Pakistan needs 'middle-power alliances' to navigate emerging world order, US-China rivalry

German professor says in the new bipolar system, countries will 'hedge' their bets and look for the 'best offer'

Pakistan would need to forge alliances and partnerships with "like-minded" middle powers to navigate the emerging world order and resist pressure to pick sides in the US-China rivalry.

These remarks were made by professor of security and defence policy at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich, Germany, Carlos Masala, in a seminar entitled “The Evolution of the International Order and Current Structural Changes” delivered on Friday at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) City Campus in Karachi.

Masala is the author of a provocatively titled 2025 book “If Russia Wins: A Scenario”, which has become a best-seller at a time when the war in Ukraine has caught the attention of the global media and readers alike. The book explores a hypothetical scenario in which Russia attacks a small Estonian town, and NATO fails to respond under its Article 5 obligation.

Exploring the Shifting Global Order

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The professor explained that in an increasingly bipolar international system where China and the US were superpowers, the pressure on Pakistan to "pick a side" would be "extremely high" because great powers have "tools of coercion for dragging countries into their orbit”.

The only way out for Pakistan to withstand this pressure, Masala argued, was to create as many "alliances and partnerships" with middle powers that did not want to be pressured to side with either Beijing or Washington on a permanent basis.

Read: A world of blocs: where Pakistan stands

The professor expounded: “Pakistan needs to form alliances with like-minded countries to be able to withstand pressure from great powers. In the recent Makkah pact, Pakistan saw a strategic vacuum which could elevate its own role and bring the country out of this kind of squeeze between India and China. Now, Pakistan hopes to play a more independent role in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East."

Speaking about Pakistan’s “tragedy of geography”, Masala mused that Pakistan, with a population of around 260 million, would have been a "superpower" if it had been geographically situated somewhere in Europe. Sandwiched between much larger neighbours, India and China, Pakistan was "unfortunately" only a middle power, the professor said.

Describing himself as a "structural realist", Masala pointed to the tectonic shifts that have accelerated over the past decade, which were part of what he described as the “fight for a new world order”.

The professor demarcated the world into two camps: "status quo powers and revisionist powers", explaining that the dividing line in the present era was not, as conventionally understood, between "democracies and authoritarian countries".

He expounded: “The dividing line is between status quo powers who want to preserve the liberal world order in one way or the other, and those who want to basically crush it down, and these are the revisionist powers.”

Turning to the debate on polarity in the international system, Masala clarified that according to the academic concept of polarity, an actor was a pole in the global system if it had overall economic and military capabilities which were bigger than those of other states. Using this logic, the professor reasoned that multipolarity in the present international system was an “illusion” because there was no empirical evidence to back the existence of several poles.

Read More: Leaders back a 'just multipolar world order'

The professor expounded that China’s rise could only be “delayed” but not prevented, and given the relative decline of the US, the future international system will "either be characterised by bipolarity or a weakened unipolarity".

He further made his case for a bipolar international system through a clever analogy: “The picture is that we still have an 800-pound gorilla in the room and that is the United States; we have a 720-pound gorilla in the room who would like to gain more weight, going up to 780 pounds. That is China. And all the rest are 50-pound monkeys jumping around.”

The professor proceeded to argue that the "new bipolarity" in the international system would not resemble the old bipolarity between the US and the Soviet Union, explaining that unlike the Cold War, an arms race with a focus on nuclear stockpiles would not dominate the current dynamic between the US and China.

Masala maintained that "geoeconomic rivalry and technological innovation" would instead serve as crucial factors in the bipolar competition between the two rival superpowers.

The professor added that unlike the Cold War, where countries fell neatly into one camp or another, in the current bipolar dispensation, most countries were “hedging their bets” and were looking for a “better offer” from either the US or China.

"If the best offer comes from Beijing, they go to Beijing. And if, in another case, the better offer comes from Washington, they go to Washington. Most of the countries don't want to be pressed into an alliance and become dependent on one of the two 800-pound gorillas."

While speaking about the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit to be held on November 18-19 in Shenzhen, the professor stated that the common idea of Russia, China and the US was to establish “spheres of influence”, drawing a parallel to the Yalta Conference of 1945 when the “Big Three” agreed to the division of Germany into four occupation zones.

In such a scenario, Masala argued, middle powers like Pakistan needed to “gang up”, referring to earlier comments made by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at Davos in January 2026, so that they could “face the pressure” exerted by great powers to make them a part of their "sphere of influence".

While responding to a question from The Express Tribune on whether the recent spate of hoax bomb threats and supermarket attacks across Europe were part of a sustained Russian destabilisation campaign, he replied that Russia was engaging in a “shadow war” to dilute support for Ukraine among European countries, although attribution remained difficult.

Also Read: EU foreign policy chief claims Russia planning 'more sabotage acts' against Europe

Responding to another question from the audience about whether the Ukraine crisis was primarily caused by NATO’s eastward expansion, Masala countered that Russia’s “imperial ambitions” and its territorial claims were driving the war in Ukraine.