With Trump’s arrival, Pakistan gets ready for foreign policy challenges in 2025. donald trump news

Islamabad, Pakistan – After 30 months of turmoil marked by unstable politics, contentious elections and a collapsing economy, Pakistan entered the new year in a state of relative peace.

As domestic politics stabilizes and the economy in South Asia’s second most populous country is expected to turn around, foreign policy and security challenges are likely to emerge as the country’s most pressing concerns this year.

Analysts predict that 2025 will be tough for Pakistan as it manages relations with its closest neighbors, allies and adversaries around the world, as well as the United States, where Donald Trump is expected to return to power later this month. Are ready for.

Most of Pakistan’s foreign policy and security challenges arise from its neighbourhood, primarily Afghanistan to its west and hawkish India to its east.

Violence by armed groups and insurgents across Pakistan intensified after the capture of Kabul by the Afghan Taliban in 2021. In 2024, armed attacks killed nearly 700 law enforcement personnel, making it one of the deadliest years in the country of 240 million people.

The attacks were mainly carried out by the Pakistan Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, TTP), an armed group that considers the Afghan Taliban as its ideological twin. Separate insurgent attacks targeted sites related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $62 billion megaproject that has brought Islamabad and Beijing closer than ever as political and economic allies. .

Christopher Clary, non-resident fellow at the US-based non-profit Stimson Center and associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, says Pakistan faces its “most serious” national security challenge in at least a decade and possibly more. Since the 1990s”

“Pakistan has no major strategic option but to get its economic house in order and improve its relations with other great powers and regional neighbours. This probably involves years of work, and it’s not clear that Pakistan has years to do this work before the House falls,” Clary told Al Jazeera.

Here is information about the countries that will be the focus of Islamabad’s foreign policy this year:

China

Pakistani officials often boast of their “deeper than the sea, higher than the mountains” friendship with China. But in 2024, cracks emerged in that relationship.

Attacks on Chinese citizens and interests reached a fever pitch, prompting Beijing’s envoy to Islamabad to issue a rare public rebuke. “It is unacceptable for us to be attacked twice in just six months,” Jiang Zaidong said at an event in Islamabad in October.

China foreign policy expert Muhammad Faisal has warned that China will continue to provide financial assistance to Pakistan, but any further expansion of the CPEC project in the country is unlikely.

Faisal told Al Jazeera, “Pakistan will have to skillfully handle Beijing’s growing pressure for a ‘joint security mechanism’ which would essentially entail placing Chinese security personnel on Pakistani territory, which in turn would complicate existing security measures. Will make it a target for terrorists.”

Chinese troops overseeing the country’s projects on Pakistani soil would represent an admission of Islamabad’s security failures, would increase the risk of Chinese civilians being targeted, and would also increase the politically sensitive possibility of Chinese fighters killing Pakistani civilians. .

Meanwhile, experts also fear that Trump’s hostile stance towards China could force Beijing to seek public support from Pakistan, which would then have to walk a diplomatic tightrope to avoid angering its old ally Washington. Will be forced to.

Trump has consistently taken a tough stance on China, with his first term seeing a trade war between the two economic powers. In his second term, the US leader has promised to impose tariffs of up to 60 percent on Chinese imports.

“But since Pakistan is not at the top of the Trump administration’s international agenda, there is a ray of hope. Yet, uncertainty is common to both Pakistan’s challenges with China,” Faisal said.

Kamran Bukhari, senior director of the US-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, said China’s frustration with Pakistan is due to low returns from its massive investment in CPEC. He said that China’s difficult situation can be beneficial for America.

He said, “China is already very disappointed with Pakistan and relations have been going bad for some time. But Beijing is in trouble because due to billions of investments in CPEC, it is knee deep in Pakistan and is not getting any benefit from it. So, China being swamped in Pakistan is good for America,” Bukhari told Al Jazeera.

united states

Pakistan’s relations with the United States date back to its independence from British rule and emergence as a new nation in 1947. But Islamabad-Washington relations have mostly focused on how Pakistan supported US policies in the region, primarily in Afghanistan, where the Soviet invasion took place. The 1970s and 1980s, or the US-led “war on terrorism” after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

With the return of the Afghan Taliban to power in Kabul, the Pakistan-US strategic partnership in the South Asian region has diminished. While America is now investing less in Afghanistan, Pakistan is gradually moving towards China for economic, military and technological needs.

