Is Pakistan ‘pro-China’ or ‘pro-US’? Or neither? Islamabad would like the world to believe it has a neutral position on what is clearly the gradual and muscular formation of an emerging global political bipolarity that looks set to rival the Cold War waged by Washington and Moscow in the later decades of the last century.

Indeed, Prime Minister Imran Khan speaking at a foreign policy conclave in Islamabad last week was at pains to emphasize that Pakistan is determined not to be partisan. “We don’t want to get trapped in this new Cold War like we did in the past,” which, he said, had cost Pakistan dearly. Instead, he offered to mediate between Washington and Beijing to help scale down their “needless but harmful confrontation.”

Khan’s statement indicates Pakistani diplomacy is re-assuming ambiguity on international issues that come with a bilateral impact on which it is supposed to take public positions but doesn’t want to, anymore. His statement is also significant because he has been complaining of not being contacted by President Joe Biden even once since assuming office in Washington. And yet as soon as Biden invited Pakistan to the hyped up Democracy Summit, he promptly declined the invitation on its eve. Hence the gap between how Pakistan articulated this neutrality and practiced it.

The media in Pakistan immediately read Khan’s snub to the US as a thinly veiled expression of solidarity with China and Russia who had not been invited and also fumed at the rebuff. Tellingly, the Beijing foreign office spokesman tweeted: “Pakistan declined to attend the Democracy Summit. A real iron brother!” For Islamabad, this was hardly an expression of avoiding ‘bloc politics!’

Pakistan needs a more representative foreign policy developed by the parliament. 

Adnan Rehmat

Pakistan declining to attend the Biden summit indicates it is aligning its diplomatic position with the changing geopolitics in the region where both Beijing and Moscow are pushing against American priorities related to both Afghanistan where it seeks to guide the future of Taliban at the helm in Kabul and India, with whom a strategic association is deepening into a distinctly anti-Beijing partnership.

This will have implications for Islamabad in both the medium and long terms. Pakistan’s stuttering economy needs budgetary support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and an unburdening from the chokehold of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) seeking an end to borderline sanctions that are preventing economic progress. Both IMF and FATF are influenced by the US, India and their allies. Pakistan’s snub to the summit, where India attended, may translate into delayed relief, if not worsening conditions for it. 

And yet Pakistan is seeking to invest its confidence in the expected economic bonanza of the next phase evolution of the $55 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) under which a frenetic five-year infrastructure development is about to give way to operationalized commerce of energy and trade. Islamabad also is pinning hopes on two energy projects – the $8 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline and the $1.5 billion Central Asia-South Asia (CASA) electricity project frowned upon by Washington.

Islamabad hopes that closer foreign policy alignment with Beijing and Moscow, with their stakes in these projects in the shape of investments or benefits, will help it tide through energy shortages as well as help unleash a complementary east-west trade corridor and turn the country into a transit economy. Islamabad and Moscow are already engaged in a strategic relationship building that provides a fillip to Pakistan’s geo-strategic calculations.

But all these Pakistani aspirations of bloc sidestepping or even bloc bridging may be a tad fanciful and easier said than done. True, Islamabad in the 1970’s had helped Washington and Beijing in strategic engagement – as also reminded by Khan last week in his address – but the global geo-political and geo-strategic conditions are a world apart now. Skipping global summits that can help Pakistan project its democratic credentials and enlarge the margins of multilateral global engagements in favor of China will only end up harming Pakistan.

Such decisions – already unrepresentative in terms of not being piloted by the elected parliament – are only ending up clouding how Islamabad is viewed from abroad. Ditching the ‘democracy summit’ – too late to reverse now – was a strategic mistake. This because it has ended up in Pakistan becoming more formally recognized as not prioritizing its own democratic aspirations and credentials and instead being recognized as a de facto supporter of the polities of China and Russia. 

By proxying its approach thus, Islamabad has already supported one bloc over another. Pakistan needs a more representative foreign policy developed by the parliament. The people of Pakistan support engagement, not estrangement. The foreign policy should reflect this. 

*Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.

Twitter: @adnanrehmat1