In and around the Indian subcontinent, S Paul Kapur is going to become an important figure, working carefully behind the headlines. He will be the eyes, ears, and at times the hand of the world’s most powerful nation in this region.

Kapur has been nominated as America’s representative in India’s neighbourhood. He will be the new Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs in the US State Department.

The extent of the power vested in him can be gauged from the legacy of his predecessor, Donald Lu. Lu is credited (or discredited) with engineering regime changes in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Kyrgyzstan; fomenting violent protests against the nationalist government in India; mishandling Afghanistan; keeping the Maldives and Nepal on the boil against India; and interfering in Central Asia’s Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

So, who is Paul Kapur? What are his core geopolitical convictions? How closely do these align with India’s vision and strategic approach?

Kapur is an academic born in New Delhi to an Indian father and an American mother. He rose through the ranks of the foreign service and enjoys enough of the Trump administration’s trust to be entrusted with one of the most sensitive regions in the world.

His appointment becomes even more significant in light of the recent Pahalgam massacre of tourists by Pakistan-backed jihadis and India’s response via Operation Sindoor.

Kapur’s views on Islamist terror are well documented in his 2017 book Jihad as Grand Strategy. It is not just an analytical study of how Pakistan has used jihad as a central lever of its state policy— in many ways, the book anticipates what is unfolding today.

Kapur opens with a blunt statement of truth: “Terrorism’s ascendance as one of the world’s leading strategic dangers has been a central development of the post–Cold War security environment… Scholars and analysts have generated a voluminous literature attempting to identify the demographic, economic, psychological, ideological, strategic and other patterns in terrorist violence. Although the nature and prevalence of such patterns are a matter of vigorous debate, one recurring theme concerning terrorism is strikingly clear: A disproportionate amount of it has been linked to Islamist terrorists based in Pakistan."

He backs this up with examples—how Al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trained........

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