How Pakistan Turned Praise Into Geopolitical Leverage |
Let me begin with a salute. Not mine—Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s. Standing beside Donald Trump in Sharm el-Sheikh last October, at the Gaza peace summit watched by most of the world, Sharif turned to the American president, raised his hand in a formal gesture, and declared Trump “the man this world needed most at this point in time.” He then announced, to the visible delight of the man beside him, that Pakistan was nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for the second time in four months. Most observers either cringed or laughed. I found myself taking notes instead.
Because what looked, on the surface, like a small country embarrassing itself before a powerful patron was, on closer inspection, something considerably more deliberate. I have been watching Pakistan’s foreign policy long enough to recognise when Rawalpindi and Islamabad are reading from the same script. What I was watching in that Egyptian resort town was not desperation; it was strategy. A strategy I call flattery as a policy tool: the calculated, sustained investment in one man’s ego as an instrument of Pakistan’s geopolitical rehabilitation.
The approach had been building quietly since May 2025. When India launched Operation Sindoor and the two nuclear neighbours edged towards a confrontation that genuinely frightened chancelleries from Beijing to Brussels, it was Trump who declared a ceasefire on May 10 and publicly claimed credit for stopping a war. Pakistan, wisely and with remarkable discipline, said nothing to contradict him.
Sharif thanked Trump. Field Marshal Asim Munir exercised the restraint that earned him an invitation to the White House, where Trump said, “I love Pakistan” and called the meeting an honour. India disputed the American role furiously. Pakistan let Trump keep the trophy.
That was the exchange at the heart of this strategy: give Trump the narrative he craves, and in return, inherit the access, the warmth, and, crucially, the reputational stake that Washington now has in Pakistan’s success.
Because once Trump called Munir “my favourite field marshal” in public, and once Sharif praised him on live television, the American president’s prestige was quietly tied to Pakistan’s standing. For a man who guards his brand above all else, that is a form of leverage no treaty could have created.
And then the Strait of Hormuz closed. On 28 February, American and Israeli airstrikes on Iran set off the energy shock the world had long feared but never quite believed would arrive. Iran shuttered the strait, through which nearly 20 million barrels of oil pass daily—roughly a fifth of everything the world consumes. Oil prices lurched towards levels not seen since the 1970s.
Whether Pakistan has what it takes to walk through them to convert a warm personal relationship into lasting institutional standing, to be trusted as the honest broker long after the applause fades, is something this approach alone cannot answer
Whether Pakistan has what it takes to walk through them to convert a warm personal relationship into lasting institutional standing, to be trusted as the honest broker long after the applause fades, is something this approach alone cannot answer
Goldman Sachs had warned that Brent crude could reach $110 even with a partial closure; Bloomberg began modelling scenarios that could push it to almost double that level. In Pakistan alone, petrol prices jumped to an all-time high, prompting businesses and educational institutions to go online. Across Asia, fuel was being rationed and hoarded. The global economy was staring at an inflationary wound whose recovery would take years.
And into this crisis walked Pakistan, not scrambling for relevance, but already positioned for it. Early in the conflict, Islamabad did something no other capital had: it got both Washington and Tehran to agree to a two-week ceasefire. All formal negotiations between the two sides were to run through Pakistan. Munir was in Tehran just days ago, meeting the Iranian parliament speaker, the president, and the Revolutionary Guard’s operational command, then briefing Trump. The American president has reportedly spoken of signing a final deal in Islamabad itself.
So, has the strategy worked? Largely, yes. That much must be said honestly and without the reflexive cynicism that sometimes passes for sophistication in our commentariat. Pakistan has gone from a country that Washington treated with barely concealed impatience to the host of what may be the most consequential nuclear negotiations in a generation. That is not nothing. It is, in fact, extraordinary, and the architects of this approach deserve credit for reading the American president with far greater accuracy than most of their regional counterparts managed.
As for the current situation, I have questions, and readers deserve to hear them plainly. A diplomacy built around the personal warmth of one uniquely transactional president is, by definition, only as durable as that warmth. When our own defence minister called Israel “evil” during the very weeks Islamabad was claiming neutrality, the contradiction nearly unravelled months of careful positioning.
Both sides have already violated the ceasefire. The second round of talks is already underway. And a country hosting the world’s most delicate negotiations while simultaneously dependent on IMF bailouts and carrying a fractured domestic consensus is walking a very narrow ledge.
The deeper question is structural. The strategy, as I have described it, is one of access, not of power. Access is precious, and Pakistan has used it remarkably well. But the kind of power that sustains a mediating role across administrations, across crises, across the inevitable moment when Trump is gone and a different Washington takes over—that requires institutions, economic weight, and a consistency of purpose that Pakistan has historically struggled to maintain.
Yet I want to end not on doubt but on acknowledgement. There is a great deal to recommend in what this government and this military establishment have pulled off in the past year—considerably more than the decades of Pakistani foreign policy that oscillated between dependence and resentment without ever building genuine capital. The salute in Sharm el-Sheikh looked undignified in the moment. What it led to a Pakistani general shuttling between Tehran and Washington as the world watches, the Hormuz looks rather different in retrospect.
Though I must acknowledge that perhaps flattery alone may not suffice, and perhaps there are more nuances to this newfound warmth. Perhaps Washington’s shifting posture could be premised on the display of our military’s capability that caught the world off guard, or on giving crypto a go. These instances have surely prompted the United States to reassess Pakistan’s potential value on the geostrategic chessboard.
If ‘praise’ is not the only factor, though, it is surely a complementary one. This smart move has opened doors once thought firmly shut. Whether Pakistan has what it takes to walk through them—to convert a warm personal relationship into lasting institutional standing, to be trusted as the honest broker long after the applause fades—is something this approach alone cannot answer. Pakistan has done the harder part. It has earned its seat at the table. What it does once seated there, only time will tell.