Islamabad, Pakistan
CNN
 — 

As tensions ratcheted up over the last week of fighting, Pakistan did not consider deploying nuclear warheads to strike India, the country’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar told CNN on Monday.

In his first interview since India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire Saturday, Dar said Islamabad “had no choice” but to launch strikes in “self-defense” following India’s May 7 cross-border attacks.

Last week’s escalatory tit-for-tat strikes marked the worst fighting between the two nuclear-armed nations since 1971, killing dozens and deepening fears of a wider conflict.

Dar referred to India’s strikes as a “war” and a “wishful attempt to establish its hegemony” in the long-disputed Kashmir region – but said that the nuclear option was never on the table.

“There are certain times when you have to take very serious decisions,” he said, “We were very sure that our conventional capacity and capabilities are strong enough that we will beat them both in air and on ground.”

After the initial attack last Wednesday, Pakistan claimed it had used Chinese-made fighter jets to shoot down five Indian Air Force jets, including three Rafales, sophisticated French-made jets that New Delhi acquired only a few years ago. A French intelligence source told CNN that Pakistan had downed at least one Indian Rafale.

India has not responded to those claims, which CNN has been unable to verify.

Following several days of fighting, Islamabad and New Delhi agreed to a US-brokered truce on Saturday, as explosions reportedly ripped through parts of Kashmir over one final burst of strikes.

While the agreement has so far appeared to hold, Dar told CNN that long-term negotiations between the two parties are “not done yet.”

“We still hope sense will prevail,” he said.

Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday that India has “only paused our responsive attack on Pakistan’s terror and military hubs.”

“Operation Sindoor has drawn a new line under the fight against terrorism – this is a new phase, a new normal,” he said, adding, “If there is a terror attack on India, we will give a jaw-breaking response.”

“India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail,” Modi cautioned.

The Indian leader asserted the ferocity of his country’s attacks pushed Pakistan to look for “ways to save themselves” by reaching a ceasefire deal.

“They were calling the world to reduce tensions after being completely destroyed,” he said.

In Islamabad, when asked about the impetus for the unexpected deal, Dar told CNN that “It is in the interest of everybody to not delay or to leave such issues beyond a certain reasonable time.”

“(The Indians) had seen what happened in the sky,” he added. “They could see how serious the damage was.”

There was no direct contact between Indian or Pakistani officials, Dar said, contradicting a previous assertion made by India’s director general of military operations, who reportedly received a message from his counterpart in Pakistan during the talks.

Instead, Dar said that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio passed on the message that India was ready to stop the fighting.

Rubio said in a Saturday statement that he and US Vice President JD Vance had spoken to the political and military leadership in India and Pakistan to secure agreement before the situation deteriorated further.

Dar told CNN on Monday that Pakistan was looking forward to establishing a path for long-term peace and security that would provide “dignity for both sides.”

The Muslim-majority region of Kashmir has been a flashpoint in India-Pakistan relations since both countries gained their independence from Britain in 1947.

The two nations to emerge from the bloody partition of British India – Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan – both claim Kashmir in full and, months after becoming independent, fought their first of three wars over the territory.

The divided region is now one of the most militarized places in the world.

Dar pointed to Kashmir as “the root cause of this regional instability” and called for the region’s “future self-determination.”

India has long accused Pakistan of harboring militant groups in Kashmir that conduct attacks across the border against Indian security forces, a charge Islamabad has rejected.

India launched its cross-border strikes last week in the wake of a tourist massacre in the Indian administered part of Kashmir in April.

Dar reiterated that Pakistan was not behind last month’s rampage, saying, “We condemn terrorism in all forms and all manifestations.”

He added that he believes US President Donald Trump supports Pakistan’s antiterrorism efforts.

“If they didn’t believe (in our efforts), they would not have cooperated the way (that they did),” Dar said, pointing to Trump’s social media post on “finding a solution” to the Kashmir conflict.

