May 2, 2023
Pakistan can't afford middle ground between US, China, says Pakistani Minister
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Pakistani Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar has suggested that Pakistan must stop maintaining a "middle ground" between China and the United States.
This came in her leaked internal memo she titled "Pakistan's difficult choices."
The document, among a trove of US secrets, leaked online through the Discord messaging platform, provide a rare glimpse into the private calculations by key emerging powers, including India, Brazil, Pakistan and Egypt, as they attempt to straddle allegiances in an era when America is no longer the world's unchallenged superpower.
Khar cautioned that Islamabad should avoid giving the appearance of appeasing the West, and said the instinct to preserve Pakistan's partnership with the United States would ultimately sacrifice the full benefits of what she deemed the country's "real strategic" partnership with China.
The undated intelligence document does not detail how the United States gained access to Khar's memo.
Another document, dated Feb 17, describes Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's deliberations with a subordinate about upcoming UN vote on Ukrain conflict and what the government anticipated would be renewed Western pressure to back a resolution condemning Russia's invasion.
The aide advised Sharif that support for the measure would signal a shift in Pakistan's position following its earlier abstention on similar resolution, the intelligence document says.
Pakistani officials, according to the US news outlet, have refused to comment on the matter.
On India, one more leaked document indicated that the country's National Security Adviser Ajit Kumar Doval had earlier assured his Russian counterpart Nikolay Patrushev of New Delhi's support for Moscow "in multilateral venues, also singling out India's reluctance to support the Western-backed UN resolution over Ukraine."
Matias Spektor, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was quoted as saying that developing nations are recalibrating at a moment when America faces potent new competition, as China projects new economic and military clout and Russia, though weakened by President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, demonstrates its ability to deflect Western pressure.
"It's unclear who will end up in a pole position in 10 years' time, so they need to diversify their risk and hedge their bets," Spektor said.
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The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
