Key Points

Led to a candid answer by British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan, the Minister admitted that “defence cooperation is increasing with China” because of “unreliability of other sources, like the US”.

This interview happened recently when he was in New York to participate in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session. Ironically, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, after his address at the UNGA, had a meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington around the same time.

Going by Asif’s defence of his country's “hybrid model” of governance by political and military masters, both his bosses were present at the White House meeting on September 25. Sharif was accompanied by Gen Asim Munir in the 80-minute meeting, for which the duo had to wait for about 30 minutes while Trump was taking care of other engagements.

As the Defence Minister, Asif’s emphasis on Pakistan’s “time-tested relationship” with China since the 1950s, and Beijing being a very reliable provider of “arms and other things”, raises some pertinent questions.

As does his statement “strategic future can’t be with both (the US and China)”. Is Pakistan actually being “flirtatious” (a term he used during the interview) with the US, without any agenda? Or did White House summon his masters to bestow an unknown task?

In any case, while facing serious economic instability and revolts in tribal areas, Pakistan is also caught in a diplomatic crosswind rising from the escalating rivalry between the US and China.

Amidst increasing domestic concerns, the Sharif administration, like many of his predecessors, has sought a closer relationship with Washington, including in security. Simultaneously, it has also made renewed forays into partnership with China -- with which it shares a part of the border.

Given Asif’s earlier outburst against the “Western world” for doing their “dirty work” in the covert operation against the Soviet army then occupying Afghanistan, he may be exhibiting a shift towards China.

And while doing that, he has ignored the US support his country has received time and again. It includes the dispatch of the Seventh Fleet in 1971 during the Bangladesh war for liberation. However, that did not help Pakistan due to some quick military-diplomatic manoeuvres by India and the then USSR.

He has also ignored the fact that China has strongly reacted to the killing of its citizens assisting Pakistan in infrastructure development. Beijing has also given indications of withdrawing from financing a major road connectivity project.

In an earlier interview with another publication, too, Asif shared that his country had been abandoned by the US after the first Afghan War (the one against Soviet occupation), adding, “we were left high and dry”. “And the United States just went back and then again, just about three years back when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, again this situation [in which] we are taking the brunt, again, for what was there in Afghanistan,” he told his interviewer in 2023.

Pakistan’s economy is in a shambles, where the West has assisted in world aid organisations opening their purse strings. On the other hand, China has been investing heavily, leading to a situation where Islamabad is slipping into a debt trap.

As Asif said earlier, “All we have is a geographical location, which is strategic, which attracts, I would say, not all the good things; it sometimes attracts some things which really make us even more vulnerable.”

- IANS