'Deterrence stability': Pakistan looks to China, Russia as US indulges India, says report

Pakistan's civil-military leaders reach out to Moscow, seeking to warm ties that have been frosty since Cold War

ISLAMABAD: With US President Barack Obama wrapping up a charm offensive trip to India in late January, Pakistan has seemingly found a soft corner in Russia — seeking military and energy assistance from a country against which it helped the US fight a proxy war, The Washington Post reported last week.

“Of course we are concerned,” an unnamed senior Pakistani military leader told the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. “The balance of power is being tipped toward India, and that is not good, and it’s been done with the help of the Western World. That is why we are looking at various markets, because conventional [military] parity is the only recipe for peace and stability.”

Islamabad has found in Moscow a partner interested in military and energy partnerships as the former seeks to counterbalance recent US moves which it claims unbalances 'deterrence stability in South Asia'.

“To be very honest, we think Obama has gone one step too far,” said Maria Sultan, chairwoman of the Islamabad-based South Asian Strategic Stability Institute.

Pakistan wants to purchase nearly three dozen Russian Mi-35 gunships and support for energy projects.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had visited Islamabad last November and signed a military cooperation agreement with Pakistani officials.

 

“The moves come as Pakistani leaders grow increasingly nervous that their traditional alliances could erode, if not crumble, in the coming years. For much of its history, Pakistan has been an ally of the United States, while Russia had stronger ties to India, even backing it during that country’s 1971 war with Pakistan. But now that most NATO troops have left next-door Afghanistan — and the Pakistani army is straining to overcome militants on its western border — officials here fear that the United States’ regional interest is tilting toward India, Pakistan’s eastern neighbor and arch-rival,” the article said.

However, the report notes that question marks remain on any deal with the Russians paying off.

Yury Barmin, a Russian foreign policy expert based in the United Arab Emirates, said he doubts Russia would risk its relationship with India by also selling arms to Pakistan. He said he suspects Putin, who visited New Delhi in December, is using Pakistan as leverage over the Indian government so it doesn’t get too close to the United States.”

“Pakistan’s historical mistake after its inception was to establish close ties with the United States but to ignore the Russians,” said Senator Haji Muhammad Adeel who chairs the Senate’s foreign relations committee. “We went to war with Russia in Afghanistan, and that brought us gifts of terrorism, extremism and drugs. Now Pakistan is trying to forge friendly ties with Russia to correct the mistakes of past.”

But Russia is not the only country Pakistan is looking towards. As Obama became the first US president to attend India's Republic Day parade, Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif was on an official tour of China.

“In another sign of the unease, Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Raheel Sharif, travelled to China last weekend to solidify long-standing military and economic ties between the two countries. China is Pakistan’s largest arms supplier, having sold or transferred it nearly $4 billion in weapons since 2006, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which monitors arms sales.”