Jeremy Shapiro wrote an interesting review of Shields of the Republic, a new book by Mira Rapp-Hooper about U.S. alliances. Dan Drezner responds to Shapiro by changing the subject to talk about the recent clash between Indian and Chinese forces in Ladakh:

This is not a clash that involves U.S. allies. But I can remember a time in which the United States possessed enough diplomatic capital and network centrality to function as a mediator between the two nuclear-armed countries. As this border skirmish was heating up, Donald Trump offered to act as a mediator only to be rebuffed by India almost immediately.

When exactly was this time that the U.S. could have served as a mediator in a situation like this? The only comparable case that I can think of was during the Kargil war between India and Pakistan more than twenty years ago, and even in that case the U.S. didn’t really mediate between the two. The U.S. did encourage Pakistan to deescalate, but even at the height of the so-called “unipolar moment” the U.S. had virtually nothing to do with bringing that conflict to an end. The crisis between India and Pakistan in late 2001 and early 2002 following the attack on the Indian parliament was likewise resolved with minimal U.S. involvement. No doubt Trump is too lazy to do the kind of diplomatic work that would be required to sustain an effective mediation effort, but India rebuffed U.S. mediation because India has a long history of not wanting others to get involved in its bilateral disputes with its neighbors. Modi previously blew off Trump’s offers to mediate the Kashmir dispute for the same reason, just as an earlier Indian government dismissed Obama’s suggestion of mediation. India has no wish for the U.S. to insert itself into the showdown with China, and the U.S. is in no position to appeal to Beijing about anything right now. The U.S. could have the most “robust” diplomatic presence in both countries, and it still would not make our involvement any more welcome or constructive.

There is a passage from George Kennan’s American Diplomacy that seems appropriate to quote here:

But when it comes to the acceptance of new responsibilities, let us, at long last, try to bear in mind the limits of our national capabilities and the price we are obliged to pay for our liberties. Let us recognize that there are problems in this world that we will not be able to solve, depths into which it will not be useful or effective for us to plunge, dilemmas in other regions of the globe that will have to find their solution without our involvement [bold mine-DL]. (p. 191-192)

We can all agree that Kennan was a strong proponent of U.S. diplomatic engagement, so when he was telling us almost forty years ago that there were some things that we couldn’t and shouldn’t try to fix we ought to have listened to him.

India and China still have strong incentives to deescalate despite the sudden eruption of violence and loss of life. For one thing, the clash has occurred in such a remote, high-altitude area that it is practically difficult to escalate the conflict. The U.S. should of course encourage a peaceful resolution to the standoff, but we should take Kennan’s advice and learn some humility about the limits of what our foreign policy can do. A border dispute between India and China is a good example of one of those dilemmas that the U.S. can’t solve.