Pakistan seems to have caught the geopolitical winds just right. Last month, Pakistan signed a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia. Under this bold pact, an attack on one will be regarded as an attack on both, a dramatic escalation of security guarantees in a region already crowded with rivalries. At the same time, Islamabad has quietly dispatched rare earth mineral samples to the United States and is exploring deeper export agreements. Washington, for its part, appears newly interested in treating Pakistan as more than a peripheral irritant.
These moves suggest momentum. Commentators in Islamabad and Riyadh call it a renaissance of Pakistani foreign policy, a belated recognition of the country’s strategic indispensability. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s presence at the Gaza peace summit only reinforced the impression of a nation returning to centre stage in the Muslim world.
But this is no overnight miracle. It is the product of necessity, pressure and shifting alignments in a volatile region. Behind the optics lie harder realities.
The first driver of Pakistan’s foreign policy push is the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Washington’s abrupt exit left a vacuum it still struggles to fill. With a hostile Iran and an entrenched Taliban, the US needs a counterweight in the region. Pakistan, with its geography, intelligence networks and long entanglement in Afghan affairs, suddenly matters again.
US President Donald Trump’s demand that the Taliban hand over the Bagram airbase, five years after signing the deal that paved the way for the US withdrawal, underscores America’s search for leverage. If that gambit fails, Pakistan becomes the obvious fallback: the only state with both logistical capacity and political connections to help Washington maintain a presence in the region.
The second factor is the uneasy US-India relationship. Over the past decade, Washington has drawn New Delhi deeper into its Indo-Pacific strategy, strengthening its global profile in ways Pakistan sees as threatening. Yet US-India friction has grown. Disputes over visas and tariffs have festered. India’s embrace of Moscow has raised eyebrows in Washington.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s August visit to Beijing sent a clear signal that India is willing to hedge its bets with China. Economically, his “Make in India” programme, modelled on East Asia’s low-cost export strategies, could undercut US manufacturing. For Trump, eager to maintain balance in Asia, Pakistan appears useful again as a counterweight to India’s flirtations with Beijing.
The third and most precarious driver is mineral diplomacy. Islamabad’s outreach to Washington centres on promises of access to rare earth minerals, many of which are located in the restive region of Balochistan. On paper, this looks like a win-win: Pakistan gains investment, and the US secures critical resources. But the reality is darker. Balochistan remains Pakistan’s poorest province despite decades of extraction. Infrastructure projects stand underused, airports lie empty and unemployment remains stubbornly high.
The Balochistan Mines and Minerals Act 2025, passed by the provincial legislature in March, has only deepened discontent. Under the act, Islamabad is formally empowered to recommend mining policies and licensing decisions in Balochistan, a move that has provoked opposition across the political spectrum. Critics argue it undermines provincial autonomy and recentralises control in Islamabad. Even right-wing religious parties, such as the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F), seldom aligned with nationalist groups, have expressed opposition, portraying the law as yet another attempt to dispossess local communities of their rightful stake in the province’s resources.
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