Foreign policy grey rhinos…By Sherry Rehman
This year – 2025 – promises to be one defined by extraordinary disruption, in an era of staggering shifts in human history. Countries like Pakistan will need to map change to respond to strategic global shifts that threaten stability, impacting both predictability and management of risk. None of the crisis trendlines can be called black swans because they are not unexpected or in a category of event that arises as a bolt from the blue. They are instead called grey rhinos. Not surprises, but still the cause of shocks when they actually erupt.
The biggest trendline reshaping history is not an evolutionary positive. Geopolitics has not only come back, it is red in tooth and claw, weaponised to match the politics of this rules-lite era. It has also returned to dominate national responses and leach resources from broader existential trends like climate stress and the unequal impacts of machine learning on less developed economies.
Most notable is the dangerous surge in conflict at a scale not seen since the last world war. The rise of political illiberalism and a growing spike in hot and simmering wars in at least two theatres, Europe and the Middle East, should definitely give us cause for strategic pause. The European war theatre has already led to challenges in energy and food security, triggering a cost-of-living crisis in many countries, especially those struggling with high levels of inflation like Pakistan.
At a closer pivot, both culturally and geopolitically, Middle Eastern conflicts will continue to exert a high gravitational impact on our entire swathe of region in spiralling strategic tiers. The recent fall of Assad’s regime in Syria has alerted all players about the chessboard unfolding a little too conveniently for Israel’s expansionary model of settler colonialism, embedded at the same time in a volatile mix of extremist militancy. This pattern has played out disastrously in the past where rival groups compete for power while arms and cash flow without interruption to flammable zones in a grey zone of opacity. Syria has now joined that set of troubled dominoes. Navigating policy in such a hotbed of competing interests, including Turkiye, among others like the US, Russia, Iran and others will be a test of Islamabad’s diplomacy.
Closer to home, in case Iran and Israel go beyond the retaliatory signalling of limited war and seek to contain conflict, there may be an opening for a fragile settlement if President Trump 2.0 seeks legacy bargains, but any imposition of an unjust ‘peace’ that accepts or normalises Israel’s colonising gains in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon will not be seen as legitimate in Pakistan, and certainly not in Iran. Tehran has also demonstrated a high degree of sanctions resilience, like Russia, so those tools may not work in a longer play.
Will proxies take on a life of their own? Entirely possible, as they often do. Pakistan will do best to hedge its close ties with both Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two energy titans of the Middle East, so any conflict escalation will present challenges. Pakistan can certainly play a role in mitigating this conflict but will need to continue balancing the diplomatic tightrope between the two powers, each with deep ties to the US and China respectively.
At the same time, history tells us that egregious imbalances in the exercise of power yield unresolved conflict, not stable endgames. The Taliban resistance is a clear case in point. The forgotten war in Afghanistan, which has left deep aftershocks on our part of the world, continues to impact the daily lives of citizens, first responders and military personnel in border provinces, as well as casting a shadow on foreign investment. With an uptick of 40 per cent in militancy, Pakistan’s internal conflict spectrum is already responding to current spikes in terrorist activity originating from our western border. This trendline should materially trigger a red alert for institutional national responses to this alarming resurgence since the US exit from the longest war. A new NAP is needed.
While the Biden administration’s parting sanctions on Pakistan’s ICBM programme ring up to the seventh such entity-sanctions, they are to be taken seriously. Despite the fact that Indian ICBMs obviously possess a higher strike range than Pakistan’s, the enduring neuralgia in the American defence establishment with Islamabad’s nuclear programme and its delivery potential is a worry that needs to be addressed, and if possible allayed. A series of strategic dialogue rounds with the US is entirely called for in 2025, with a new administration.
Back in what we all continue to call South Asia, entrenched maximalisms over unresolved conflicts, including the Kashmir issue, will keep the region at a standstill on substantive peace-making, even on transboundary pollution, water, trade, and deterrence regimes. Perhaps the most dangerous dynamic between India and Pakistan will continue to be a shared overconfidence in their own ability to control escalation and a surety that the other will exercise strategic restraint, preventing the ramping up of a small-scale conventional conflict to the nuclear level.
At the same time, while the fuse in South Asia may be shorter than at any time in recent memory, the China-India-Pakistan triad may not receive more than scant attention outside the region. Despite the fact that South Asia is the only place in the world where three nuclear-armed nations sit in close proximity and are bound by violently contested borders. Given the escalating strategic risks in the triad, several measures can enhance stability and reduce the likelihood of nuclear conflict which are no secret to our strategic playbook. These should be put on the table as an agenda item after discussion with China in all possible forums.
In another geopolitical play, the ‘Taiwan Contingency’ as it is often labelled signals another potential conflict theatre in the Pacific, which can potentially rip all existing maps of stability into shreds. This will have to be watched for its buildup, for obvious reasons, along with India’s growing alignment with the US as the proxy in the ‘Indo-Pacific’. Any big disruption in this theatre will present a clear and present danger for Islamabad in balancing sides between two competing global powers. With Beijing as Pakistan’s largest investor, and the US as the largest trade partner, any zero-sum behaviour will impose costs on Islamabad’s trade, credit lines and balance of payment numbers.
At another but potentially seismic level, with Trump 2.0 pushing high trade tariffs with China and other countries, Pakistan will have to brace for the predicted cracks in the global order that drove trade, currency and economic activities in 2024. They are likely to be subject to accelerated weaponisation in more intensified potential decouplings of what used to be a system on a path to global integration. Because of supply chain breaks, these wars will have a high potential of disruption in the system, along with a fresh search for innovation-nationalism as a path to building guardrails for protectionist goals. In either case, for many countries, efficiency will be replaced by resilience as economic outcomes.
Lastly, as we saw in 2024, many global ‘givens’ such as a consensus on climate action are opening up again for contestation, which means a loss of protection from crucial multilateral agreements. The path to global de-warming is not on a stable trajectory, which means enhanced climate risk for frontline nations like Pakistan, high on the vulnerability index. While Pakistan should use both diplomacy and action at global forums, the likelihood of expecting a big financial windfall, or even extracting justice from existing wins like Loss and Damage Funds is unlikely if we are unable to leverage our standing with the G77 group at multilateral tables. This will inject uncertainty and of course volatility in many outcomes.
Is Pakistan ready for geopolitical contests that reshape its trade, tech and access to capital? Our diplomacy is still old-school, and not pivoted to aggressively promoting commercial gains, or articulating security concerns beyond the boilerplate templates. This will have to change, especially at multilateral tables, where Pakistan has an opportunity as a non-permanent member of the Security Council to preside this year in July.
As another option, as pressures go up to navigate the pull of strategic binaries, which middle powers like Pakistan must face, Islamabad should use mini-laterals and bilateral forums to better capacity while running the soft balancing model of doing business with all sides. Most importantly, Pakistan will need to fast-track its institutional capacities to effect reform, grow its economy and respond with agility to challenges that will not go away with the business-as-usual scale of response. Smart diplomacy requires high intellectual alignment to change, and this decade likely will bring it to a quantum level.
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