Shifting paradigms

Day-to-day political changes can occur with remarkable speed as the Brexit campaign in the UK starkly illustrated this summer, but geopolitical changes tend to be far slower, tied as they are to evolutions in an individual nation’s foreign policy. Yet even the glacial movements of geopolitics can accelerate, and the subcontinent and South Asia are currently in fast-forwards mode geopolitically as the consequences of the American ‘pivot to the east’ play out.

America is looking to its interests in the South China Sea and counterbalancing the moves of China in that area. China has territorial ambitions over some islands in the South China Sea that would vastly expand its access to natural resources were they to be realised. China is also active in Pakistan with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Assuming this becomes a fully fledged reality, it will be a game changer for Pakistan and an economic powerhouse for China, generating billions of dollars in trade.

In the midst is India, and its strategic position, an accident of geography, renders it crucial in the developing powerplay. If America is to successfully project its power, it needs bases and facilities to do so, logistic support and friendly neighbours. Bases are expensive to build — so why not rent? The agreement recently signed between India and the US essentially makes such a provision, allowing mutual use of existing facilities in India of land, sea and airbases. Despite American assurances to the contrary, it is obvious that there is the potential — indeed we would say a certainty — that there will be a disturbance in delicate strategic balances for Pakistan as a consequence. America has already begun to marginalise Pakistan, blocking military assistance funds and not allowing the sale of F-16 aircraft — and compounding that by looking at the possibility of manufacturing F-16s in India as well. Pakistan diplomats having met with American envoys, here to smooth ruffled feathers, remain unconvinced, and rightly so, and view these developments with “concern and suspicion”. This is not the conspiracy theorists at work, this is hard-nosed Realpolitik. The plate-tectonics of geopolitics are not favourably aligned for Pakistan, and some nimble and decisive diplomatic footwork is urgently required.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1^st, 2016.

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