Hasan Abbas, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington DC, believes Pakistan should “proceed cautiously” in its relations with the US amid tensions with China and India. He says that “although nervousness on the part of Pakistan is evident”, a dramatic change in the relationship seems unlikely.

“Security issues and regional challenges, such as instability in Afghanistan,” are likely to dominate bilateral talks, Abbas told Al Jazeera. Abbas is also the author of The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan After America’s Left.

Bukhari said Pakistan remains a low priority country for the US, which has more serious global issues to deal with such as the Russia-Ukraine war and several Middle East conflicts.

“At the moment, I do not think any tension between the two countries is rising to a significant level and Pakistan is playing its cards very safely. In DC, the perception about Pakistan is that it is a weak, disorganized state that needs to settle its business before anything else,” he said.

India

India remains the biggest foreign policy puzzle for Pakistan.

While there is limited interaction on multilateral fora, relations have been practically frozen for years. Tensions over Kashmir escalated after New Delhi stripped Indian-administered Kashmir of its limited autonomy in 2019, which Pakistan strongly condemned. India and Pakistan both rule parts of Kashmir, but claim the entire Himalayan region, making it one of the world’s longest and bloodiest military conflicts.

“Asymmetry with India continues to grow, and Pakistan has few options to force India to take this seriously that do not jeopardize other Pakistani foreign policy goals,” analyst Clary told Al Jazeera. ” Interested in rapprochement with Pakistan” and “considers it impractical during a period of domestic instability” in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s former envoy to India Abdul Basit sees the Kashmir issue as a perpetual standoff that requires behind-the-scenes diplomacy. “India has shown no willingness for flexibility after the constitutional amendment,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the Modi government’s scrapping of Article 370, the law that granted partial autonomy to Indian-administered Kashmir.

With India getting closer to the West, primarily the US, than to its common enemy in China, Basit feels Islamabad should find ways to engage with New Delhi.

“Otherwise, we will continue to move from one impasse to another and will never be able to take our relationship on the path to normalcy. For me, this is the crux of the issue when it comes to India,” the retired ambassador said.

However, Bukhari of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy believes that it could be India that is in the US’s crosshairs this year and is under pressure over its rivalry with China.

“India has very close and pragmatic relations with Iran, where it is building a port. It is also buying oil from Russia, which is waging a war in Ukraine. So the incoming (Trump) administration is more likely to put pressure on them (India),” he said.

According to Bukhari, Pakistan will have to offer strategic value to attract US attention, as it did during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and during the post-9/11 US wars.

He said, “If you want America’s attention, you have to offer them something that can generate interest for America and only then can you get attention.” “It was not that America liked Pakistan or became best friends, it was just that Pakistan served a purpose.”

iran

The year 2024 proved to be a cataclysmic year for Iran, as it suffered huge losses to its geopolitical interests in the Middle East and Israel carried out direct attacks on its territories on several occasions.

But the year began with Iran launching attacks inside Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, citing an armed group called Jaish al-Adl as a threat to its security in the border areas. Pakistan took immediate military retaliation after the attack. But as tensions between the predominantly Muslim neighbors escalated, Tehran turned to diplomacy to resolve the issue.

Omar Karim, a researcher at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, expects the “uncomfortable rapprochement” to continue, with new challenges emerging with Trump’s return to the White House.

Karim warned that a deterioration in Pakistan-Iran relations could worsen border security, which would embolden Baloch separatists who are reported to be hiding in Iran. Baloch rebels have been fighting for a separate homeland for decades.

“Pakistan will hold constructive talks with Iran to avoid further hostilities amid rising domestic violence,” Karim said.