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Editor’s Note:
This article argues that Pakistan’s recurring attempts to project itself as a regional mediator mask a deeper strategic contradiction rooted in its long-standing anti-India security doctrine and dependence on geopolitical patronage. The author contends that Islamabad’s reliance on proxy warfare, tactical balancing and crisis-driven diplomacy has produced internal instability while eroding long-term credibility. Lasting peace in South Asia, he argues, will remain elusive unless Pakistan undertakes a fundamental strategic and institutional transformation.
Dialogue between India and Pakistan will only yield meaningful results if there is a genuine willingness within Pakistan to fundamentally transform its strategic outlook, abandon its entrenched anti-India doctrine, and move beyond the manufactured perception of India as an existential threat. For decades, this threat narrative has served as the principal instrument through which Pakistan’s feudal-fauji-fanatic power structure has sustained its dominance over the state, economy and national psyche.
In this context, recent media speculation surrounding the reopening of India-Pakistan dialogue, alongside Pakistan’s projection of itself as a potential “peacemaker” between Iran and the United States, must be viewed with realism rather than romanticism.
As I wrote recently in StratNewsGlobal, “Pakistan is not an example of successful balancing. It is a rentier state, structurally dependent on external patrons, bailout cycles and security sponsors.” That observation lies at the heart of the larger South Asian dilemma.
Pakistan’s current attempt to position itself as a stabilising intermediary between Washington and Tehran is not evidence of strategic transformation. It is part of a familiar historical cycle in which Islamabad leverages geography and geopolitical utility during moments of global instability to regain external relevance.
During the Cold War, Pakistan marketed itself as a frontline state against Soviet expansionism. After 9/11, as Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has alleged in his memoir, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage delivered this ultimatum to Pakistan’s intelligence director, “Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,” forcing the country to join the U.S. war on terror.
Today, amid renewed tensions with Iran, Gulf security anxieties, and intensifying great-power competition, Pakistan is once again attempting to reinvent itself as an unavoidable intermediary power.
This recurring pattern reflects continuity, not reinvention.
In my article “Pakistan’s Strategic Myopia and Internal Decay” (after the Pahalgam terrorist attack) in Chintan, India Foundation, May 2, 2025, I argued that “Pakistan today faces not just a political or economic crisis, but a deeper existential one. Its ideological foundations are crumbling, its governance model is unsustainable, and its strategic doctrine is outdated.”
That outdated doctrine has long revolved around strategic depth, proxy warfare and the cultivation of non-state actors as instruments of geopolitical leverage.
Afghanistan became the clearest manifestation of this flawed thinking. What Pakistan’s security establishment once considered strategic assets gradually evolved into autonomous ideological forces beyond its control. The rise of the Afghan Taliban, the expansion of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), repeated terror attacks inside Pakistan, sectarian radicalisation, and instability along the Durand Line all represent the blowback of decades of securitised adventurism.
Pakistan’s establishment underestimated a fundamental reality: jihadist ecosystems cannot indefinitely remain calibrated tools of state policy.
As I noted in my recent Chintan article “Between Anxiety and Strategy: The Fragile Logic of an Islamic Defence Pact“, many of the emerging alignments involving Pakistan today are “less about collective strength and more about collective unease in a rapidly fragmenting strategic environment.”
It is an important distinction.
Pakistan’s foreign policy establishment has historically mastered the art of converting instability into geopolitical leverage. But tactical utility should not be confused with long-term strategic credibility.
Even recent controversies surrounding Pakistan’s role in the Iran-US dynamic exposed this duality. While Islamabad projected itself internationally as a neutral facilitator, parallel reports emerged alleging that Iranian military assets were quietly facilitated through Pakistani channels during periods of heightened tension. Whether entirely accurate or not, such reports reinforced longstanding concerns within parts of the Western strategic community regarding Pakistan’s habit of maintaining multiple overlapping alignments simultaneously.
This balancing act, involving the United States, China, Gulf monarchies, Islamist networks, and regional actors, may generate temporary leverage, but it also deepens structural mistrust.
The larger issue, therefore, is not whether Pakistan can occasionally facilitate dialogue. Many states act as intermediaries during crises. The real question is whether Pakistan is willing to fundamentally abandon the strategic paradigms that contributed to regional instability in the first place.
Can a state genuinely emerge as a durable force for peace while continuing to tolerate extremist ecosystems, military overreach in civilian affairs, and an India-centric security doctrine that justifies perpetual securitisation of society?
That remains the central unresolved contradiction.
The deeper tragedy is that ordinary Pakistanis themselves have borne the greatest cost of these policies. Pakistan today faces mounting internal fissures: economic fragility, debt dependency, ethnic unrest in Balochistan, tensions with Pashtun populations, political instability and a widening disconnect between civilian aspirations and entrenched security structures.
Meanwhile, India, despite the contestations and imperfections inherent to any large democracy, has remained anchored in constitutional continuity, electoral legitimacy, economic expansion and growing geopolitical relevance.
As I argued in my recent article in StratNewsGlobal, March 24, 2026, India’s approach today is not “fence-sitting,” but “a deliberate multi-vector strategy designed to secure energy flows, market access, connectivity, diaspora interests and geopolitical flexibility.”
This distinction matters because India’s rise has increasingly been tied to economic scale, technological capacity, market depth, and strategic autonomy – not perpetual dependency on external security sponsorship.
South Asia’s future cannot remain hostage to outdated zero-sum doctrines and manufactured insecurities.
The region possesses immense demographic, economic and civilisational potential. Yet durable peace and prosperity will remain elusive so long as proxy warfare, geopolitical rentierism and selective tolerance for extremism continue to shape strategic behaviour.
Pakistan today stands at a historic crossroads. It can continue leveraging crises for temporary geopolitical utility, or it can evolve into a genuinely stable regional state focused on institutional reform, economic modernisation, connectivity and peaceful coexistence.
The distinction between tactical mediation and strategic transformation is critical.
One creates headlines. The other creates history!
Sumeer Bhasin (Author is a geopolitical analyst and strategic affairs commentator)