However, Dar warned that the already precarious ceasefire could be threatened “if the [Kashmir] water issue is not resolved” in the coming talks, referring to ongoing disputes of access to water from rivers in Kashmir. Pakistan’s proposed solution involves reversing India’s decision to block three vast Kashmir rivers vital to Pakistan’s economy.

Failure to resolve the water issue “will amount to an act of war,” he said.

CNN’s Esha Mitra and Sana Noor Haq contributed to this story.

New Delhi/Islamabad
CNN
 — 

India and Pakistan engaged in the most intense fighting in decades with four days of escalating conflict that included fighter jets, missiles and drones packed with explosives. It ended almost as abruptly as it began.

New details reveal how a flurry of phone calls and diplomacy ultimately brought about a truce between the nuclear-armed neighbors and historic foes.

And while the Indian and Pakistani accounts differ on some details, both sides agree the breakthrough started to come on Saturday afternoon.

The ceasefire between Islamabad and New Delhi, which according to Pakistani officials had been in the works for several days, was agreed to after a “hotline” message was sent from a top Pakistani military official to his Indian counterpart, India’s military said Sunday, offering new details about how the unexpected deal was struck.

In a briefing Sunday, India’s director general of military operations said that as officials were huddling Saturday “to wargame” the early morning’s strikes from Pakistan, he received a message from his counterpart in Pakistan seeking communications.

Pakistan’s military confirmed Sunday that it reached out, but said it contacted intermediaries regarding a ceasefire with India. It did not specify which countries, although a Pakistani official involved in the talks told CNN it was the United States making the important calls Saturday.

During a call, held at 3:35 p.m. local time, a ceasefire agreement was reached, according to India’s director general of military operations, Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai. He said a further call would be held to “discuss the modalities that would enable the longevity” of the agreement. Pakistan has not confirmed whether or not a call was held, but the official involved in the diplomatic efforts said Pakistan had received unspecified “assurances” from the US that India would abide by the ceasefire.

The latest details of how the agreement was reached, which was first announced by US President Donald Trump, give the clearest picture yet of how Islamabad and New Delhi directly communicated to agree on an end to the spiraling conflict amid growing international pressure.

On his Truth Social, Trump said Saturday the US had brokered an end to the fighting and congratulated the leaders of both countries for “using common sense and great intelligence.” While Islamabad praised US involvement, New Delhi has downplayed it – keen to portray the ceasefire as a victory and saying that the neighbors had worked together “directly” on the truce.

India’s director general of military operations, Ghai, said India approached Islamabad on Wednesday following its initial strikes to “communicate our compulsions to strike at the heart of terror.”

India made a request – which was not specified – that was “brusquely turned down with an intimation that a severe response was inevitable and in the offing,” Ghai told reporters. The Pakistani military said that it was approached by India earlier in the week regarding a ceasefire.

“The Indians requested a ceasefire after the 8th and 9th of May after they started their operation. We told them we will communicate back after our retribution,” Pakistan’s Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said during a news conference on Sunday. After Pakistan’s military operation, “we reached the international interlocutors and we responded to the ceasefire request,” he said.

Speaking on Wednesday, after India’s initial strikes, a Pakistani official involved in diplomacy efforts said Pakistan was engaged with the US and that he hoped those conversations would bring positive results.

He said Pakistan was going to give diplomacy a chance and hold off on retaliation as the US and others tried diplomacy – though India claimed Pakistan repeatedly fired drones and artillery into its territory, something Islamabad has strenuously denied.

The Pakistani official said they were shocked when India attacked several Pakistani airbases early Saturday morning as they thought diplomacy was still in play. Pakistan immediately struck back, he said, harder than they had previously planned.

Pakistan’s military called the strikes on multiple Indian military bases an “eye for eye” and said they targeted the Indian air bases used to launch missiles on Pakistan.

