ADNCA’S Epilogue: Unveiling insights at National Seminar on the theme ‘Great Power Competition: Challenges and Opportunities for Pakistan’

On the 2nd of May, 2024, a one-day seminar convened at BUITEMS by the Balochistan Think Tank Network (BTTN), attracting a distinguished array of participants including delegates from the Advisor Development National Command Authority (ADNCA), the Center for International Strategic Studies, Sindh (CISSS), Rabita Forum International (RFI) and other think tanks alongside notable figures such as former governor, Balochistan, diplomats, dignitaries, academia representatives, and officials from forces. Notably, ADNCA, Lt. General (R) Khalid Ahmed Kidwai NI, HI, HI(M) delivered a comprehensive address to the audience, encapsulating key insights and perspectives pertinent to the seminar’s themes and objectives. His remarks, presented in the form of an epilogue, are detailed below.

1. Justice Amanullah Yasinzai, Brigadier Agha Ahmed Gul, Dr. Zafar Khan, eminent speakers of the Seminar, ladies and gentlemen. It always gives me great pleasure to be in Quetta and spend quality time with one of my favourite think tanks the Balochistan Think Tank Network (BTTN). Further, it gives me added pleasure, personal satisfaction and pride in seeing the rapid progress and growth of BTTN as it emerges on the academic and intellectual horizon of Pakistan. In a very short time of less than three years, BTTN has earned a nationally respected name for itself. In Balochistan alone, BTTN has established itself as the go-to strategic think tank on a variety of subjects of interest whether these be of local interest or national or international strategic interest. This is entirely in line as visualized in the founding objectives laid down for BTTN. So, I can say with complete confidence to team BTTN, well done, you have delivered with aplomb.”
2. The topic chosen by BTTN for its annual seminar could not have been more relevant to the strategic environments, and from Pakistan’s perspective, may I say, challenging strategic environments, prevailing in today’s geo-political and geo-economic world: Great Power Competition: Challenges and Opportunities for Pakistan. And to do justice to the topic, the BTTN has invited speakers of the highest caliber, respected professionals in their respective fields. Listening to their candid and informed views was a great learning experience and I am sure, everyone here would agree that we will all go out from this Seminar wiser than when we came in and so, a very special thank you to the eminent speakers.
3. The term used in the topic “Great Power Competition” reminds me of a familiar and somewhat similar term used over a century plus ago, which was in vogue in this part of the world when the British Empire in India was struggling to keep the Russian Empire of the Tsars at bay. The term used then was “The Great Game” which was centered on and around Afghanistan, our own North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and parts of Central Asia. A century plus later, today, from the South Asian perspective, if we were to say that the American Empire has replaced the British Empire, and the emerging Chinese Empire has replaced the Russian Empire, we may not be too wide off the mark.
4. From Pakistan’s national security perspective, and for that matter from India’s national security perspective as also from the national security perspectives of the USA and China, the strategic and geographical areas and features remain much the same. The Himalayas, the Karakorum, the Hindukush Mountains remain quite where they have always been for centuries unknown, the mighty Indus, the mighty Ganges, the mighty Brahmaputra, and for that matter the mighty Oxus separating Afghanistan from Central Asia, continue to flow richly as they always have for centuries unknown. The Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Pacific, stay where they always have been for centuries unknown.
5. However, the Great Game of today, call it Great Power Competition as in this Seminar, is very much on, only with a change of cast, characters and actors. The difference being that after the partition of India in 1947, two new sovereign nations of India and Pakistan, adversaries for a variety of reasons anyway, also find themselves additionally at the receiving end of the fallout of today’s Great Power Competition or The Great Game, between the USA and China. From the foregoing analogy, one can also reconfirm the famous proverb of the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr: the more things change, the more they remain the same. And from the point of view of history therefore, while one can say that history repeats itself, one can also say that historically speaking, there is nothing new about the Great Power Competition between the USA and China, and by extension as surrogates, between India and Pakistan.
6. As I see some of these global developments today, I think you might agree that we are living through very interesting times. I think we are also living through historic times. In a philosophical sense you and I are fortunate to be witnessing history unfold before our eyes in our lifetime as we watch three super powers, the USA, Russia and China competing, containing and where possible confronting to establish their respective footprints for global supremacy. The chessboard is fascinating but the chessboard also carries direct consequences for South Asia. The fallout effects are already upon us, India and Pakistan, in a variety of negative and positive ways. The South Asian region as such remains in a flux while attempting to adjust to the global and regional developments and ground realities around it.
