…India’s, Russia’s, and possibly even China’s interests could be adversely affected
By Andrew Korybko
It was assessed in January that “The Pakistani Regime Destroyed Their Country & Betrayed Its National Interests For Nothing”, but that appraisal has since drastically changed due to the Trump Administration’s unexpectedly hard line towards India and how deftly Pakistan then played its cards with him. Regarding the first, despite the high-level Indophiles on his team, Trump is trying to subordinate India just like Biden before him through the means and for the reasons that were explained here.
In brief, he wants to stall India’s rise as a Great Power so as to decelerate the decline of the US’ unipolar hegemony, to which end he threatened to modify or rescind its sanctions waiver for Chabahar, is playing hardball with it on trade talks, and humiliated India by claiming to have mediated peace with Pakistan. These surprising sequential developments strongly suggest that he envisages reshaping South Asian geopolitics as explained here, which would benefit Pakistan at India’s expense.
This last point leads to Pakistan’s role in Trump’s plans. He’ll have to cut a deal with it if he’s serious about returning US forces to Afghanistan’s Bagram Airbase like he earlier declared that he wants to do. His unprecedented meeting with Field Marshal Asim Munir last month, the first time that a US President exclusively hosted the Pakistani military chief, suggests that the US will continue ignoring human rights and democracy issues in Pakistan while working towards an understanding on its alleged ICBM programme.
These concessions could be in exchange for military and/or economic access to Afghanistan. Other rewards might include preferential critical mineral and crypto deals of the sort that the Financial Times wrote about in their report about how Pakistan is wooing Trump. Moreover, Pakistan is trying to strike an oil deal with the US, which might lead to it abandoning such talks and even other deals with Russia if successful. These carrots are being dangled as the broader region is undergoing significant changes.
The North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) isn’t as viable as before due to joint Israeli-US bombings greatly weakening Iran and newfound Russian-Azerbaijani tensions jeopardizing this route’s planned Western Caspian rail branch. Not only could this harm Russia and India’s bilateral trade plans, which could make it easier to divide and thus subordinate them, but it could also make the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Uzbekistan (PAKAFUZ) railway project Russia’s only overland corridor to the Indian Ocean.
The restoration of US influence over Pakistan could thus lead to the latter controlling Russia’s access to there via PAKAFUZ on the former’s behalf if the NSTC becomes totally unviable. Additionally, if Afghan-Pakistani ties improve, then joint US-Pakistani influence could surge into Central Asia via that country to complement the expansion of Turkish influence there via Azerbaijan to maximally contain Russia on its southern front. Pakistan would prospectively supplant India as the US’ top regional partner in that event.
This could lead to the US once again leveraging “Major Non-NATO Ally” Pakistan as a means for coercing India into concessions or containing it if Delhi doesn’t concede. If Trump’s self-declared “total reset” with China works out, then those three could coordinate the aforesaid pressure campaign, while Pakistan might be coerced by the US into distancing itself from China if it fails. In any case, the US-Pakistani rapprochement could have far-reaching geostrategic consequences, hence the need to monitor it.
