Post–Operation Sindoor, Pakistan’s renewed alignment with traditional partners underscores a continued pattern of leveraging geopolitical positioning for short-term gains over structural economic reform
The recent United States (US)-Israel war against Iran has become a key testimony to how Pakistan punches above its weight to remain geopolitically relevant to its traditional patrons. Historically, Islamabad’s strategic engagement with the world has been driven heavily by its anxieties about India. In the aftermath of ‘Operation Sindoor’, to offset perceived vulnerabilities, Pakistan turned to its oldest patrons—the United States and Saudi Arabia—seeking to revive strategic partnerships. Islamabad is committed to opening its critical minerals sector to US investment and has consolidated its defence partnership with Saudi Arabia. Pakistan has repeatedly avoided structural economic reforms by relying on capital inflows generated through its geopolitical alignments. Islamabad revived what had become a largely dormant one-way affair with Washington into a more active patron-client partnership after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and, eventually, in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor.
Islamabad revived what had become a largely dormant one-way affair with Washington into a more active patron-client partnership after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and, eventually, in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor.
To stay strategically relevant to the United States after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Islamabad offered ‘over-the-horizon’ counterterrorism help and reportedly supplied ammunition to Ukraine while maintaining an officially neutral position on the conflict. This attempt to revive strategic utility soon encountered an unexpected response from India. India launched Operation Sindoor in May 2025, hitting militant infrastructure and Pakistani airbases, signalling a more aggressive counterterrorism doctrine. In response, the Shehbaz government has intensified efforts to revive geopolitical relevance by aligning with emerging US-led security initiatives. Pakistan became one of the first countries to support Trump’s proposed ‘Board of Peace’ plan and even committed to joining the US-endorsed International Stabilisation Force. The pinnacle of Pakistan’s renewed clientelist behaviour is evident in opening its critical mineral sector to US investment, coupled with a cryptocurrency deal involving Trump’s close aides and family members. This reflects a familiar pattern of operationalising foreign policy as crisis-driven external balancing for short-term rents—both economic and diplomatic—by leveraging great power competition at the cost of a long-term developmental agenda.
Pakistan has historically exhibited the characteristics of a rentier state; unlike Arab nations that have derived rents primarily from natural resources, the Pakistani government has leveraged its geostrategic location as a bargaining chip for external economic flows and diplomatic visibility. Successive governments in Pakistan have traded their strategic support for external rents, dodging the IMF’s call for structural overhaul of the economy. Pakistan inherited a weak economic system and has repeatedly turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 1958 to stabilise its economy. Yet the recurring crisis cannot be blamed entirely on domestic economic policies; Pakistan’s foreign policy choices have also played a significant role.
Pakistan aligned with the US during the Cold War, and later extended strategic support to the United States against the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan, and finally positioned itself as a frontline state in the American-led War on Terror, gaining military aid as a security partner. Pakistan’s foreign policy projected Pakistan as a net security partner to the West, a strategic neighbour to China, and a partner to the Gulf countries to garner economic support. Economic assistance from the US poured in steadily until the Americans conducted a raid in Pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011. Since then, aid has declined drastically, culminating in President Donald Trump's suspension of military assistance to Pakistan in 2018, citing the latter’s poor counterterrorism record. Under Imran Khan’s premiership, Pakistan experimented with economic initiatives to address the balance of payments. Policymakers envisioned a geoeconomic turn, leveraging Pakistan’s unique geography as a connectivity hub between Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. Later, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan marked an inflexion point in Islamabad’s long trajectory of leveraging geography to gain diplomatic or financial benefits. Pakistan faced growing diplomatic isolation following the Afghan Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Pakistan has historically exhibited the characteristics of a rentier state; unlike Arab nations that have derived rents primarily from natural resources, the Pakistani government has leveraged its geostrategic location as a bargaining chip for external economic flows and diplomatic visibility.
