From Russia, with Love

As the West-led, post-WWII global order undergoes a major transformation amidst turbulence and volatility, the building blocks of an alternative worldview are evident in Pakistan's vicinity. Recent journeys to Beijing and Moscow have confirmed the contours of a huge transition, driven by decline of the West and rise of the East. As President Xi Jinping famously told President Vladimir Putin during a visit to Moscow on March 22, 2023, "Right now, there are changes, the likes of which we haven't seen for 100 years, and we are the ones driving these changes together." These changes refer to the tectonic shifts in the global balance of economic, political, military, scientific and technological power, from the West to the East, shifts which are inexorable and irreversible.

In this context, Pakistan's military, political and diplomatic victory over India in last month's 16 hours of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation is also having ramifications that go beyond the region, changing the South Asian geopolitical landscape. Perceptions of India and Pakistan, in the eyes of allies and adversaries, have been altered. The big picture presents an outlook that has pluses for Pakistan, providing Pakistan with strategic space, in an altered geopolitical landscape. Three new realities in terms of relationships among four key regional powers - China, Russia, Pakistan and India - are clearly evident.

First, the China-Russia alliance is rock-solid, cemented by their adversaries attempts to ignite a new Cold War, as well as Trump's failed trade and tariff war. Both Beijing and Moscow are of the view that the Western world, centred on the EuroAtlantic, with NATO as its military arm, is determined to 'contain' both of these giants, in Asia and Europe respectively. Hence, the possibility of a 'Reverse Nixon' is non-existent. 'Reverse Nixon' is the naive notion peddled by some in the Washington Establishment, who felt that just as President Nixon, in the 1970s, had delinked China from the Soviet Union to form a Sino-US alliance that ultimately proved decisive in the defeat of the Soviet Union, a similar manoeuvre now by the US to delink Russia from China could jointly pressure China. Both China and Russia are now deeply committed to jointly building Eurasia as the global strategic centre for both geopolitics and geoeconomics.

Second, the Pak-China strategic partnership has been solidified in the recent struggle in a new qualitative manner, as rock solid as the China-Russia relationship. Reinforcing this is the fact that Moscow no longer views Pakistan through Indian lenses, and there's a new-found respect and liking for Pakistan in the Russian political establishment. Russia is now ready to build a closer rapport with Pakistan, an outreach in which Russian disillusionment with India is also a factor.

Third, after meeting Russia's highly experienced Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, and listening to his landmark 29 May speech at the Eurasian Forum in Perm, Russia, where, for the first time, he criticised India's role in the Western sponsored military arrangements like the Indo-Pacific Strategy and QUAD, in front of an audience that included a dozen BJP parliamentarians and party activists, shows that the first cracks have appeared in the bond between Delhi and Moscow. Trump's India-specific embarrassing statements (calling for reviving the Kashmir dispute and rehyphenating Pakistan with India), Pakistan's May 10 victory over India and China's May 14 announcement of giving Indian-occupied Arunachal Pradesh a new Chinese name, Zangnan have added to India's isolation and discomfiture. The Big Three - US, China and Russia - are now collectively equidistant from India.

The narrow-based, insular, divisive Hindutva regime in Delhi offers limited appeal to the Big Three, more so, since its arrogance and hubris were decisively punctured by Pakistan's demolition of the 'Shining India' military myth in May. No wonder it is Whining India now, carrying on a chorus of cribbing and complaining about Pakistan in world capitals.

A key change in the Russia-India relations is that, irrespective of the regime ruling New Delhi, Russia also had a deep ingress in the Indian political establishment. Now with a weakened Left in India, almost a non-relationship of Moscow with the Congress Party and Kremlin's discomfiture with the ruling BJP's deep-seated pro-Americanism, Russia's political bond with India has weakened. Russia has prioritised ties with China and is willing to seek greener pastures in South Asia with a more confident and reliable Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Lavrov's speech at the Eurasian Forum on May 29 had three key planks:

1) Building new security architecture in the Eurasian continent (largest and wealthiest) is necessary given 'approaching end of centuries-long Western dominance and advent of multipolar era', with Eurasia replacing EuroAtlantic as the center of gravity in global affairs.

2) Within Eurasia, the centerpiece is where the region's four nuclear powers - China, Russia, Pakistan and India - are located, with Indian participation in the Western military schemes like Indo-Pacific Strategy and QUAD causing discomfiture to both Beijing and Moscow.

3) "Four years after its ignominious retreat from Afghanistan, NATO is once again seeking new points of entry into Afghanistan."

However, the most telling of Lavrov's remarks was his unvarnished critique of India's participation in QUAD, as during preliminary discussions with the Russians, India "emphasised that their intent was confined exclusively to trade, economic and other peaceful domains of collaboration". But to the surprise of Russia, India did the opposite of what they promised to Russia: "in practice, however, the QUAD nations (India, US, Japan and Australia) are already endeavouring, with notable persistence, to organise naval (military) exercises!" In another first, Lavrov specifically attacked the Indo-Pacific Strategy, linking it directly to India's role, saying that such a nomenclature "had never existed and NATO made it up to drag India into their anti-China schemes". In other words, India is being viewed in Moscow as a willing accomplice of and collaborator in the West's anti-China games, which are synonymous with anti-Russia policies.

Given this context, Pakistan has strategic space and a unique opportunity to outflank India in the heart of Eurasia. With better ties now emerging with Iran and Afghanistan, a solid and stable relationship with China and a sympathetic perspective from Moscow, plus an assertive South Asia that has rejected Indian hegemony, Pakistan should consolidate its gains, with a healing touch at home and a region-centric foreign policy that leverages its role, relationships and respect into strategic dividends for the country. These developments provide an opportunity for a strategic reset in foreign policy: with Russia; with our Western neighbours like Iran and Afghanistan; and with the smaller states of South Asia. The last such opportunity that arose for a strategic reset with Russia was after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, but it was squandered due to the flawed obsession with 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan.

Let it not be said "we never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."