The escalatory strikes from both sides forced the existing diplomatic efforts into a high gear – including by the United States, China and Saudi Arabia – to broker an end to the fighting.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that he and Vice President JD Vance had spoken to the political and military leadership in India and Pakistan to secure an agreement before the situation deteriorated further.

Vance had pressed India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to find a potential “off-ramp” to escalating tensions, according to multiple sources at India’s foreign ministry. Modi listened, but did not commit, the sources said.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi also spoke separately to top officials in India and Pakistan and expressed Beijing’s support for a ceasefire, according to readouts from China’s foreign ministry.

Just before 8 a.m. ET on Saturday, about 5 p.m. in India and Pakistan, Trump announced the ceasefire on Truth Social, writing: “After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE.”

Shortly after Trump’s post, both sides confirmed the truce.

India’s Foreign Ministry said the agreement was worked out “directly between the two countries,” downplaying US involvement and contradicting Trump’s claim.

But Pakistani officials heaped praise on Washington. “We thank President Trump for his leadership and proactive role for peace in the region,” said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

A Pakistani source familiar with the negotiations told CNN that the US – and Rubio in particular – was instrumental in striking the deal, painting a picture of talks that were in doubt with trust at a low ebb and missiles attacks from India only abating in the final few hours before the truce was confirmed.

It’s not surprising these bitter rivals give contradictory accounts of how a deal was struck.

India, which views itself as a regional superpower, has long been resistant to international mediation, whereas Pakistan, which is heavily dependent on foreign aid, tends to welcome it, analysts say.

The Indian military’s latest account of what happened raises further questions as to what exactly was Washington’s role in brokering the truce.

For India and Pakistan, the truce – which largely appears to be holding despite early accusations of each other violating the agreement – has brought much needed relief to both sides.

CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed to this report.

Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

Ding Xueliang spent his early teenage years in China as a fervent believer and practitioner of Chairman Mao Zedong’s revolutionary ideals — but he never imagined those memories would one day be stirred by a sitting US president.

In 1966, at just 13 years old, the son of poor farmers became one of Mao’s Red Guards. He joined millions of young people across China to participate in the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long upheaval set off by an aging Mao to reassert his absolute control over the ruling Communist Party – with the stated goal of preserving communist ideology.

Nearly six decades later, Ding is a distinguished scholar of Chinese politics based in Hong Kong, with a PhD from Harvard and a career teaching about the catastrophic movement he embraced.

But in recent months, he has begun to see uncanny echoes of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in an unexpected place: Donald Trump’s America.

To be clear, there are profound, incomparable differences between the deadly violence and chaos unleashed by a dictator in a one-party state, and an elected president’s divisive attempts to expand executive power within a mature democracy.

“It’s not identical,” Ding said. “But there are certainly parallels.”

As Trump upends the very institutions, alliances, and free trade order that have underpinned America’s global dominance since World War II, some in China are reminded of their own former leader — one who wielded revolutionary zeal to tear down the old world more than half a century ago.

In articles and social media posts, Chinese scholars and commentators have drawn comparisons between Trump and Mao. Some referenced the Cultural Revolution – at times obliquely to avoid censorship; others highlighted Trump’s apparent appetite for chaos, and the rising signs of authoritarianism and personality cult within his administration.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has disrupted the federal bureaucracy – dismantling agencies, purging officials and slashing civil service jobs. He has waged a war on ideology that conservatives deem “woke” and attacked elite universities – including Ding’s alma mater Harvard – for “liberal indoctrination,” threatening to cut their federal funding. He’s also pledged to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and “put American workers first.”

And in the US president, Ding noticed what he said were striking similarities with the late Chinese chairman whom he once worshiped as a young Red Guard: despite their vast differences, they both share a deep contempt for intellectual elites, a strong mistrust of the bureaucratic apparatus, and a populist appeal aimed at farmers and blue-collar workers.

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s Red Guards declared war against the “Four Olds” – old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas – to erase remnants of China’s pre-communist past. (It led to the widespread destruction of some of the country’s most valuable historical and cultural artifacts.)

