Pakistan’s Strategic Stability Vs India’s Volatile US-Russia Balancing In 2025 |
South Asian geopolitics, where alliances double-cross about as much as the shifting desert sands, India’s geopolitical hokey-pokey between Washington and Moscow reveals a deep strategic confusion. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's welcome of Russian President Vladimir Putin for the 23rd India-Russia Annual Summit on 4–5 December reflects this pendulation: grand pronouncements of raising bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2030, unbroken fuel supplies despite U.S. sanctions, and new pacts on joint fertiliser plants and the movement of workers. However, weeks earlier, on 31 October, the U.S. Secretary of Defence signed off on a revamped 10-year defence plan for India by assuring enhanced Quad naval harmonisation through the November Malabar exercises as well as fortress Major Defence Partner status under Strategic Trade Authorisation.
This is no elegant multi-alignment; it’s dodgeball on steroids, powered by raw transnationalism, hovering cheap Russian crude to let imports surge and propel trade to $68.72 billion, while pursuing American jet engines and logistics pacts to plug military lacunae. Contrast this with Pakistan’s rock-like mooring in Beijing: the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), re-inaugurated in October 2025 as an interconnected jugular vein, and its Phase-II instantiation reprised, complemented with a revised Long-Term Plan within 90 days that weaved together “Pakistan’s strategic planning” or its 5Es framework—exports, environment, energy, equity and empowerment—with the Himalayan leap of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan. Here, predictability is not a buzzword; it’s the foundation of national security, a fortress against the storms of great-power rivalry.
Pakistan’s alliances reek of dogged endurance, a process not unlike existential threats and economic sieges in a cauldron. As India hatches schemes for quick concessions (India does want more favourable trade terms with the United States and European Union, among others), such as its military agreement with Russia last month that added to a 10-year $33 billion Rosneft energy arrangement extending from late 2024, even while American tariffs hover like storm clouds, Islamabad’s relationship with Beijing beats on steadily. Jon D Woods: The 26 September JCC meeting brought to the CPEC new glory, reptilian tentacles of hawkish cooperation slithering across Central Asia for third-party participation, while yanking in billions for Gwadar port enhancements and green energy grid tissue veins that will deliver 30% of Pakistan’s energy needs by late 2025.
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