Read it all:Q. President Obama’s trip to India last month is still fresh in people’s minds. It was a three-day panorama of effusive and friendly images and words. How did that go down in Pakistan and China?
A. Evidently neither side has reacted that well, and I think there was some surprise — not so much about the U.S. willingness to embrace [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi, but how forward-leaning the new Indian leader is over relations with the United States, and what the implications of that might be. The Chinese complained specifically about the “joint strategic vision” statement for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean, and the Pakistanis were more generally piqued. The fact that the [Pakistani] chief of army staff paid a visit to Beijing on the very same day as Obama was in India showed the need for a little bit of symbolic counterplay, and China’s willingness to go along with it.
Q. From time to time, the Chinese have told the Pakistanis that, though we are very good friends, don’t alienate the United States too much. Why do they say that?
A. China wants Pakistan to benefit from as much U.S. financial largess and military support as it can. Part of Pakistan’s value to China continues to come from its playing a balancing role against India, and it can do that far more effectively with advanced U.S. defense equipment and economic and diplomatic backing than when it gets treated as a pariah state. A healthy U.S.-Pakistan relationship also acts as something of a constraint on the depth of U.S.-India ties. Beijing is also very wary about being caught in the middle of tensions between the two sides.
Poor U.S.-Pakistan relations invite a lot more pressure and scrutiny on China’s own dealings with Pakistan, which was the case throughout the 1990s over nuclear parts and missile sales, and the worst-case scenario — outright military confrontation between the United States and Pakistan — would be a disaster for China’s position in the region.
Q. and A.: Andrew Small on the China-Pakistan Relationship