That campaign stemmed from Mao’s long-held belief in “first destroy, then establish” – the idea that old systems, ideologies, or institutions must be demolished before new ones can be erected in their place.

Coming from an impoverished family, Ding eagerly took part in public humiliation rallies against teachers, intellectuals, government officials and others labeled as enemies of Mao’s vision.

“I was especially enthusiastic about the Cultural Revolution because I was born into a family of three generations of poor farmers — one of the ‘five red categories.’ At the time, I felt the Cultural Revolution was extremely important for us, it was wonderful,” he said.

But as China learned over a harrowing decade, it’s far easier to tear things down than to rebuild them. Mao’s violent mass movement shut down schools, paralyzed the government, shattered the economy, destroyed religious and cultural relics – turmoil that only subsided after the leader’s death in 1976. Historians estimate somewhere between 500,000 and two million people lost their lives.

Now, some Chinese are looking at that tumultuous chapter of their own history to make sense of the change Trump is unleashing in America.

Among Mao’s most ardent admirers, there’s a sense of pride that the US president appears to be borrowing from the revolutionary playbook of their esteemed supreme leader. One blogger likened Trump’s February tweet — “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” — to Mao’s iconic slogan: “To rebel is justified.”

“Trump is adept at imitating Chairman Mao. Trump is China’s true opponent,” the blogger concluded.

Other Mao fans cheered Trump for cozying up to Vladimir Putin’s Russia while snubbing Ukraine and Europe, said Wu Qiang, an independent analyst in Beijing who is studying Chinese perceptions of Trump.

Ever since his first term, Trump has earned the nickname “Chuan Jianguo,” or “Trump, the nation builder” among Chinese nationalists — a mocking suggestion that he is making China stronger by undermining America.

For some Chinese liberals, however, Trump’s sweeping expansion of executive power and attacks on press freedom, academic independence and the rule of law in the first 100 days of his second term have sparked disbelief, frustration and disappointment.

On Chinese social media, users voiced their disillusionment in the comment sections of US Embassy accounts, lamenting that America no longer resembles the ideal they once believed in.

“I always thought the US was a beacon to the world, standing for justice and fairness. But its recent actions have been completely disillusioning … Many Chinese people’s faith in America has been shattered!” said a comment on the US Embassy’s WeChat account.

Others made oblique references to Mao.

Underneath the embassy’s post celebrating Trump’s first 100 days in office, a Chinese user wrote: “Sailing the seas depends on the helmsman.” That’s the title of a revolutionary song eulogizing Mao, which became the popular anthem of the Cultural Revolution.

Another wrote: “The American people also have their own sun,” complete with a smirking dog emoji. Mao was extolled as the “red sun of China” at the height of his personality cult during the mass movement.

For years, Chinese liberals have quietly warned of a creeping return to the Cultural Revolution under Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao. A devoted student of the “Great Helmsman,” Xi has steered China closer to strongman rule and curtailed individual freedoms in ways critics say are reminiscent of that era.

And so, it was all the more striking for some Chinese liberals to witness an authoritarian turn seemingly unfolding in Washington, which under former President Joe Biden had framed the US competition with China as “democracy versus authoritarianism.”

Less than a month into Trump’s second term, Zhang Qianfan, a constitutional law professor in Beijing, was already alarmed by the emergence of what he called an “American-style Cultural Revolution.”

“The Cultural Revolution was essentially a power struggle,” he said.

Mao was insecure about his authority, eroded by three years of famine caused by his disastrous “Great Leap Forward” industrialization campaign; he was also suspicious of the establishment built by himself, claiming that “representatives of the bourgeoisie” had sneaked into the party, the government, the army and the cultural spheres.

Similarly, Trump believes the “deep state” is out to get him. And like Mao, he turned to loyalists outside the establishment to reshape the system and bend it to his will, Zhang said.

