Building on long-standing ties & Islamic solidarity, Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement comes at a time of heightened regional tensions especially after Israeli attack on Doha.
Muslim countries are authoritative and feel threatened by democracies because of interventionist policies. Beijing took the advantage of these conditions.
Bitterness preceded the visit, which is happening for the first time since the Ladakh stand-off began, despite its extremely crucial nature. Both sides didn’t announce the visit officially.
India builds ‘regional consensus’ with Central Asian countries on Afghanistan. Concurrently, Pakistan creates fund under Islamic Development Bank at a special OIC session.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s refusal to allow a stand-alone meeting on Kashmir issue signals a new era of understanding of New Delhi’s position.
China has again been Pakistan’s friend — bailing it out of Saudi loans and raising the Kashmir at UNSC. But Islamabad is fast losing other friends in Islamic world.
On bilateral ties, Admiral Paparo said India-US ties have an exponential effect on deterrence, because it demonstrates a unity of purpose among us to maintain the peace.
This is the game every nation is now learning to play. Some are finding new allies or seeing value among nations where they’d seen marginal interest. The starkest example is India & Europe.
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