began on April 22, when five Islamist terrorists from Pakistan reportedly invaded Indian-administered Kashmir, identified Hindus and executed them.
A Christian and a local Muslim who attempted to protect Indian civilians also were murdered. The final death toll: 26.
In response, India conducted precision air and missile strikes on nine "terrorist infrastructure sites" in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Pakistan called those strikes "acts of war."
Cross-border artillery and drone exchanges followed. Pakistan claimed it downed several Indian fighter jets. India reduced the flow of water going to Pakistan. Escalation became a serious possibility. Did I mention that both Pakistan and India have nukes?
You can trace the roots of this conflict to the days when the sun was setting on the British Empire. Knowing post-colonial India would be a Hindu-majority and Hindu-dominated country, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the All-India Muslim League, demanded the founding of a Muslim state.
Under the Indian Independence Act, partition followed. The two largest Muslim-majority regions of India became the new nation of Pakistan.
That sparked one of the biggest and bloodiest population transfers in history as Muslims moved to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs moved to India. Roughly 15 million people crossed the new borders. As many as 2 million people were killed in sectarian clashes.
Even after these movements, Hindus, Sikhs, and other non-Muslim minorities constituted almost 25 percent of Pakistan's population, while Muslims made up about 10 percent of India's population.
Today, Muslims have grown to 14 percent of India's population.
By contrast, the non-Muslim population of Pakistan has shrunk to less than 4 percent.
That's because, over the years, Pakistani Islamists implemented policies that caused Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians – along with many moderate Muslims – to emigrate.
That would have disappointed Mr. Jinnah, a British-educated and well-tailored attorney who favored pluralism and tolerance. He died in 1948. Eight years later, Pakistan declared itself an Islamic Republic.
As for Kashmir: At partition, it had a Hindu maharaja, Hari Singh, who governed a Muslim-majority population. Initially, he wanted his princely state to be independent. But after militias invaded from Pakistan, he turned to India for protection.
That led to the 1947-48 Indo-Pakistan war which ended in a ceasefire with a "Line of Control" dividing Kashmir, whose entire territory is still claimed by both Delhi and Islamabad.
There have been two more wars and multiple skirmishes over Kashmir since. Diplomatic efforts to forge a conclusive settlement have gone nowhere.
The April attack was initially claimed by a group calling itself The Resistance Front, believed to be an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Islamist terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Urdu for Army of the Pure.
LeT has been implicated in many other terrorist attacks in India, including those in Mumbai in 2008 in which at least 174 people were killed. Among them: civilians, police officers, six Americans, and six people at a Jewish community center, including a rabbi and his wife.
Though officially banned by Pakistan in 2002, LeT is widely believed to receive support from powerful factions within Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment. Government spokesmen deny that but offer no alternative explanation.
On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he will "not differentiate between the government sponsoring terrorism and the masterminds of terrorism." He noted that "top Pakistani army officers came to bid farewell to the slain terrorists. This is strong evidence of state-sponsored terrorism."
Though LeT's primary focus is Kashmir, its members are self-proclaimed jihadis whose grand ambition is to establish a global Islamic caliphate and empire.
You want to talk about "forever wars"? Those who have been killing Hindus, Jews, Christians, apostates, heretics, infidels, and unbelievers for more than a thousand years have all the patience in the world.
Negotiations can bring about ceasefires. But peace is not an outcome that anyone – not even President Trump – should expect.