Restoring alliance with the US

Dr. Jassim Taqui

DG Al-Bab Institute for Strategic Studies

Islamabad, August 4, 2021: In a slow reaction to the Chinese strategic shift, the ruling hybrid regime has shown an unprecedented freshness. All indications suggest that the regime was not happy with the Chinese-Iran Strategic Partnership to which Beijing allocated $400 billion compared to only $60 billion to CEPEC. India helped to build the Chabahar seaport and is operating it.

In Afghanistan, Beijing struck a deal with the regime of Ashraf Ghani even as the latter has combined with India against Kashmir and Pakistan.

 

China appears to be backing away from CPEC

amid rising corruption and militant attacks on Chinese engineers.

Overall lending by the state-backed China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China declined from a peak of USD 75 billion in 2016 to just $4 billion last year. Provisional 2020 figures show that amount shrunk to around $3 billion in 2020.

Under these strategic shifts, Pakistan is working slowly but emphatically on reviving its erstwhile alliance with America. More developments are expected to materialize.

On the Pak-Saudi ties, Pakistan succumbed to Saudi pressure. Most probably Pakistan would recognize Israel to ensure that over 4 million Pakistani laborers would not be expelled from GGC countries. Iran’s close ties with India and Ashraf Ghani’s pro-India regime would make it easier to embrace GGC countries at the expense of its ties with Tehran and Kabul.