7. The USA has of course been an undisputed super power since the end of World War II particularly since the demise of the USSR. However, it has faced challenges to its world domination in the past and continues to face serious challenges to its status today, interestingly not only from China and Russia in the politico-military domains but also economic challenges. There is an increasing de-dollarization drive by many countries in an attempt to break free from American monetary hegemony. Then there is the enlargement of the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which now also includes some important countries of the Middle East which were thus far considered to be in the US area of influence. Mildly put, one can say that the US is struggling as it tries to retain its sole super power status.
8. The second super power of our times the USSR collapsed dramatically right before our eyes in the early 1990s, and splintered into the original 15 odd Republics that had earlier come to form the then USSR some 70 years ago in 1922. The mantle of the collapsing USSR along with the nuclear weapons, passed on to the successor state of Russia. For over three decades since then Russia has struggled to regain its inherited super power status politically, economically, militarily and technologically. However, both the USSR (read Russia) and the US have demonstrated vulnerabilities, and limits to power, through strategic debacles in Afghanistan, one following the other, refusing to learn from history, with serious consequences for their respective geo-political clout and global influence.
9. Additionally, for over two years now, Russia and the US are directly embroiled in Ukraine in what essentially is yet another struggle for security, power, and domination. While the world suffers the consequences politically and economically, and anxiously awaits the conclusion of this unwarranted conflict, I have no doubt that the eventual outcome will redefine the future global strategic balance in more than one way.
10. In the meantime, beside the broader geo-political and geo-economic outcome that might emerge in the indefinite future, there are issues of immediate relevance and concern as the Ukrainian conflict rages; some of these issues touch Pakistan directly or indirectly.
11. One, the use of energy – both gas and oil – as also wheat as a strategic tool of war.
12. Two, the real possibility of the use of nuclear weapons especially tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) leading possibly to a global Armageddon. While Russia has chosen to deploy the TNWs on the Belarus-Ukrainian border, as a deterrent, as a warning, or for possible employment, the other side too continues to respond by its own nuclear threats and warnings rather loosely. The latest in this one up-man ship was Poland recently.
13. Three, Russia has also walked back from its ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), indicating intention to test nuclear weapons if the US were to do so, or even if the US were not to do so. And who can tell then that both India and Pakistan might actually welcome such an opportunity to test their own new weapon designs even as the prevailing non-proliferation regime is scuttled.
14. Further, as a corollary to these issues, one could also perhaps debate the now hypothetical possibility of what might have been if Ukraine had not given up its nuclear arsenal a few decades ago, in a moment of strategic insanity, in exchange for unreliable international security guarantees. These guarantees of course did not rescue Ukraine when most needed. Would Ukraine have been able to join NATO without a bullet being fired because its nuclear weapons would have deterred Russia from invading?
15. If one looks at all these developments closely, I think these issues carry strong relevance and lessons for countries like Pakistan and its deterrence policies when faced with asymmetrical military, political and economic challenges in South Asia with direct strategic effects on regional strategic stability.
16. In the geo-political milieu of today’s global order, or disorder, it is the third super power of our era China which is emerging, some say has emerged, as the brand new super power posing multiple challenges to the US in the political, economic, military and technological spheres and is now making soft inroads even in areas of traditional US influence. Even though the meetings between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jin Ping, and now the recent visit of the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to China, may have calmed nerves, the Great Game, or the Great Power competition remains very much on with desperate American efforts to contain the rise and rise of China, duly identified as the main threat, with a series of alliance building like the AUKUS and Quad, and getting countries like India, Australia and a few Far Eastern countries on board for playing the contain China game. The fact is that ever since President Obama’s policy of Pivot to Asia over a decade ago, the resultant focus of the United States to contain the rise and rise of China, is today the singular dynamic driving the international, and in the case of Asia particularly, the regional geopolitical scene, with chips falling wherever they might.
17. Consider the soft but a surprise diplomatic coup in March 2023 by China in the Middle East. China hosted and brought about a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to not only re-establish broken diplomatic relations but also revive and honour a number of past agreements that the two sides had worked out but suspended years ago. The wider strategic effects of the rapprochement will eventually impact strategic outcomes in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and possibly Lebanon. For now though the regional game in the wider Middle East seems to have taken a strategic pause because of the ongoing Israeli war of genocide on Hamas and the Palestinians, further aggravated by the Israel-Iran military escalation and stand-off.
18. These are tectonic events, ladies and gentlemen, which speak of China’s emerging international diplomatic clout, which rests on solid economic strength as the world’s second largest economy. And this despite the fact that China’s latest military budget is only 27 % of the US military budget; USD 225 billion versus USD 817 billion.
