One leader sees his last chance for peace. The other, perhaps, sees his political mortality amid repeated assassination attempts and political opposition.
But more than two years after their last summit ended in failure, India's prime minister and Pakistan's president have set the groundwork for talks that could end years of enmity.
In a region long accustomed to the threat of war, peace may actually be at hand.
"Now, I am a happy man," Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf told reporters after the surprise announcement that the two countries would soon begin comprehensive talks. Among the issues: the divided, bloodied Himalayan region of Kashmir, where more than a half-century of bitterness has been nurtured.
South Asia has seen optimism before in relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. In July 2001, Musharraf traveled to Agra, India to meet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in a summit many hoped would lead to peace. Instead, within hours of its ending officials were simply trying to show it hadn't been an utter failure.
But things have changed dramatically since that summit, and the chances of peace appear much better now.
If nothing else, it's clear both nations want peace, a desire reflected, in part, by the careful way expectations were kept in check in the days before the announcement, and the quiet, behind-the-scenes discussions held during the regional summit in Islamabad that led to Tuesday's announcement.
"The establishment is determined not to repeat the wrenching experience of the Agra summit in July 2001, where runaway popular expectations ... could not be matched by the outcomes," C. Rajamohan, an Indian security analyst, wrote in The Hindu newspaper before the meeting.
Less than a year after the Agra summit, the two countries nearly went to war for the fourth time, after a militant attack on the Indian parliament building that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-backed militants.
But the past few months have seen regular steps forward, with a truce declared along the line of control that divides Kashmir, where the two countries exchanged near-daily weapons fire. While militant violence continues in Kashmir, road and air links, severed after the parliament attack, have been restored. Peace -- and, both sides hope, the trade that would come with it -- have increasingly seemed possible.
"There was a growing realization on both sides that peace is a necessity," Pakistani analyst Zahid Malik said in Islamabad.
Not that peace is a certainty. Just a few months ago Musharraf was blasting India for suppressing "the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people." Indian diplomats, for their part, accused Pakistan of the "diplomacy of abuse and hate."
Easing relations began in April, when the often-ailing Vajpayee stunned the region with the announcement he was ready to resume dialogue.
"This round of talks will be decisive, and at least for my life, these will be the last," Vajpayee told the Indian Parliament at the time. "We don't want to forget the past, but we don't want to remain slaves of the past."
Many analysts believe the 79-year-old Vajpayee is desperate to forge a legacy of peace for himself. The prime minister has, as Rajamohan put it, an "irrepressible enthusiasm for exploring different options to break the political deadlock."
Now, with Indian elections expected in a few months, Vajpayee may be hoping to solidify diplomatic gains before the vote.
Musharraf, for his part, in mid-December signaled new flexibility on Kashmir, saying Pakistan was willing to look beyond a long-standing UN resolution that calls for a referendum in the disputed region to decide its own future. The resolution has been the basis of Pakistan's Kashmir policy for decades, but is strongly opposed by India.
It was a significant move for Musharraf, who faces bitter opposition from hard-liners at home, including some in his own army and intelligence services, who see him as a traitor to the Kashmiri militant movement and to the militant Muslim cause in general.
In the past month, he has twice survived assassination attempts.
But if talking peace costs Musharraf politically at home, it will earn him tremendous capital with the US, which is desperate to keep him as an ally in its war against terrorism.
Enmity has been part of India-Pakistan relations since the two countries were carved from British India at independence in 1947. The "partition" of colonial India cost the lives of over a million people, as Muslims went to the new nation of Pakistan and Hindus to modern India.
Today, Kashmir is at the center of their continued bitterness. A Muslim region whose Hindu prince chose to align himself with India in 1947 -- almost certainly against the wishes of his people -- Kashmir has been divided ever since by India and Pakistan.
Both nations claim the region in its entirety.
Elbridge Colby, America’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is the most influential voice on defense strategy in the Second Trump Administration. For insight into his thinking, one could do no better than read his thoughts on the defense of Taiwan which he gathered in a book he wrote in 2021. The Strategy of Denial, is his contemplation of China’s rising hegemony in Asia and on how to deter China from invading Taiwan. Allowing China to absorb Taiwan, he wrote, would open the entire Indo-Pacific region to Chinese preeminence and result in a power transition that would place America’s prosperity
A few weeks ago in Kaohsiung, tech mogul turned political pundit Robert Tsao (曹興誠) joined Western Washington University professor Chen Shih-fen (陳時奮) for a public forum in support of Taiwan’s recall campaign. Kaohsiung, already the most Taiwanese independence-minded city in Taiwan, was not in need of a recall. So Chen took a different approach: He made the case that unification with China would be too expensive to work. The argument was unusual. Most of the time, we hear that Taiwan should remain free out of respect for democracy and self-determination, but cost? That is not part of the usual script, and
All 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安), formerly of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), survived recall elections against them on Saturday, in a massive loss to the unprecedented mass recall movement, as well as to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that backed it. The outcome has surprised many, as most analysts expected that at least a few legislators would be ousted. Over the past few months, dedicated and passionate civic groups gathered more than 1 million signatures to recall KMT lawmakers, an extraordinary achievement that many believed would be enough to remove at
Behind the gloating, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) must be letting out a big sigh of relief. Its powerful party machine saved the day, but it took that much effort just to survive a challenge mounted by a humble group of active citizens, and in areas where the KMT is historically strong. On the other hand, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) must now realize how toxic a brand it has become to many voters. The campaigners’ amateurism is what made them feel valid and authentic, but when the DPP belatedly inserted itself into the campaign, it did more harm than good. The