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India and Pakistan are not just rivals—they are instruments in a broader imperial strategy of containment and control. But history has shown, time and again, that such games eventually implode. The empire’s clever gambit may buy time, but it cannot buy legitimacy.
By JUNAID S. AHMAD
The American empire is not built on friendship—it is built on leverage. It rewards submission, punishes defiance, and sustains itself by exploiting regional tensions, manufacturing crises, and cultivating willing enforcers.
Under Donald Trump, this game has become unusually transparent, even clumsy. In the heart of South Asia, the US is executing a ruthless strategy: keep two nuclear-armed rivals, India and Pakistan, locked in a state of calculated instability. Play them off each other. Extract strategic concessions. Undermine their sovereignty—and all the while, maintain a covert but unrelenting grip on the direction of the region.
India and Pakistan are not simply regional powers—they are case studies in how the American national security state disciplines nations that flirt with autonomy. While India pushes back subtly through multilateralism and energy independence, Pakistan plays the opposite role: a hollowed-out client state run by a militarised elite willing to lease out sovereignty to prolong its internal dominance. Both are being managed. One is being cajoled. The other is being rewarded for submission.
India’s defiance and Washington’s displeasure
India, under the aggressive majoritarianism of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is often depicted in the Western imagination as a natural ally in containing China. It is courted as part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), hailed for its market size, and praised for its democratic façade. But the American empire has grown increasingly uneasy with India’s stubborn desire to act independently. Its ongoing economic and military relationship with Russia is the most visible expression of that discomfort.
Despite the avalanche of Western sanctions, India continues to buy Russian oil at scale, refusing to fold under pressure. This isn’t simply about cheap energy—it’s about strategic autonomy. India’s calculus is clear: It will not surrender its economic or geopolitical leverage just to win favour in Washington. It wants multipolarity, not alignment. That places it squarely at odds with a US that still believes in unipolar dominance dressed up in the language of ‘rules-based order’.
New Delhi is fully aware that it is being courted primarily to counterbalance Beijing. And it resents it. India does not want to be a pawn in America’s China containment strategy. It views itself as a civilisational state, a sub-imperial power in its own right. It leads in BRICS, it takes initiative in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and it sees its neighbourhood as a sphere of influence—not as a battlefield for great power rivalry. The fact that India continues to assert this role, while still participating in QUAD meetings and joint military drills with the US, reflects the delicate tightrope it walks. It is trying to gain from both sides without surrendering to either.
But Washington is losing patience. India’s refusal to adopt Western narratives on Russia, its reluctance to isolate Iran, and its quiet resistance to US diktats have made it increasingly suspect. Tariff threats, passive-aggressive diplomacy, and subtle economic punishment have all emerged as tools to remind India of its place. The message is clear: the price of defiance is pain, and no amount of cultural affinity or democratic rhetoric will shield you from empire’s wrath.
Pakistan: Empire’s favourite autocrat in uniform
On the other side of the border, Pakistan is playing a far more familiar role: the loyal enforcer, the ever-available subcontractor of imperial agendas. But today’s Pakistan is not what it was a decade ago. It has morphed into a security state run almost entirely by a military elite that trades national sovereignty for regime stability.
The current army leadership has handed Washington exactly what it wants. Secret drone bases? Approved. Access to rare earth minerals? Granted. Quiet corridors for US special forces and intelligence contractors? Already operational. The transactional nature of the relationship has never been so blatant. Empire wants footprints, logistical routes, and silence. Pakistan’s military leadership wants legitimacy, protection, and foreign patronage. The deal is simple—and disturbingly effective.
At the centre of this alliance is the army chief, a figure who has concentrated power to unprecedented levels. His role is no longer just military—it is political, economic, and even symbolic. He functions as a regional viceroy, maintaining internal order with an iron fist while allowing foreign interests to extract and operate with impunity. This isn’t sovereignty—it’s occupation by invitation.
The American embrace of Pakistan’s army chief sends a powerful signal to India, and to others in the region: you can be a brutal autocrat, crush dissent, and sell off your country’s future—but as long as you serve the empire’s needs, you will be protected and even praised. It is a message that resonates across many corners of the developing world. Compliance, not democracy, is the currency of imperial favour.
