In Chinese thinking the strategic discourse is more holistic and integrated than segmented just as is the case with its medical, political and philosophical traditions. Chinese history and strategic thinking are, of course, replete with zero-sum games of deceit, outsmarting, outmaneuvering, psychology, prevailing over superior numbers, etc.

But all of this is integrated into a larger harmony as the condition for longer-term success and the bestowal and preservation of the Mandate of Heaven. When this harmony is broken and policies are segmented and stove-piped, all the short-term successes add up to nothing – as has frequently happened in Chinese history – and the Mandate of Heaven is withdrawn.

The US cajoles, bullies, coerces and sanctions Pakistani governments into submission and reluctant cooperation. China achieves much more by investing in the prospect of shared prosperity and security for the people of Pakistan. It retains a relative advantage over the US despite the equivocation and unreliability of Pakistan’s ruling elites. It demonstrates superior strategic leadership.

Pakistan’s policies, whether external or domestic have, by and large, been an extended series of short-term policies that never add up to a coherent and successful longer-term policy. That is strategic incoherence. This is because statecraft or good governance has been missing. In these circumstances, strategic leadership remains an aspiration divorced from reality.

Economically, Pakistan has statistically done reasonably well with an externally dependent and colonially structured economy that has little or no prospect of domestically generating longer-term stability, security, prosperity and well-being for its people. Its........

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