The United States has consistently made the mistake of believing it could buy Pakistan, but in reality Islamabad is not for sale but available for rent.
The advantage for Washington, however, is that it rents Pakistan by choice, whereas China does so out of necessity.
The US-Iran conflict illustrated this dynamic. Trusted by both Tehran and Washington, Islamabad helped broker the ceasefire that briefly reopened the Strait of Hormuz. Traditional treaty allies such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom could not have played that role. A hedging power could.
Mention may be made of the June 2025 agreement with Azerbaijan worth up to $4.6 billion, under which Islamabad is set to supply 40 JF-17 fighter jets to Baku.
The aircraft is built on a Chinese airframe, powered by a Russian engine and sold by an American ally to a country Washington is actively courting. The transaction monetises Pakistan’s relationship with China within a Western-facing market. Pakistan’s strategy is to maximise its strategic value to both Washington and Beijing.
More recently, after helping broker talks during the Iran conflict, Islamabad reportedly asked Washington to establish a $10 billion exchange-stabilisation facility to strengthen its foreign-exchange reserves. Pakistan was again converting geopolitical relevance into economic support without abandoning its relationship with China.
The US has failed to recognise the strategic value of Pakistan’s hedging policy, describing it as the cheapest “strategic asset” Washington can afford. It recommended that the US use its remaining leverage to tilt Pakistan to advance American interests.
Pakistan’s longstanding reliance on international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank is one area where American influence remains decisive. Beijing, with its higher-interest bilateral loans and reluctance to finance the Pakistani state itself, cannot readily substitute for that role.
Pakistan should withdraw from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a “non-starter”, as a country pursuing a hedging strategy is unlikely to accept demands that force it to choose sides. Instead, it said Washington should assess Pakistan not by whether it scales back ties with China, but by whether it prevents Beijing from gaining a monopoly over those ties.
If Washington is generous with prestige, pragmatic on conditionality, and focused on military and economic cooperation, it can turn Pakistan’s hedging strategy into an American advantage.
Terrorism should become too costly — not because America threatens punishment, but because it would destroy opportunities Pakistan itself values. The goal is to create so much to lose that terrorism spoils it all.
With the country reeling under widespread internal unrest — from home-grown terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and an armed secessionist movement in Balochistan to an unprecedented public discontent in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK), including Pakistan-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan (PoGB) — one would have expected Islamabad to focus on putting its own house in order.
Since no one in Pakistan dares to question the country’s ‘failed’ Field Marshal, he probably thinks that silence is an endorsement of his astute thinking. Perhaps this is why he indulges in immature rhetoric so often and his irresponsible utterance that “What India labels as terrorism is, in fact, a legitimate and lawful struggle for freedom, recognised by international law” exposes his skewed mindset.
It would however, be naive to believe that a cunning fox like Field Marshal Munir genuinely expects that the proposed diplomatic outreach would yield positive results for Pakistan. And his talk of fighting 10 more wars for Kashmir unambiguously indicates that just like all his predecessors, the Field Marshal knows very well that his much-touted diplomatic offensive on Kashmir will, like all the previous attempts, end with a whimper, not a bang, but it will enthrall the masses.