From Pariah to Peacemaker - Pakistan in the new geopolitics of Donald Trump
For a long time, news from and about Pakistan have been bad news. From sponsoring the Afghan Taliban to becoming the victim of their now border-crossing terrorism, from the brief wars with its arch enemy India to its ritual requests for IMF credits because of another economic crisis, this fragile, nuclear and quasi-military South Asian state has produced its fair share of negative headlines. Yet now the world has been looking to Islamabad because Pakistan has turned itself into a widely accepted moderator. How did this transformation from rogue state to diplomatic player under Donald Trump’s new geopolitics happen and what does it signify? The demise of American power? The “middle powers” stepping in to mediate the conflicts of the Middle East? China pulling the strings from behind? All these various currents have been coagulating into the now failed peace talks in Islamabad – and will shape their aftermath.
Islamabad has been proudly receiving its political guests from all over the world. US-Vice President Vance flew in and so did delegations from Iran, Turkey, Egypt and the Gulf States. The wide avenues of the artificial but friendly capital at the foot of the Margalla Hills were cordoned off. No more public traffic in the government quarter or around the Serena Hotel, as it always was when irate Islamists or roaming supporters of the imprisoned opposition leader Imran Khan were threatening to march against the government. But this time it was different. Unlike the homegrown demonstrators the convoys of black limousines have been lifting everybody’s spirits: the military’s, the government’s, of all political parties and of ordinary citizens. Pakistan is back on the international stage due to its new geopolitical importance and skills, not because of the bad reputation of its past.
And it is one person above all who has cleverly engineered this swing from pariah to peacemaker over the last year – Pakistan’s Army chief General Syed Asim Munir. This domestically ruthless officer had sussed out Donald Trump better than most. By letting the US-president take the credit for having defused the short war with India in May 2025, whilst India’s Premier Narendra Modi still insisted on this being a bilateral affair, Munir became Trump’s “favourite Field Marshall” for telling him he deserved the peace price for saving millions of lives. From then on India’s standing, so high during the first Trump presidency, has sunk considerably. In the choice of his favourite right-wing or autocratic foreign leader Donald Trump has always been flexible. But for the time being Premier Modi’s attempt at isolating Pakistan as a sponsor of terrorism, has failed.
After Munir had taken over as the Chief of Army Staff in 2022 Premier Imran Khan, the country’s most popular politician, was jailed in 2023 followed by a rigged election one year later. Unlike Khan the new prime minister Shehbaz Sharif decided not to fight but to arrange himself with the military. As a result, Munir could strengthen his position and became the most powerful head of Army after General and President Musharraf in the early 2000s.
After having crushed the opposition at home the well choreographed “victory” over India has turned Munir into a national hero and the country’s de facto leader. Reading the Pakistani press before the arrival of the negotiators, you would not have known that the country is still an economic basket case with an oppressed opposition. For now, Munir has led the whole political and social spectrum from the urban elites to the man in the street to a new consensus of political pride and national self-importance. At last, the thinking goes, Pakistan can exert its rightful role as an important power in the wider Middle East.
Pakistan’s historical relations to the Gulf have undergone as many changes as its relationship with the US. From the 1950 to the 90ies, the scholar Ayesha Siddiqa argues, the relations to the Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia, had undergone a shift from military and economic cooperation to an asymmetric ideological influence. What started as trading Pakistan’s military expertise against economic opportunity for Pakistani migrants became a one-sided export of financial flows and Islamism when Saudia Arabia outsourced its homegrown fundamentalists to the madrassas of Pakistan during the 90s. This export sowed the seeds for the Taliban.
And when Pakistan’s military establishment later turned the mujaheddin - which it had been running for the CIA against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan during the 80ies - into assets for its own policy of “strategic depth” against its archenemy India, this ill-though strategy created decades of instability. What followed was the failed Nato-intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11 and the second rule of the Taliban now hosting their offshoot, the Pakistani Taliban (T.T.P), terrorizing their original sponsors from across the Afghan border. It is this self-induced instability that has stopped Pakistan, this nation of almost 260 million industrious people, from becoming an economically successful and politically consolidated country. All because of its eternal enmity towards India.
