The Great Game

 Acting US undersecretary for political affairs, John Bass, held delegation-level meetings in Islamabad, as President Biden's term winds down. 

Mr. Bass held meetings with the Foreign Secretary, Amna Baluch, the Deputy PM, and Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, and called on the COAS, Syed Asim Munir. 

The talks were wide-ranging and included bilateral mechanisms in trade, energy, security, health, climate change, and counter-terrorism.

Pakistan attaches great importance to upgrading bilateral defense and economic mechanisms and working towards building a broad-based and meaningful bilateral relationship, based on mutual respect. 

The American side emphasized expanding cooperation on economic and security issues, including countering terrorism and violent extremism. 

It also underscored the need to promote stability in the region, in a veiled reference to Kashmir and Afghanistan. 

It should be borne in mind that Afghanistan is where consensus and partnership will be built against Iran, putting pressure along its eastern Frontier from both Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the process also severing Iran as a seaport serving land-locked Central Asia. 

With militancy on the rise in KP and Balochistan once again, any such miscalculation on Pakistans part will destroy its relations with Central Asia, the SCO, Eurasia, and Russia, besides also fanning the flames of war in the Middle East, thereby putting its relationship with the Arabs under duress. 

India, on the other hand, would like to exploit precisely this weakness, engaging in asymmetric warfare all along this Frontier, and advocating for the development of the Russian Northern Sea Route to replace the Suez, thereby supplying Central Asia and Afghanistan primarily through the north. 

At the same time, India remains deeply entrenched in Kashmir, with large troop deployments giving Pakistan no choice but to remain wary and engaged all along its North Eastern sector. 

With disengagement between India and China along their Himalayan sector, Eurasia has all but fallen to the Russians, who now control the Asia Pacific through the Russia-India-China bloc. 

It is little wonder that the US had to make a hasty retreat from Afghanistan, after decades of war that destroyed the Afghan economy and infrastructure. 

With the closure of southern trade routes and with a war raging in Ukraine, should Central Asia and CSTO come under duress, there is every possibility of this war spreading throughout Europe. 

Therefore, Pakistan would be well advised to remain engaged in the economic realm with the US, only within the construct of prevailing Geo-Strategic realities, aiming at bringing stability globally, rather than on a regional level, by ensuring that it does not become a pawn in the great games being played between the US, Russia, China and Europe. 

The delegation-level meeting between the US and Pakistan coincided with ADB releasing USD 8billion, in USD 2 billion tranches annually, over 4 years.