New Delhi: Tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad remain raw a month after the India-Pakistan flare-up triggered by the Pahalgam bombing. Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, Pakistan’s most distinguished soldier, has now received an unprecedented high-profile invitation to attend the US Army Day celebration on June 14, 2025.
Munir is scheduled to enter Washington two days earlier, on June 12, for back-to-back sessions with senior Pentagon and Joint Chiefs officers. Beaming cameras will capture the pageantry, but experience suggests the real outcome will rest on what remains unsaid after the fanfare. CNN-News18, citing unnamed diplomatic channels, refers to the trip as ‘heavy with practical import’ even if the headlines lean ceremonial.
Three subjects dominate the agenda: deepening Pakistan-China partnership, nerves around cross-border militancy, and the ever-tense Delhi-Islamabad equation. Zalmay Khalilzad, who once stewarded the US Afghan portfolio, insists Washington intends to press Munir for concrete moves against groups striking both India and Afghanistan. US officials hope such pressure may coax Islamabad toward stabilising a region where its own security is repeatedly implicated.
Pakistani foreign policy chief Jalil Munir is ready to table two headline-grabbing ideas. One harks back to the Nixon era, when Islamabad briefly played mediator between Washington and Beijing. The second, more straightforward in tone, invites American firms to tap the country’s copper-gold trove at Reko Diq and the rare-earth deposits scattered through Balochistan. Backers argue that new jobs from mining could undercut the local insurgency.
Meanwhile Pakistan is pressing the Biden administration to nudge New Delhi back to the Kashmiri negotiating table. India flatly counters that dialogue is off-limits until Islamabad halts cross-border terrorism, a demand External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has framed as non-negotiable.
Washington still feels the weight of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor projects, which have stitched Beijing’s money deep into its ally’s economy. Proposing rare-earth shipments to the West runs the risk of convicting those ties, and upsetting Chinese sensibilities hardly helps Islamabad’s bargaining position.
Even so, indicators at State Bank suggest breathing room; foreign reserves bump up near $10 billion, inflation sits at a tame 0.3 per cent, and Munir wants Western capital to keep that momentum alive. The survival of that vision in the face of geopolitical pressure remains uncertain.
In a recent analysis, Zalmay Khalilzad underlined Pakistan’s wariness of becoming too dependent on China. Islamabad, he noted, regards American capital as a hedge against what some in the establishment fear could evolve into a colonial arrangement. Sceptics still invoke the old spectre of a double game whenever Rawalpindi flirts with rival superpowers.
Meanwhile, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir is preparing for a Washington visit that could redefine Pakistan’s diplomatic calculus. He hopes to exchange access to the country’s newly discovered mineral deposits for fresh technology and credit. Success, however, hinges on dodging fresher quarrels with New Delhi while reassuring Beijing that friendship with the West has limits.
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