At the same time Pakistan has walked the geopolitical tightrope between the US and China with wide swings, yet without ever losing the balance. Recently it has been the main beneficiary of China’s Belt & Road Initiative without foregoing American support. Looking at Pakistan’s hybrid military arsenal, you can see the historical and technical shifts in military support turning from American to increasingly Chinese equipment.
Against this historical background Pakistan’s interests in peace-making are becoming clear. So are the risk of its now failed mediation. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz endangers the country’s crucial energy imports and could easily lead to a cost-of-living crisis which in turn would threaten the undisputed leadership of Munir and his military. But being seen as too close to the US, and by extension to Israel, could enrage the 40 million Shiites in Pakistan, the second-largest Shia population after Iran. A further escalation of the war would also have a negative effect on the important remittances from the several million of Pakistani workers in the Gulf States.
“You have a military dictator and a ruling elite, trying to punch above their weight in geopolitics, as an escape from the reality of failing governance, security and economic conditions in Pakistan”, a policy advisor to a previous Pakistani government describes the challenge for Asim Munir in the Financial Times.
As the only Muslim country with nuclear weapons, but with a weak economy, Pakistan last September signed a mutual defence agreement with Saudi Arabia receiving cash for providing deterrence. But with Iranian missiles and drones striking oil and military installations in Saudi Arabia Islamabad fears to be drawn into the conflict and having to take sides.
Because Pakistan needs to keep the goodwill of Iran for commonly managing the 900 km-long border against Baluch secessionists on either side. After violent clashes between Iranian and Pakistani border posts last year such a common agreement had just been reached. It is Pakistan’s historically good and recently improved relationship with Iran that has turned the country into the best available mediator for the negotiations about an end to the Iran war.
On the other side of the conflict Asim Munir has played Donald Trump better than any European, including NATO General Secretary Rutte. He has joined the Gaza-Group. His reactions to all the circulating 5 to15-point-plans have always been measured. Meanwhile his foreign minister Ishaq Dar has appealed to the extractive side of the US-Administration. In a kind of “crypto diplomacy” he has been talking to the son of Trump’s advisor and negotiator Steve Witkoff about exploring partnership opportunities in the less coercive realm of Pakistan’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority.
The way that Trump has been let into this war without a plan, the way he handed Teheran the control over the Strait of Hormuz, and the way his Vice-President has mishandled the peace talks in Islamabad, has shown the 47th US-president as the gravedigger of the old - not always but mostly benevolent - American Empire. The US might still be a “predatory hegemon” (Stephen Walt), but it has clearly overreached in the Middle East by unsuccessfully challenging Iran. America under Trump has alienated its allies and shredded its moral reputation. And it has clearly lost in its conflict, competition, rivalry – whatever you might call it – with China.
Now the “middle powers” like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt – combining nuclear weapons, financial power und large armies - are trying to step in as the range of negotiators in Islamabad has shown. With the so called “international community” and the United Nations weakened by the onslaught of Trump’s transactionalism and his violations of international law Pakistan has brought replacements to the table: Saudi Arabia with some influence on Israel, Turkey as a long-time interlocutor, and Egypt with the Arab League. This is still an untested formation prone to missteps and internal wrangling. And their human rights record is atrocious. But it is what it is, and possibly the first step to a new order for their neighbourhood.
Lastly, there is China minding the limelight but quietly working on solutions that are safeguarding its own interests. It was Beijing which brought Iran to the negotiating table, it is Beijing which holds considerable power over Pakistan, and it is Xi Jinping who has been looking more systematically and rationally after his country’s own economic and maritime interests in this region than the United States under Donald Trump have been capable of.
After the failed negotiations to end the Iran war many questions remain: How will the Trump Administration be leaving the scene of the devastation and destruction it has caused? Who is to stop the Israelis? Who will organize the Strait of Hormuz? How will China react when US-warships stop its oil imports from Iran? What role will the “middle powers” from now on play? How will India respond to it being sidelined by the US and Pakistan’s diplomacy? And where the hell in all this mess is Europe?