The last time India and Pakistan faced off in a military confrontation, in 2019, U.S. officials detected enough movement in the nuclear arsenals of both nations to be alarmed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was awakened in the middle of the night. He worked the phone “to convince each side that the other was not preparing for nuclear war,” he wrote in his memoir.

上一次印度和巴基斯坦的军事交锋是在2019年，当时美国官员察觉到两国的核武调动已经到了足以令人担忧的程度。国务卿迈克·庞皮欧半夜被叫醒。他在回忆录中写到，自己通过电话“说服双方，让他们相信对方并没有在为核战争做准备”。

That clash quickly cooled after initial skirmishing. But six years later, the two South Asian rivals are again engaged in military conflict after a deadly terrorist attack against tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir. And this time there is a new element of uncertainty as the region’s most important military alliances have been redrawn.

经过一开始的小规模交火，那次冲突很快就平息了。但六年后，在印度控制的克什米尔地区发生了一起针对游客的致命恐怖袭击事件，这两个南亚对手随即再次陷入军事冲突。而这次，由于该地区最重要的军事联盟已重新划定，出现了新的不确定因素。

Changing patterns in the flow of arms illustrate the new alignments in this particularly volatile corner of Asia, where three nuclear powers — India, Pakistan and China — stand in uneasy proximity.

武器流动模式的变化体现了在亚洲这个特别动荡的地区的新联盟关系，印度、巴基斯坦和中国这三个核大国在这里比邻而处，关系却格外不安。

India, a traditionally nonaligned country that has shed its history of hesitance toward the United States, has been buying billions of dollars in equipment from the United States and other Western suppliers. At the same time, India has sharply reduced purchases of low-cost arms from Russia, its Cold War-era ally.

传统上不结盟的印度已经摆脱了过去对美国的犹豫态度，一直在从美国和其他西方供应商那里购买价值数十亿美元的装备。与此同时，该国大幅减少了从其冷战盟友俄罗斯那里购买的廉价武器。

Pakistan, whose relevance to the United States has waned since the end of the war in Afghanistan, is no longer buying the American equipment that the United States once encouraged it to acquire. Pakistan has instead turned to China for the vast majority of its military purchases.

自阿富汗战争结束以来，巴基斯坦对美国的重要性有所下降，巴基斯坦已不再购买美国曾鼓励其采购的美国装备，转而向中国采购绝大多数军事装备。

These connections have injected superpower politics into South Asia’s longest-running and most intractable conflict.

这些联系将超级大国政治的因素注入了南亚这个持续时间最长、最棘手的冲突中。

The United States has cultivated India as a partner in countering China, while Beijing has deepened its investment in its advocacy and patronage of Pakistan as India has grown closer to the United States.

美国将印度培养成对抗中国的伙伴，而随着印度与美国关系的密切，北京加大了对巴基斯坦的支持和资助力度。

At the same time, relations between India and China have deteriorated in recent years over competing territorial claims, with clashes breaking out between the two militaries at times. And relations between the world’s two biggest powers, the United States and China, have hit a nadir as President Trump has launched a trade war against Beijing.

与此同时，近年来，印度和中国之间的关系因领土争端关系恶化，两国军队不时爆发冲突。并且，由于特朗普总统对中国发动了贸易战，世界上两个最大的国家——美国和中国之间的关系已降至最低点。

This combustible mix shows how complex and messy alliances have become as the post-World War II global order has fractured. The volatility is compounded by South Asia’s history of frequent military confrontations, with armed forces on both sides that are prone to mistakes, increasing the risk that an escalation could get out of hand.

这一切综合在一起，形成了一触即发的局面，显示随着二战后全球秩序的破裂，联盟关系变得多么复杂和混乱。南亚频繁的军事对峙历史加剧了这种动荡，双方的武装部队容易失误，增加了冲突升级失控的风险。

印度近年添置的美国武器包括AH-64E攻击直升机， 图为2019年帕坦科特的一次入役仪式上的该型直升机。

“The U.S. is now central to India’s security interests, while China increasingly plays a comparable role in Pakistan,” said Ashley Tellis, a former diplomat who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

卡内基国际和平基金会的高级研究员、前外交官阿什利·泰利斯说：“美国现在对印度的安全利益至关重要，而中国也在巴基斯坦日益发挥着类似的作用。”

As India now takes military action against Pakistan, it has had the United States on its side more forcefully than ever in recent years.

如今，在印度对巴基斯坦采取军事行动之际，美国对印度的支持已经达到近年来的最高水平。

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India spoke with both Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the initial days after the April 22 terrorist attack in Kashmir. The strong backing voiced by Trump administration officials was seen by many officials in New Delhi as a green light for India’s plan to retaliate against Pakistan, even if U.S. officials urged restraint.

