Switching alliances, shifting blocs, and retooling policy are integral to the conduct of international relations. For decades, Pakistan has followed a predictable trajectory in the execution of its foreign policy. At the outset of the Cold War, it allied with the Western bloc to secure its survival. The 70s saw Pakistan navigating Cold War pressures and leaning toward both the Soviet Union and China. In the ensuing period, it aligned once more with Western powers to check Soviet influence in Afghanistan. After Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. sanctions in the unipolar world left Pakistan steering through headwinds against the backdrop of a power vacuum. In the aftermath of 9/11, Pakistan returned to a partnership with the United States under the banner of the Global War on Terror. In the wake of the Abbottabad operation and against escalating U.S.-China tensions, Pakistan decisively pivoted toward China. Throughout the journey in the labyrinth of global politics, the trajectory of external affairs was predominantly shaped by binary choices. That long pattern of binary choices is now breaking down. Today’s global landscape is no longer split into fixed camps, but has shifted toward what scholar Amitav Acharya calls a multiplex order. The word “multiplex” is taken from the movie theatre, where several screens simultaneously display various films without controlling the tastes of the viewers. Similarly, the multiplex world order rejects hegemony and offers states multiple avenues for engagement. Unlike the bipolar or the unipolar world system, this order is decentralized, multidimensional, and unpredictable. No single state holds global dominance; instead, power is shared among regional players, middle powers, non-state entities, and transnational actors.

In such an order, global leadership is not just about who is biggest or strongest: it varies across domains and is exercised according to specific agendas, with different states leading on different issues at the same time. Given these evolving patterns of global arrangements, Pakistan’s foreign relations reflect multiplex diplomacy — a strategy defined by diplomatic maneuvering with multiple powers, including rivals, through agenda-specific settings. Rather than establishing permanent alliances, Islamabad now prefers omni-alignment, which serves its interests in multiple arenas at once. Instead of ideological commitment, it manifests a pragmatic approach.

To appreciate what is distinctive about this approach, multiplexity needs to be distinguished more clearly from the concepts that usually dominate discussion. Classic multipolarity, rooted in realist thought, emphasizes the distribution of material power among several great-power poles and the balance-of-power contests that follow. Recent discussion of “multipolarization,” reflected for instance in the Munich Security Report 2025, captures the diffusion of influence to a larger number of players together with growing polarisation between and within states. Multiplexity goes further. Drawing on Amitav Acharya’s framework, this perspective shifts focus away from simply counting poles toward a decentralized system of overlapping orders. In this scenario, outcomes are shaped by middle powers, smaller states, non-state groups, and transnational networks, and leadership becomes issue-specific and concurrent. Interaction capacity matters as much as raw material power. The result is less a chessboard of competing superpowers than a system of multiple stages operating at the same time.

Pakistan’s practice of omni-alignment also sits apart from related foreign-policy concepts. Classic non-alignment was largely an ideological and moral refusal to join Cold War military blocs. Multi-alignment, a term that has gained currency especially in contemporary Indian discourse, points to pragmatic engagement with several partners on different issues without formal bloc membership. Strategic hedging, widely discussed in the context of secondary states navigating U.S.–China rivalry, typically involves mixed signals and risk-management tactics aimed at avoiding a clear choice while extracting benefits from both sides.........

© Paradigm Shift