Pakistan Seizes the Diplomatic Stage in the West Asia Crisis; India Stays Cautiously Invisible |
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Chandigarh: The contrast between Indian and Pakistani diplomatic styles –currently unfolding in the ongoing Islamabad talks over the US-Israel war against Iran – is stark and unmistakable: one is opportunistic to the point of audacity, while the other is cautious to the point of invisibility. Pakistan has aggressively and unapologetically inserted itself into a geopolitical melee – whose outcome remains nebulous and which threatens wider conflagration, even apocalypse – that has already triggered unprecedented economic and energy turmoil, making it globally relevant.
It has hosted multi-country consultations with players like China, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Egypt to shape a diplomatic track around the conflict. More strikingly, it has positioned itself as a conduit – if not an outright mediator –between Washington and Tehran, facilitating continual backchannel exchanges between multiple parties over the past six weeks that the West Asia conflict has raged unchecked.
This is not quiet diplomacy. It is pure theatre, signalling and leverage rolled into one.
Pakistan’s approach appears, at one level, to be simple: show up, stay visible, and claim relevance, and whether or not it actually delivers outcomes is almost secondary. The act of being seen to mediate – of being photographed in the room where it happens – is in itself Islamabad’s strategic objective. Even when Iran questions the process and endings remain uncertain, Pakistan has already banked diplomatic capital by inserting itself into the conversation.
India, by contrast, has perfected the art of saying nothing loudly.
Its official position has been a predictable call for........