New Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar suggested over the weekend that his country should resume its trade with India that it suspended in August 2019 following Delhi’s revocation of Article 370 for Kashmir. He noted that Indian imports are still arriving in Pakistan, albeit via third parties nowadays, which in turn raises their costs. Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar responded by saying that Pakistan must first stop supporting terrorism otherwise nothing in their ties will qualitatively change.
Dar’s seemingly random suggestion raises questions about Pakistan’s intentions, especially since he didn’t float any possible compromises that it could make with India, let alone any unilateral concessions. Although his Indian counterpart reaffirmed that he wants to see a stable neighborhood, thus implying that this could be achieved through the resumption of direct trade, his country doesn’t need to agree to this without Islamabad making some concessions since the latter’s IMF aid suffices for now.
Furthermore, although Pakistan could potentially cut off Afghan-Indian trade via its territory like it recently threatened to do if ties with Kabul further deteriorate, this can still be conducted across the relevant branch of the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) that transits through Iran. The same goes for scaling India’s trade with the Central Asian Republics, which while being easier to carry out across Pakistan and thenceforth Afghanistan, can also continue to be facilitated by the NSTC.
The fact of the matter is that Pakistan needs India more than the inverse in order to reduce indirect import costs of its products and thus help liberate itself from the IMF’s bondage over the long term. Be that as it may, India’s interests might be better served by Pakistan remaining indebted to that global body, which could continue demanding certain economic and political changes in exchange for more aid. These could in theory help reshape Pakistan into a less threatening country from India’s perspective.
The risk is that Pakistanis might one day rebel against the austerity measures demanded of them or the government might finally refuse to implement any more policy changes, thus leading to economically driven political instability that could endanger Indian security, but neither is likely for now. The de facto imposition of martial law since last May neutralizes the first-mentioned scenario while April 2022’s post-modern coup that led to the installation of a pro-Western regime does the same for the second.
While it’s possible that Pakistan has become so economically desperate and displeased with the IMF’s aid conditions that it’s now become sincerely interested in resuming direct trade with India as a valve from all this pressure, its lack of proposed compromises or unilateral concessions is suspicious. The power asymmetry with India should have informed policymakers that Delhi won’t agree to this without anything tangible in return. The upcoming six-week-long elections also reduce the chances as well.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP would never do anything during this sensitive political time that could be spun as making it seem like they have a so-called “weak” policy towards Pakistan. Clandestine talks could potentially be held during these months for Pakistan to convey its proposed compromises or concessions in furtherance of getting India to agree to resume direct trade if Islamabad lifts its restriction but preceding them with such a seemingly random public suggestion is strange.
Pakistan knew that this would engender speculation on both sides of the border about what might really be going on behind the scenes, which risks provoking patriotic pushback inside India that could doom the prospects of a deal. This insight gives the impression that Pakistan’s intentions might not be as sincere as some think and that its real motive might actually be to create a public spectacle over this issue that it could then exploit in advance of ulterior goals.
To explain, the earliest time by which a deal could be reached in the best-case scenario is sometime in June after the elections end, which coincides with the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Nizhny Novgorod from the 10th to the 11th of that month. The agenda for October’s leadership summit will be decided upon then and will likely also include the list of non-member states whose leadership will be invited to attend the “Outreach”/“BRICS-Plus” Summit.
Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov said in early March that his country plans to invite the leaders of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the latter of which includes Pakistan. All EAEU members are part of the CIS while all SCO ones apart from Pakistan are part of either the CIS or BRICS, thus meaning that it’s redundant to invite the SCO leaders unless the intent is to invite Pakistan without offending India.
The problem is that India would definitely be offended by Pakistan participating in BRICS in any capacity as was explained here, while this piece here warns near the end that inviting that country’s returning prime minister to participate in the “Outreach”/“BRICS-Plus” Summit would damage trust with India. The last-mentioned hyperlinked analysis also concludes with a few words about the existence of an increasingly vocal but still not all that influential Chinese-aligned policymaking faction in Russia.
They doubt that a return to Sino-US bi-multipolarity can be prevented and accordingly favor policies that de facto constitute becoming China’s “junior partner” in order to help it beat America as soon as possible, ergo why they want to invite its “iron brother” Pakistan to participate in BRICS. This faction is also deeply suspicious of India after being misled into thinking that it’s the West’s “Trojan Horse” in BRICS, and it’s they who might be the target of Pakistan’s seemingly random trade suggestion with India.
It could therefore very well be that Pakistan is calculating that the creation of a public spectacle over this issue would help this Chinese-aligned bi-multipolarity faction convince their comparatively quieter but much more influential Indian-aligned tri-multipolarity rivals that Delhi is indeed a “Trojan Horse”. Islamabad knows that no deal is possible till after the elections end in June but also that Delhi won’t approve of Moscow’s possible invite to Pakistan without Islamabad doing something tangible first.
Pakistan and India are unlikely to agree on this before the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting during the second week of that month when their top diplomats will decide the agenda for October’s leadership summit and who’ll all be invited to the supplementary one. The only possible chance of Russia agreeing to invite Pakistan over India’s objections in that case is if its leading policymaking faction is manipulated by public spectacles before then into thinking that India doesn’t actually share its multipolar worldview.
To be clear, it’s highly unlikely that anything could get them to deliberately offend India such as inviting Pakistan to participate in BRICS in some capacity despite Delhi’s objections, but that doesn’t mean that Islamabad still won’t give it a shot since it doesn’t lose anything by pretending to offer an olive branch. The worst that can happen from their perspective is that Russia doesn’t invite them to this year’s event just like China declined to do in 2022, while the best is that they drive a wedge in its ties with India.
If Prime Minister Modi skips the leadership summit on any pretext in order to protest India’s decades-long strategic Russian partners inviting his country’s equally long Pakistani rival to BRICS when even its Chinese “frenemy” decided against this, then bilateral relations would certainly suffer as a result. Russia’s Chinese-aligned bi-multipolarity faction might then become more influential than the Indian-aligned tri-multipolarity one is, with all that could entail for the future of the global systemic transition.