“Mao unleashed the Red Guards to ‘smash’ the police, prosecutors, and courts, so that loyal revolutionaries could seize control of state machinery,” he said. “Trump brought Elon Musk and six young Silicon Valley executives into the White House under the banner of eliminating corruption, waste, and inefficiency — akin to the ‘Cultural Revolution Leadership Group’ entering the party’s central leadership.”

Zhang was equally unsettled by the growing signs of a personality cult in Washington.

Last month, when he saw a social media photo of a gold pin in the shape of Trump’s profile worn on the chest of Brendan Carr, chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, he initially thought it was fake news or a parody.

In China, such a badge carries heavy political symbolism. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s badges were worn ubiquitously by Red Guards and others as a public display of loyalty to the chairman and devotion to the revolution.

“During Trump’s presidential inauguration speech, Republican lawmakers all stood up and applauded with such fervor that it rivaled North Korea. These are deeply troubling signs,” Zhang said. “People are seeing all kinds of sycophancy in the US that would have once been unimaginable.”

Trump has even publicly flirted with the idea of seeking an unconstitutional third term, saying he was “not joking” and claiming that “a lot of people want me to do it.”

Mao ruled China until his death. Xi is serving a third term after abolishing presidential term limits in 2018 in a move praised by Trump.

“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump said at the time in closed-door remarks obtained by CNN. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”

All the parallels aside, the first 100 days of Trump’s second term are radically different from Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which devastated China, saw millions of people persecuted and resulted in more than 1.7 million deaths, according to the party’s own count.

Unlike Mao, Trump did not mobilize youths across America to form a nationwide, self-organized political movement. “The January 6 attack on the US Capitol was somewhat similar, but it didn’t take off – it did not become a national rebellion in the US,” said Ding, the former Red Guard.

To Ding, the two leaders also differ dramatically in their global ambitions.

“Whereas Mao’s Cultural Revolution had a grand goal for China to replace the Soviet Union and become the sole guiding force for the global proletarian revolution, Trump’s movement lacks such an ambitious, internationalist vision,” he said. “Instead, Trump has utterly damaged America’s image, credibility, and influence within the global camp of liberal democracies.”

In many ways, Trump is reshaping the global order. He has disrupted the transatlantic alliance – a cornerstone of Western security for decades – and pushed Asian allies to pay more for US protection. He also narrowed the focus of his global tariff war squarely on China, effectively cutting off trade between the world’s largest economies – until both sides announced a 90-day reduction in tariffs on Monday.

Wu, the political analyst in Beijing, believes Trump has a substantial base of support in China – larger than many might expect.

“The enthusiasm for Trump — from intellectuals and elites to ordinary people — reflects a deeper dissatisfaction with China’s current political system,” he said.

For many Maoists, Trump has sparked their renewed yearning for a political movement that can bring China closer to what they see as the social equality and ideological purity of the Mao era, Wu noted.

Some in the business community believe Trump’s radical approach can finally push China to enact the painful reforms it needs. To Wu, their support of Trump signals a symbolic gesture: a longing for change.

“What they share is a desire to see a Trump-like movement, or even a Cultural Revolution-style political shakeup, take place in China — a way to break from the status quo,” he said.

Zhang, the law professor in Beijing, said similarly, Trump’s reelection reflected widespread political discontent in the US.

“In this context, America’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ can be seen as a desperate response to the failure of democracy,” he said.

But Zhang believes there’s no need to be overly pessimistic.

After Mao’s final decade of turmoil and destruction, China moved away from the fervor of ideological and class struggles to focus on economic growth. It opened up to the world and embraced the global order that the US helped create, and the rest is history.

“After all, every country makes mistakes — what matters is whether it can correct them in time,” Zhang said.

“Right now in the United States, the breakdown and the repair of its social contract are locked in a race. If America can mend that contract before Trump and his MAGA movement inflict lasting damage…then there is still hope. The ‘beacon of democracy’ can shine again.”