19. With Russia and China aligning against US hegemony and supremacy, the US finds itself confronted by strong challengers. The identifiable responses in the US geo political and geo-economic strategies are to retain its pre-eminent dominant position through the sheer force of its military-industrial power and alliance building like the Quad and AUKUS. This stands out in considerable contrast to the strategies of China, which is more confident of itself and is exercising its traditional strategic patience in order to assert its global position of eminence through the tools of its economic power, its soft global reach and growing military, nuclear and technological prowess.
20. Also consider the build-up of Chinese hard power; the military exercises that China held in April 2023 to demonstrate its capabilities of physically encircling and isolating Taiwan despite the presence of strong US forces in the Pacific and the South China Sea.
21. Where does South Asia figure out in this unfolding global and regional geopolitical environment? What are the emerging challenges for Pakistan especially because of Pakistan’s traditional and strong strategic relationship with China on the one hand as well as a long history of transactional relationship with the US on the other hand? Is a balancing act possible that would work to serve Pakistan’s national interests? How should Pakistan in the context of its security interests view and respond to the clear strategic choice that the US has made in over two decades by now, of propping up India as a counter weight to China? Even though India is nobody’s fool as it has quite boldly and smartly demonstrated in its handling of the Ukraine crisis and unapologetic retention of its traditional strategic and economic relationship with Russia. In keeping with the emerging trend of dedollarization in international trade, India also went ahead and struck an agreement with Russia for the purchase of Russian oil in non-USD currencies. ‘India first’ is the declared and practiced policy under Modi and Jaishankar – and rightly so, why not?
22. On the flip side however, I am sure that deep down somewhere the US and the western establishments would wonder on the reliability of India as a strategic containment partner if and when the chips might be down against China in a future scenario. With a roaring trade with China of USD 136 billion in 2022, and an entirely mismatched Indian military as it emerged clearly during the 2020 thrashing in Ladakh, one wonders how much of a containment game would India want to play on behalf of the US and the west when actually needed? The west would likely watch as helplessly then, as it does now with reference to Russia and Ukraine, while India will play for preserving its own interests in a future US-Chinese conflict. An article by the Indian-American academic Ashley Tellis in the Foreign Policy magazine last year quite clearly indicated which way India would swing in such an eventuality – and he said quite clearly that it would not be towards the US. And while Ashley Tellis is the voice of the Indian establishment in Washington, the US continues to live with blinkers on and builds up India as a bulwark against China. India is quite happy with those blinkers.
23. Under these challenging geo-political and security environments, I think Pakistanis should thank our elders of many decades ago who aligned Pakistan’s star with China. The effects of that visionary decision have borne fruit all through these decades as the Pakistan-China friendship has blossomed steadily and has gone from strength to strength. Today, Pakistan not only has a reliable friend but a strategic partner in the truest sense of the word, who can be trusted blindly and who has stood by Pakistan and safeguarded its interests in every conceivable way. Internationally, economically, strategically and militarily, Chinese help has been crucial, and on a number of occasions in fact, life-saving. Consequently, as China rises slowly but surely to claim it’s historical and rightful place as a great power in a multipolar world, I have no hesitation in saying that Pakistan is on the right side of history. We therefore need to be wise about safeguarding zealously our coveted position and our interests. That does not at all imply walking away or a dilution of our relationships with other world powers but it does imply certainly the recognition as to where the anchor is.
24. Given the vast scope of the topic of today’s Seminar, the worthy I speakers and subject experts have done full justice to their sub-topics and deserve our deep gratitude for their candid analysis and views. There is just one last point that I would like to make and that is with regard to India especially in the context of its rising place in South Asia and the region. I have a viewpoint on that account and I would like to say a few words on it.
25. There is no doubt that India is a rising regional power and it is aspiring to become a major global player in the future I have no argument with that. Besides its geographical size and a population of over 1400 Million people, over time India has developed strategic, military and economic strengths that compel international players to woo India as an emerging power of consequence. In the unfolding international power play India has smartly aligned itself with the US and the west because of converging mutual interests mainly over a rising China. Recent events and successes have provided India an opportunity to showcase its claims to recognition as an emerging regional and global power. The landing on the moon, the hosting of the G-20 Summit in New Delhi, the announcement of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), all in quick succession, have come at an opportune time for India to glamourize and bask in international recognition. This to a point that it can, not only participate in an anti-US trade de-dollarization drive, be on the opposite side on Ukraine, display arrogant behavior before the very powers that are trying to propel it upwards by signing strategic agreements after strategic agreements with it, but also get away with state sponsored murders in Canada, USA and in Pakistan in addition to undertaking state sponsored terrorism inside Pakistan and in Indian Occupied Kashmir by taking pages out of the Israeli playbook.
