Americans are accustomed to exercising sanctions to coerce adversaries and also foster a change in allies’ behavior. However, these sanctions’ execution criteria lack uniformity. Washington gives a waiver or makes exceptions while imposing strict sanctions in identical cases. This discriminatory approach testifies to considering strategic interests rather than legal, moral, and ideological norms and customs in real politik.
The Americans defend the sanctions strategy by claiming that these are strategic tools designed to ensure compliance with international norms, particularly non-proliferation. However, in reality, they only levy sanctions to pursue their strategic objectives in global politics rather than strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime. In South Asia, it bluntly supported India’s membership of the Nuclear Supplier Group. It opposed Pakistan, which asked for a criteria-based rather than a state-specific approach in granting the NSG membership. Precisely, these discriminatory approaches and double standards undermine the credibility of non-proliferation regimes.
Pakistan is struggling to improve its relationship with the United States. However, the transformation in global geopolitics, increasing China-U.S. strategic competition, and evolving threshold alliance between New Delhi and Washington obstruct the positive trajectory in bilateral cooperation between Pakistan and the United States.
Global geopolitical trends, especially Sino-U.S. security competition, have pushed Washington to back New Delhi as a counterpoise to Beijing’s steady rise in Asia and beyond. India’s leaders, aspiring that the country would become a great power, have cemented a strategic partnership with the United States by shelving their decades-long non-alliance external policy.
India-United States’ strategic partnership has evolved from an episodic cooperation to a ‘threshold alliance’ since the dawn of the twenty-first century. Forming a threshold alliance involves developing military-technical interoperability. The disturbing factor is that India has received generous supplies of advanced conventional and non-conventional weapons, technologies, and platforms from the United States. The transfer of sophisticated lethal weapons amplifies the arms race in South Asia.
The United States and Western allies did not object to the S-400Triumph air defense system trade between India and Russia. Washington did not levy sanctions on India under the ‘Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act’ (CAATSA). The U.S. sanctioned Turkey for purchasing the S-400 missile system from the Russian Federation in December 2020.
Washington imposed sanctions on four companies for their alleged role in supplying missile-applicable items to Pakistan’s ballistic missile program on April 19, 2024.The U.S. identified the alleged suppliers to Islamabad’s ballistic missile program as China-based Xi’an Longde Technology Development Company Limited, Tianjin Creative Source International Trade Co. Ltd., Granpect Company Limited, and Belarus-based Minsk Wheel Tractor Plant. Previously, in March 2023, a few Pakistani firms were put on the U.S. Commerce Department’s ‘entity list,’ allegedly for contributing to ballistic missile programs of concern, including Pakistan’s missile program, and for involvement in unsafeguarded nuclear activities.
Pakistan immediately censured the sanctions by claiming that technology was imported purely for socio-economic development pursuits. On April 20, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said, “Such listings of commercial entities have taken place in the past as well on allegations of links to Pakistan’s ballistic missile program without sharing any evidence whatsoever.” Islamabad reiterated its willingness to discuss end-use and end-user verification mechanisms with Washington so that the discriminatory application of export controls does not hurt legitimate commercial users.
Importantly, targeting Pakistan’s ballistic missile program manifests Americans’ desire to cap and roll back Pakistan’s missile program while encouraging India’s missile program’s modernization. India has introduced new missile systems, such as hypersonic cruise missiles, hypervelocity-gliding projectiles, and anti-satellite kill vehicles, into its arsenal. These developments added a new strategic instability variable in the South Asian strategic environment.
Ever since independence in 1947, Pakistan has encountered military threats from the eastern neighbor. The unsettled border with Afghanistan and territorial dispute with India have compelled Pakistan to maintain and continuously advance its armed forces. Though after the nuclear tests on May 28, 1998, Islamabad offered a nuclear restraint regime in South Asia, India rejected the proposal.
India’s aggressive military doctrine and modernization of armed forces, with the generous assistance of technologically advanced nations, including the U.S., oblige Pakistan to modernize its missile inventories for the sustainability of Full Spectrum Deterrence. Thus, despite the U.S. sanctions on dual-use technologies, Pakistan needs to advance its indigenous ballistic and cruise missile production within the precincts of credible minimum nuclear deterrence.
—Dr. Zafar Nawaz Jaspal is an Islamabad-based analyst and Professor at the School of Politics and International Relations at Quaid-i-Azam University. He is a non resident senior fellow of the Hong Kong Research Center for Asian Studies (RCAS). He is the author of Arms Control in South Asia: Politics, Postures, and Practices (2024): India’s Surgical Strike Stratagem: Brinksmanship and Responses: and Nuclear Risk Reduction Measures and Restraint Regime in South Asia Twitter: @zafar_jaspal
