Many reams of paper have been spent trying to decipher the mind of Donald Trump, the US President, and the policies his administration chooses. Yet for every metric ton of paper used, another has to be used the next day, when analysts scramble to square his new comments which contradict the last ones.

In this new upside-down world, journalists and academics have started practicing an odd kind of cognitive dissonance; where the actual words coming out of the president’s mouth are to be disregarded, and scattered statements coming from state officials are to be used to piece together what his administration is after. Even this practice has his limitations, being the mercurial figure that he is, the US President can overrule and change established policy positions propounded by his administration’s officials on a whim – and given the fact that he is the President, his whims carry the weight of the state.

It is with this communication limbo in mind – and a through understanding of Trump’s boastful, off-the-cuff personality – we can finally begin to approach US policymaking; and even then the experts urge us to not lean too hard on these predictions.

However, this has not stopped many in the Subcontinent from taking Donald Trump’s words on face value and interpreting deep seated policy positions behind them. The US President’s meeting with Prime Minister Imran Khan, immediately following his meeting with the Indian Prime Minister, has sparked heated speculation, with people comparing optics, tonal variations and even handshakes to try to find what Trump’s contradictory stances mean for South-Asian politics.

The underwhelming answer remains, that despite all of Trump’s proactive diplomacy, these new meetings have changed nothing and will probably change nothing. Trump perceives himself to be a dealmaker and negotiator extraordinaire, and has tried to engage with troublesome issues by engaging with their leaders on a personal basis before – the short lived Kim Jong-un affair and the offer to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to break the Middle East impasse come to mind. However, failing to set real, tangible groundwork for any of these meetings has kept all this “diplomacy” superficial.

This same superficiality besets the US President’s attempts to solve the Kashmir issue, which is propounded by the fact the US vested interests see no reason to change the status quo - India is a useful counterweight in the China equation and Pakistan a necessary partner in Afghanistan. There is no need to rock the boat.

Therefore South Asian analysts would do well to treat the US President like many in his country do – not take him too seriously.