26. Simultaneously, India has also retained its historically strong ties with Russia especially due to its heavy dependence on Russian military inventory. While counting itself as an important member of the SCO and BRIGS, India has played to the west’s need to contain the rise of China without itself undertaking any meaningful obligations as pay back. We have seen how in the Ukraine crisis India has played both sides of the fence and protected its national interests quite unapologetically while the US and Europe watch helplessly.
27. Notwithstanding the relative successes of India in different fields. India has also suffered a few strategic setbacks in the last few years A consideration of these will enable us to take a more balanced view of India.
28. Continued shut out by a direct land route from Afghanistan and Central Asia without Pakistan’s consent.
29. Inability to draw benefits from the alternative route to Afghanistan and Central Asia through Iran’s Chabahar Port despite massive investments. The concurrent entry of China into Iran with a 25 years $ 400 billion deal has further complicated India’s strategic investments in Iran.
30. The strategic fiasco against China in Ladakh, Doklam and in Arunachal Pradesh, which carries serious security and operational implications for India’s western front with Pakistan, I the LOC and its Siachen positions in a potential two front war scenario. To briefly recall, China cut India and its surprised military to size in the full glare of international publicity without firing a bullet. India was humiliated; the US and the west had no help to offer and simply watched India get a drubbing. Modi had to lie with a straight face to the world and to the Indian public when he said that, “no post has been lost, no territory has been lost”. The Indian public simply swallowed the lie as a face saver. The so-called disengagement publicized by India is nothing more than the formalization and freezing of the strategic territorial reverses suffered by India. India’s strategic over reach against China on the LAC compelled India to restore the ceasefire on the LOC with Pakistan in order to offset a possible two front war scenario. The arrogant rhetoric to take Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan also mellowed down for some time because of ground realities. Now of course, the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, with an eye on the ongoing national election, had the temerity to say that he would chase terrorists inside Pakistan with a convenient memory lapse of the fantastic tea that was served to Abhinandan the last time India came chasing terrorists inside Pakistan.
31. In my opinion, strategic stability in South Asia especially from Pakistan’s viewpoint has been well served because of the consequences of India’s strategic over reach against China. With committed deployments of the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, a portion of the Indian military is likely to remain fixed in the northern front of nearly 3700 kilometers for the foreseeable future with an additional logistical burden far greater than that required to sustain Indian positions at Siachen. That eases pressures against Pakistan creating relatively greater equilibrium and balance in the strategic stability paradigm.
32. On the economic front, while India’s broader growth trajectory is impressive at first glance, it does not provide any hope whatsoever to India’s nearly 700 million people living in abject poverty – that is 50 % of a hungry and shelter less population living in some of the worst slums in the world. It is a typical story, like Pakistan and many other third world countries, of lop sided economic growth which has nothing for the poor in it, except that in the case of India, the astounding figure of 700 million people living in abject poverty with no hope in hell of being lifted out of it is a ticking time bomb. While India’s foreign exchange reserves of nearly USD 600 billion are indeed impressive, a lesser known figure is the size of India’s external debt of USD 624 billion. However, the sheer size of the Indian economy provides the state with enough resources to spend lavishly on its security apparatus rather than on the 700 million poor souls.
33. Here I would like to state purely militarily and strategically speaking that this is where an opportunity for Pakistan emerges. While Pakistan’s military has always been conscious of the disadvantages of a conventional force asymmetrical imbalance, this has largely been offset by the acquisition of a robust nuclear weapons capability. Pakistan’s inventory of a variety of nuclear weapons across the entire spectrum of the deterrence paradigm from strategic to operational to tactical, including First and Second Strike options, has strengthened Pakistan’s hand enormously and allowed Pakistan to transit to the policy of Full Spectrum Deterrence creating strategic and operational effects to a point where India’s large conventional military capability has become quite irrelevant to the security paradigm of South Asia. War as an instrument of policy for India stands outlawed. India therefore is not ten feet tall and is manageable.
34. My recommendation is very simple really! That from such a position of relative strategic security, enforced peace and comfort, it is now up to politics, diplomacy and smart governance to use the time and space window created by Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence capability in all earnest for focused economic resurgence in order to regain Pakistan’s compromised economic sovereignty, and strengthen internal cohesion.
35. 1 thank you, ladies and gentlemen.