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Look West, Not East: What Washington Wants from Pakistan Quwa Premium
The 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) under the second Trump administration does not focus on Pakistan as a priority area of foreign policy interest, but many of the primary policy objectives of the NSS could give observers an idea of where Pakistan is heading in terms of its political and security imperatives broadly and, specifically, its ties with the US.
The key hint rests in the following excerpt of the NSS:
“The days of the United States propping up the entire world like Atlas are over. We count among our many allies and partners dozens of wealthy, sophisticated nations that must assume primary responsibility for their regions and contribute far more to our collective defense…Continuing President Trump’s approach of asking allies to assume primary responsibility for their regions, the United States will organize a burden-sharing network, with our government as convener and supporter. This approach ensures that burdens are shared and that all such efforts benefits from broader legitimacy. The model will be targeted partnerships that use economic tools to align incentives, share burdens with like-minded allies, and insist on reforms that anchor long-term stability…The United States will stand ready to help—potentially through more favorable treatment on commercial matters, technology sharing, and defense procurement—those countries that willingly take more responsibility for security in their neighborhoods and align their export controls with ours.”
The excerpt most obviously alludes to the decades-long tradition of many of the world’s powers, especially Canada and Western Europe, leveraging a peace dividend on the back of longstanding U.S. security leadership. The Trump administration is winding that dependency back and, in turn, has tasked its NATO partners to not only reach the minimum defence spending target of 2% of GDP, but now look towards reaching 5% of GDP (via 3.5% on core spending like building and maintaining capability, and then another 1.5% to elevate issue-specific capacity like countering the Russian threat). Western Europe’s leading powers are being left with not only managing their regional security interests, but doing so in a manner that still aligns with fundamental U.S. interests, like maintaining regional stability.
The same logic extends beyond NATO. Besides offloading security responsibility to wealthy European allies, it is constructing a global architecture where regional powers anchor their own neighborhoods. For Pakistan, this means a specific role within that architecture, one that American policymakers have historically preferred but never articulated quite so explicitly.
Pakistan’s Regional Role is to “Look West”
The NSS draws a direct link between stabilizing other regions – from Western Europe to Africa to the Middle East – and America’s ability to focus on China in the Pacific.
This reflects a perspective Quwa has adopted over the past several years: current U.S. policy identifies China as its leading threat, and to focus on this threat, the U.S. cannot remain anchored in other regions, including historically contested ones such as the Middle East. From America’s perspective, problems such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and tensions in South Asia must all be resolved and, just as importantly, managed by key regional actors – thereby enabling the U.S. to devote its attention to China.
Pakistan’s place within this framework becomes clear when viewed through this lens. U.S. policymakers want Pakistan to “look west” in the sense of treating Afghanistan and, to a lesser degree, the Middle East as its core areas of security interest. In exchange, Washington wants Pakistan to stop fixating on India as the singular organizing principle of its national security posture and, instead, align with American-led efforts to contain China (or at minimum, not obstruct them).
The indicators of this “look west” posture are already visible on the ground.
Pakistan’s Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia represents a formalized security commitment to the Gulf, moving beyond the informal understandings that characterized previous decades. This is precisely the kind of regional burden-sharing the NSS envisions – Pakistan tying itself to Middle Eastern security affairs so American forces don’t have to.
Similarly, the growing tensions and recent clashes between Islamabad and Kabul signal a more overtly aggressive Pakistani posture toward the Taliban. The cross-border TTP threat gives Pakistan legitimate cause, but the approach also aligns with Washington’s preference for regional actors managing their own problem sets.
The December 2024 strikes into Afghan territory and the subsequent diplomatic rupture suggest Rawalpindi is no longer waiting for American mediation.
On the maritime front, the Pakistan Navy’s participation in Coalition Task Force efforts and its self-owned Regional Maritime Security Patrol initiative have expanded its operational reach in the Arabian Sea, positioning the PN as a relevant security actor in the Middle East maritime domain.
The May 2025 Conflict and the Conventional Capacity Question
The “look west” ask implicitly requires Pakistan to feel secure enough on its eastern border to redirect attention elsewhere. The May 2025 conflict between India and Pakistan – the most intense military engagement between the two countries since 1971 – has reshaped how this dynamic works.
The conflict’s outcome carries significant implications for the NSS framework.
On one hand, Pakistan demonstrated that it possesses credible conventional deterrence against India – a prerequisite for any serious “look west” reorientation. Rawalpindi can now argue, with combat-tested evidence, that it can address Indian aggression if required – and, likewise, contest that New Delhi can be a destabilizing actor when it perceives having a decisive advantage over Pakistan.
On the other hand, the conflict showed that South Asian instability remains a live risk that can rapidly escalate to near-war conditions, precisely the kind of distraction the NSS seeks to eliminate.
The NSS language about “more favorable treatment on commercial matters, technology sharing, and defense procurement” for countries that “take more responsibility for security in their neighborhoods” can become directly relevant here. If Washington wants Pakistan focused on Afghanistan and the Gulf rather than India, Pakistan needs sufficient conventional capacity to maintain deterrence.
The May 2025 conflict showed that Chinese platforms can deliver this capability – but it also showed that Pakistan achieved this deterrence through deeper integration with Beijing’s defence industrial base, not Washington’s.
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