The strategic partnership between Pakistan and China has long been shaped by rivalry with India and shared geopolitical interests. China has invested in Pakistan since Ayub Khan’s presidency, especially in the aftermath of the India-China war (1962), making it one of the first non-communist countries to receive Chinese aid. Eventually, this economic relationship also manifested in the military domain. In the last decade, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has marked a major economic shift in the strategic partnership, as Chinese President Xi Jinping integrated Pakistan into China’s grand strategic project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Yet the corridor itself was rooted in earlier strategic thinking under military dictator Musharraf, who proposed Pakistan as a trade and energy corridor as an alternative to the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline and advanced the development of Gwadar Port as a geostrategic centrepiece for China’s connectivity ambitions. Initially dubbed a ‘game changer’ for Pakistan’s ailing economy, CPEC later lost momentum, as even Pakistan’s planning minister acknowledged the government had failed to fully capitalise on the project. The project has exacerbated Pakistan’s balance-of-payments pressures due to heavy reliance on Chinese imports for project execution, coupled with debt repayment obligations. The CPEC corridor reflects Pakistan’s familiar practice of relying on external partners to address domestic economic challenges. While CPEC-related loans contributed to Pakistan’s debt crisis and led to greater centralisation, the corridor passes primarily through Balochistan. The project shows that Pakistan’s search for economic transformation has rested on prioritising strategic partnerships rather than domestic structural reforms.
Pakistan's classic rent-seeking foreign policy manifested in two major developments post-Operation Sindoor. After outspending India in courting Trump’s attention, Islamabad sought to flatter him by opening its critical minerals sector to US investment, promoting itself as a key supplier in the global critical minerals supply chain. The onset of this renewed partnership with the US was marked by a US$ 500 million shipment of critical minerals from Pakistan to the US. Yet this renewed mineral diplomacy does not represent a structural geoeconomic shift. Though the idea of monetising minerals has been around for a decade, after the short conflict with India, the Shehbaz government doubled down on mineral diplomacy, positioning itself as a mineral state to create an alternative supply chain for the US and the West. Though the new alignment with the US was framed as a solution to long-standing debt problems, most of Pakistan's mineral wealth is found in its security-ridden provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, where many previous projects, including CPEC, are struggling to reach completion. The federal government in Pakistan has prioritised expedited access to these resources for the US, while a long-term national strategy for global critical minerals supply chains has yet to be formalised.
In a bid to upend its geopolitical standing, Pakistan also inked a defence pact with Saudi Arabia, deepening security cooperation. The agreement treats any aggression against either Muslim state as a matter of mutual concern. The pact marks a stark difference from the previous trends when Islamabad had outrightly rejected Saudi calls for military assistance during the conflict, especially involving Iran or its proxies. Formalising a pact that would require Pakistan to provide security to the wealthy Gulf monarchy would yield both political and financial benefits for Islamabad. Desperate to diversify security partnerships, Riyadh made financial commitments, particularly in Pakistan’s defence sector. Few of Pakistan's strategic partnerships operate without some form of financial backing, and reportedly Riyadh extended a US$ 1 billion oil financing facility alongside US$ 5 billion deposits to bolster reserves.
While newly forged partnerships with old patrons helped Pakistan regain diplomatic visibility, the recent security crisis in the Middle East exposed the limits of Islamabad’s rent-seeking diplomacy.
While newly forged partnerships with old patrons helped Pakistan regain diplomatic visibility, the recent security crisis in the Middle East exposed the limits of Islamabad’s rent-seeking diplomacy. Following Iran’s attacks across Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan found it increasingly difficult to balance between competing poles in the Muslim world. Despite a defence agreement with Riyadh, Islamabad refrained from overt military action against Tehran. On the other hand, reports suggest Pakistan has facilitated the transfer of Chinese arms to Iran. The confrontation between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other further shows the structural constraints of Pakistan’s strategic positioning. Islamabad sought to play a mediatory role in the weeks-old crisis, as the longer the war goes on, the more difficult Pakistan’s balancing act becomes. But its ability to shape outcomes was always limited without significant economic or military leverage over the parties to the conflict, and Pakistan could at best serve as a back-channel facilitator, not a true peace broker. Pakistan’s limitations are evident in the aftermath of ceasefire violations, soon after Islamabad claimed to have facilitated talks between the US and Iran. This episode reveals a broader limitation of Pakistan’s longstanding reliance on geopolitical relevance for external rents. Such positioning provides Islamabad only episodic diplomatic attention or financial inflows; it does not build sustained influence during a major regional crisis or in peacetime.
Nishant Yadav is an independent analyst focused on the Af-Pak region.
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