The world at large has been taken aback by Islamabad’s conspicuous role as the only interlocutor between Washington, DC and Tehran in a conflict that has also engulfed Gulf countries hosting US bases, including Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait – and to a lesser extent Oman and Saudi Arabia.

Given US President Trump’s consistently inconsistent disposition – he has regularly delivered contradictory and inflammatory statements regarding the end of hostilities – Pakistan’s role has been outstanding by any standards and has been the only ray of hope in bringing the warring parties to the negotiating table. While Islamabad’s untiring efforts have been appreciated by many, its prominent position has bruised New Delhi’s self-aggrandisement and hubris.

For India, it is a hard pill to swallow Pakistan’s consistently mounting relevance on the global stage. The effect was so severe that it made Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar mad enough to utter exceedingly indecent and undiplomatic words, a shockingly pejorative term regarding Pakistan in fact. Pakistan’s Foreign Office befittingly responded that the usage of such terms “betrays a deeper sense of frustration”, and “when arguments run thin, invective appears to fill the gap”.

Whatever perceptions India or other stakeholders may have of Pakistan’s global relevance, the fact is that, despite the country’s internal weaknesses, no one can deny Pakistan’s perennial geopolitical significance in the international order. 

It is appropriate to cite Hathaway, who argues in his study titled ‘The Leverage Paradox: Pakistan and the United States’ that “by most standard measures of power – population size, GDP, size and capability of its military, possession of nuclear weapons – Pakistan stands toward the top in global rankings”.

The author asserts that “as Bruce Riedel has noted, if Pakistan were dropped into a different spot on the map – say, Latin America or Africa – it would be one of the dominant countries in its region” (p 117). Hence, for many doyens, Pakistan cannot be neglected in its significance to the regional and global geopolitical and security architecture.

During the two decades of the ‘war on terror’ and the intensification of the conflict at the domestic front inside Pakistan, the country witnessed unprecedented turmoil and destruction perpetrated by foreign proxies and terrorists. During these years, Pakistan started to be portrayed as the most dangerous place in the world. Besides negative media coverage, various publications also titled the country in ways that led readers to think the situation there is precarious and that the state and society are on the verge of inevitable collapse.

For example, one commentator starts his write-up in The Atlantic with this description: “with its ‘Islamic’ nuclear bomb, Taliban- and Al-Qaeda-infested borderlands, dysfunctional cities, and feuding ethnic groups, Pakistan may well be the world’s most dangerous country, a nuclear Yugoslavia-in-the-making” (Kaplan, 2009). Manuscripts printed during this era contained titles such as ‘Descent into Chaos’ (Rashid, 2008), ‘Armageddon in Islamabad’ (Riedel, 2009), ‘Pakistan: a hard country’ (Lieven, 2011), ‘Breakdown in Pakistan’ (Bano, 2012), ‘Avoiding Armageddon’ (Riedel, 2013), ‘The Pakistan Paradox’ (Jaffrelot, 2015), ‘Pakistan at the Crossroads’ (Jaffrelot, 2016), ‘Pakistan under siege’ (Afzal, 2018) and ‘Pakistan: courting the abyss’ (Devasher, 2018). These are just a few titles besides countless media reports portraying or foretelling an imminent doomsday for Pakistan.

There is no doubt that, since the birth of this country and throughout its turbulent history, the overall economic and political landscape has not improved much more than what the nation deserves, and the country is grappling with multiple crises today as it was in the late 1990s. Pakistan, since its independence in 1947, has had to face tumultuous years for the first four decades, including wars with India and the breakup of East Pakistan to become Bangladesh in 1971. No doubt, the country is still faced with a poly-crisis comprising domestic political, economic, governance and security challenges. Yet, as in the past, it is the nation’s resilience that enables Pakistan to emerge from the abyss.

To begin with, one of the key fortes of the country is the geographical location of Pakistan: a country located at the intersection of three regions comprising Central Asia, the Middle East and South Asia. Because of its distinctive location, Pakistan has remained an active player in global politics and has played a dynamic role in epoch-making historical events such as the cold-war era and in the ‘war on terror’ period.

For a long time, Pakistan has occupied a key position on the global stage due to its geography, demography and other factors (such as its strong military capabilities). For example, according to Chase, Hill, and Kennedy (1999), among the world’s 140 developing states, there is a group of nine pivotal states whose status and fates are likely to significantly affect regional and even global security. Pakistan is among these nine states (others are Indonesia, India, Turkiye, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, Algeria and Mexico).

Pakistan and these countries have mostly been considered “pivotal states” (Chase, Hill, & Kennedy, 1996, p33) – countries whose fate determines the survival and success of the surrounding region and ultimately the stability of the international system. Hence, “because of its position wedged between Afghanistan and India, as well as its Indian Ocean coastline, Pakistan will continue to be a lynchpin state both for the US and for China” (Sweijs, Oosterveld, Knowles, & Schellekens, 2014, p38).

While many policy pundits indicated that Pakistan’s significance would considerably diminish for the US, particularly after the departure of its troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, the reality is that Pakistan appears to be a pivotal state in the current crisis. The country has emerged as the only actor to mediate between the US and Iran, as both countries have trust in Islamabad.

In recent years, Pakistan’s foreign policy has been remarkably successful in maintaining robust ties with both Beijing and Washington as well as with Tehran and important Gulf capitals. Islamabad’s engagement with Beijing is built on decades of mutual trust, and the relationship is multifaceted, encompassing deep defence collaboration, joint military projects, intelligence cooperation, expanded trade and economic cooperation under CPEC and Pakistan’s status as the largest recipient of Chinese arms exports since 2008. All these make Islamabad-Beijing ties quite unique without a formal defence treaty or military alliance.

At the same time, against the backdrop of Trump’s ‘America First’ policy, there is no doubt that since his second arrival at the Oval Office, Pakistan has successfully engaged his administration. Islamabad has been remarkably successful in earning Trump’s accolades at several forums on multiple occasions. It is still a long shot as to what extent Pakistan can broker a much-awaited and direly needed peace deal, contingent on the behaviour of Iran and the US

The very fact that both Tehran and Washington have reposed trust in Islamabad and that Pakistan has maintained a channel of communication between the two countries signifies Pakistan’s extraordinary diplomatic efforts and stature.

The writer teaches at the University of Malakand. He can be reached at: [email protected]

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer’s own and don’t necessarily reflect Geo.tv’s editorial policy.

Originally published in The News