在克什米尔4月22日的恐怖袭击事件发生后的最初几天里，印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪分别与特朗普和副总统JD·万斯通了电话。许多新德里的官员认为，特朗普政府官员支持印度的高调言论是在示意印度可以对巴基斯坦进行报复，尽管美国官员呼吁保持克制。

An indication of the changing dynamics was the conspicuous absence of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as Mr. Modi took calls from more than a dozen world leaders in the days after the terrorist attack. The Russian foreign minister spoke with his Indian counterpart a week after the attack, and Mr. Modi and Mr. Putin finally spoke this week, officials said.

其中一个体现这种格局变化的事例是，在恐怖袭击发生后的几天里，莫迪与十几位世界领导人通电话，但显然俄罗斯总统普京不在其列。官员们表示，袭击事件发生一周后，俄罗斯外长与印度外长通了电话，而莫迪和普京本周终于进行了交谈。

For its part, China has led public support for Pakistan, describing it as an “ironclad friend and all-weather strategic cooperative partner.”

中国则公开支持巴基斯坦，称其为“铁杆朋友和全天候战略合作伙伴”。

These trends could increasingly be reflected in military conflicts.

这些趋势可能会越来越多地体现在军事冲突中。

“If you think about what a future conflict between India and Pakistan might look like, it would increasingly look like India fighting with U.S. and European platforms and Pakistan fighting with Chinese platforms,” said Lyndsey Ford, a former senior U.S. defense official who is currently a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation America. “The close security partners of both countries have evolved significantly in the last decade.”

“如果你想想印度和巴基斯坦未来的冲突可能是什么样子，它越来越像是印度用美国和欧洲的平台作战，而巴基斯坦用中国的平台作战，”前美国高级国防官员、现任美国观察家研究基金会高级研究员的林赛·福特说。“在过去十年里，两国的紧密安全伙伴关系发生了重大变化。”

中国国家主席习近平2月在北京会见了巴基斯坦总统阿西夫·阿里·扎尔达里。

As Pakistan’s importance to the United States has declined, it has turned to China, which has long offered an open embrace.

随着对美国的重要性下降，巴基斯坦转向了一直向它张开怀抱的中国。

Beijing, which was the source of only 38 percent of Pakistan’s weapons in the mid-2000s, has provided about 80 percent over the past four years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which closely studies global weapons flows.

据密切研究全球武器流动的斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所称，在21世纪中期，北京提供的武器只占巴基斯坦武器来源的38%，而在过去四年里，这一比例已达到约80%。

At the same time, India has slashed its dependence on Russian weapons by more than half. Between 2006 and 2010, about 80 percent of India’s major weapons came from Russia. Over the past four years, that figure has fallen to about 38 percent, with more than half of Indian imports coming from the United States and allies like France and Israel.

与此同时，印度对俄罗斯武器的依赖减少了一半以上。2006年至2010年间，印度大约80%的主要武器来自俄罗斯。在过去四年里，这一数字已降至约38%，印度一半以上的武器进口来自美国以及法国和以色列等盟友。

The one area of exception for Pakistan’s frost with the United States is the F-16 program. Pakistan has expanded its F-16 arsenal over the past two decades, and the Biden administration pushed through a contract worth nearly $400 million for service and maintenance of the fighter jets.

巴基斯坦与美国关系冷淡的一个例外领域是F-16项目。在过去20年里，巴基斯坦扩大了其F-16战机的储备，拜登政府还促成了一项价值近4亿美元的战斗机维修和保养合同。

U.S. officials worry that with the hyper-nationalism in both India and Pakistan, where two well-stocked militaries operate in a tight air corridor and amid mutual suspicion, even the smallest of mistakes or exceeding of orders could lead to catastrophic escalations.

美国官员担心，由于印度和巴基斯坦的极端民族主义情绪，两国装备精良且彼此猜疑的军队在狭小的空中走廊行动，即使是最小的失误或抗命行事都可能导致灾难性的局势升级。

“A crisis where you have cross-border airstrikes and an aerial dogfight, like we saw in 2019, carries significant escalation risks,” said Ms. Ford, the former U.S. defense official. “And that’s all the more problematic when it involves two nuclear-armed neighbors.”

“像我们在2019年所看到的那样，跨境空袭和空中缠斗的危机具有重大升级风险，”前美国国防官员福特说。“当涉及到的是两个拥有核武器的邻国时，问题就更加严重了。”