President Donald Trump’s embrace of Vladimir Putin at the recent Alaska Summit was more than diplomatic theatre – it was a signal flare. With Washington hinting at a willingness to let the Ukraine conflict wind down, perhaps even on Moscow’s terms, some optimists saw a leader chasing a Nobel Peace Prize. But believing that American foreign policy is driven by short-term applause is a luxury for fools. The United States rarely plays for small stakes. A truce in Eastern Europe would not be an end in itself – it would free up strategic bandwidth for other, older ambitions. And for Pakistan, that’s where the trouble begins.
America’s Policy Machine Is Not One Voice: Too often, we in Pakistan assume Washington acts like a single mind. The truth is closer to what political scientist Graham Allison called the bureaucratic politics model. Decisions are the messy product of competing power centers: the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA. We have seen this before. The State Department may scold Islamabad to “do more” against militancy, while Langley quietly cultivates local actors in the same region for intelligence leverage. The Pentagon’s agenda can be different again, thinking in terms of force projection against China. It’s a game of overlapping and sometimes contradictory moves, all under the same flag. Even the recent U.S. designation of certain Baloch militant outfits as terrorist groups doesn’t tell the whole story. Another arm of Washington’s policy machine could still see utility in keeping those same networks on the back burner, just in case.
From Kyiv to Gwadar: The Strategic Pivot
Once Ukraine is off the boil, expect U.S. focus to swing to two theatres at once:
1. The Middle East, where Israel’s normalization with more Arab states and the containment of Iran remain unfinished business.
2. South Asia, where talk of an “independent Balochistan” has long been whispered in Washington, Tel Aviv, and New Delhi as a way to cut China’s access to the Arabian Sea and beyond.
Balochistan is no sideshow in the new Great Game. For the U.S., India, and Israel, a client-vessel state carved out of Pakistan’s southwest would be a strategic masterstroke – a listening post over the Strait of Hormuz, a wedge between Pakistan and Iran, and a roadblock for China’s Belt and Road.
India’s Rebound and the Pivot to Asia: The end of the Ukraine war would also untangle one of Washington’s headaches: India’s reliance on Russian energy. With sanctions easing, that friction disappears. Tariff disputes would soften. The Indo-U.S. relationship could reset, just in time to reinforce the Pivot to Asia, a policy designed to hem in Beijing’s rise. An India that’s back in America’s good graces, tied into a Delhi-Tel Aviv-Washington understanding on Balochistan, is not a distant possibility – it’s a near-term risk.
Afghanistan’s Role in the Equation: And then there’s Kabul. Desperate for international recognition and a seat at the UN, Afghanistan’s rulers might decide that helping destabilize Pakistani Balochistan is a price worth paying for a diplomatic lifeline. With its long, porous border and ethnic ties into Balochistan, Afghanistan could be an enabler – or a spoiler – depending on how Islamabad handles it.
Pakistan’s Tightrope: We cannot afford to stumble into this. Balochistan is already a pressure point internally. External actors will exploit any vacuum. If Pakistan treats the Alaska Summit as someone else’s peace deal, we will miss the storm it sets loose in our own backyard.
The Real Lesson from Alaska: The Alaska Summit is not just about Ukraine. It’s about what comes next when one great power front goes quiet. In the Great Game 2.0, Pakistan is not a bystander. We are a square on the board, and right now, that square is Balochistan.
We can choose to be reactive – to protest when the pieces start moving against us – or we can read the board now and start building alliances, internally and externally, that make destabilization too costly for anyone to attempt. The peace smiles in Alaska may be half a world away, but the aftershocks could rumble through Gwadar sooner than we think. Therefore, we must work on our relations with Afghanistan, Iran and China. With dark clouds of war looming over on the eastern front, any violence in our backyard could disrupt the military mobilisation from west to east. Pakistan must tread carefully from now onwards.
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