India, Aug. 20 -- India and Pakistan are at it again - and the immediate cause remains a country in the West. Coinciding with US Ambassador Sergio Gor's visit to Jammu and Kashmir where he made a statement that many see as affirming India's territorial integrity, a separate spate of tit-for-tat diplomacy has been playing out between the neighbours. In Islamabad's removal of parking poles from the Indian High Commission and New Delhi's reciprocal act of removing the queueing lines outside the Pakistani High Commission, what is being ignored is the import of Gor's statement per se.

To begin with, rather than calling J&K an integral part of India, the US ambassador chose to designate the region as "an important part". This taxonomical disti...