India’s boiling frustration
India watches this unfolding with thinly veiled rage. While it is pressured over trade, lectured on human rights, and penalised for not adopting US policy priorities, its neighbouring rival is rewarded for authoritarianism and compliance. Pakistan, a country lurching from crisis to crisis, is treated as a valued partner simply because its military is willing to sign away sovereignty in exchange for elite survival.
This dynamic deepens Indian scepticism toward American intentions. The message it receives is that submission is more valuable than strength. That obedient dysfunction is preferable to strategic independence. This is not the partnership of equals that India has long envisioned. It is a hierarchy, and India is being reminded of its place.
Yet India is not ready to break with the West either. It still craves investment, technology transfers, and the geopolitical benefits of being seen as a responsible counterweight to China. It is stuck in an uncomfortable middle ground: too independent to be embraced, too useful to be discarded. This ambiguity may serve India’s interests in the short term, but over time, the contradictions will sharpen. The more America rewards Pakistan’s submission, the more India may feel compelled to assert its independence with greater clarity.
The Pakistani-American complicity
Meanwhile, within the Pakistani diaspora, particularly among sections of the professional and managerial elite, a strange form of complicity has taken root. Many rallied behind Trump, believing—or pretending to believe—that his supposed admiration for a jailed populist leader would translate into action. They mobilised votes, orchestrated campaigns, and painted the former president as a potential liberator.
But they remained eerily silent on matters far graver. The genocidal assault on Gaza, the deepening alliance between empire and Zionism, the broader architecture of imperial oppression—none of these featured in their political calculus. The transactional nature of their engagement was as cynical as it was narrow: free our man, and we’ll give you our votes.
What they ignored—or wilfully overlooked—was that Trump’s embrace of Pakistan’s military had nothing to do with popular sentiment. It was a cold strategic calculation. The generals offered more than any populist leader ever could: bases, minerals, silence, and obedience. The diaspora’s faith in Trump was not only misplaced—it was irrelevant.
This failure to engage morally, to stand up not just for domestic political figures but for international justice, reveals a deep rot. The diaspora elite, like the generals they seek favour from, have chosen expediency over principle. They have prioritised elite access over ethical clarity.
Empire’s divide and rule: A classic still in play
None of this is new. Empire has always relied on division to maintain control. By rewarding Pakistan and punishing India, the US ensures that both remain preoccupied with each other rather than united against external manipulation. By fuelling paranoia in New Delhi and dependency in Islamabad, it maintains its privileged role as mediator, arms dealer, and ultimate arbiter.
But this game, though clever, is not sustainable. The contradictions are piling up. India’s patience is wearing thin. Pakistan’s military is overextended and increasingly isolated domestically. And the broader region is becoming more multipolar, more assertive, and less willing to play by Washington’s rules.
Conclusion: The illusion of control
The US cannot tolerate independence, even from those it calls partners. Its vision of order requires not just cooperation, but submission.
The American empire believes it is playing 4D chess. In reality, it is managing decline through increasingly desperate moves. Propping up generals, threatening allies, and leasing out coercive power may provide short-term gains—but they reveal a deep strategic insecurity. The US cannot tolerate independence, even from those it calls partners. Its vision of order requires not just cooperation, but submission.
India and Pakistan are not just rivals—they are instruments in a broader imperial strategy of containment and control. But history has shown, time and again, that such games eventually implode. The empire’s clever gambit may buy time, but it cannot buy legitimacy.
When empire rewards the dictator and penalises the defiant, it tells the world more about itself than its targets. This isn’t diplomacy. It’s coercion in a tailored suit. And as the gap widens between imperial ambition and global reality, even the most carefully managed chessboard may one day be flipped by the very pawns it seeks to control.
Professor Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Decolonisation (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a member of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST – https://just-international.org), Movement for Liberation from Nakba (MLN – https://nakbaliberation.com), and Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE –https://www.theshapeproject.com/)
