Geopolitics is too complex to be compressed into newspaper columns. As the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said somewhere, explaining yourself in 800 words can feel like trying to wriggle into a dress two sizes too small. With 1,200 words, this dress is only 1.3 sizes too tight. Into that uncomfortable fit must go a fading Pax Americana, an emergent Pax Sinica, India’s loss of lustre, and Pakistan’s valiant attempts to reclaim centre stage.

Pakistan nominated President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, played host to negotiators from Washington and Tehran, and succeeded in co-forming what is being termed an ‘Islamic NATO’: the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, combining the defence-manufacturing base of Turkey, the economic strength of Saudi Arabia, and its own nuclear-armed military capabilities. All the while, Islamabad remained Beijing’s most reliable friend at the crossroads of West, South and Central Asia, tied through CPEC to the Belt and Road Initiative.

Despite India’s visibility and weight, including its third place in Lowy’s 2025 Asia Power Index, its strategic position has become more uncomfortable: China remains adversarial, the US relationship has turned volatile, New Delhi’s leverage in West Asian affairs has weakened, and its influence in the neighbourhood is less assured than its ‘Neighbourhood First’ rhetoric suggests.

Indian democracy is described as ‘flawed’. Its Press Freedom Index is ahead only of Afghanistan in South Asia. Even its HDI is worse than Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bhutan. All the bombast about India’s GDP at current prices reaching around $5.1 trillion by 2028-29 for its 1.5 billion people notwithstanding, data also show that labour-force participation over the decade rose by only about two percent. The World Bank/ILO estimates put vulnerable employment in India above 70 percent of the total.

Those who advocated for an NC-UML alliance for stability and prosperity need to note that one of the most politically stable regimes in New Delhi in decades has not produced equitable growth. By the mid-2020s, the top 10 percent of earners in India captured over 58 percent of national income, while the top 1 percent ultrarich commanded roughly 40 percent of the country’s total wealth, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. Researchers note that these inequality figures are higher than those seen during British colonial rule.

Little wonder, then, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi sounded tired and dispirited in his 13th consecutive Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi. The speech relied on freshly minted ‘jumlas’ meant less to clarify than to confuse: Shakti Ki Sapta Dhara as a programme, and Dimagi Naxal as the internal enemy.

Northward ho!

India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval is in Beijing for high-level boundary talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. President Xi Jinping is expected to visit India for the BRICS Summit scheduled for September 12-13 in New Delhi. Prime Minister Modi may encounter President Xi a little earlier at the 25th-anniversary meeting of the SCO on September 1 in Bishkek.

New Delhi appears to have accepted, however reluctantly, that it needs to normalise relations with China if it is to navigate the uncertainties of a world left behind by a receding Pax Americana, where multiple groups will compete and cooperate, to safeguard its interests. Even though the so-called ‘new Quad’ or ‘I2U2’ of India, Israel, the UAE and the United States sounds alluring, its fate is unlikely to be much better than that of the original ‘Quad’ of Australia, India, Japan and the United States because no alignment that seeks to work around China can function effectively in the Indo-Pacific for long.

Meanwhile, Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal, Asim Munir, along with Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi—the order of names comes from the official communiqué—are in Tehran “as part of Pakistan’s efforts to promote regional peace and stability.” It is not difficult to hazard a guess that the high-level Pakistani team enjoys the confidence of Beijing, Riyadh and Ankara, and hopes to persuade Iran to return to the negotiating table.

The 17th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS), scheduled to be held in Kathmandu from August 23-29, had to be shifted online so as not to offend Chinese sensibilities. The fear of rubbing Beijing the wrong way is now so strong that the US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, concluded his recent visit to Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh without his much-speculated meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

It is not for nothing that China is said to win wars these days without firing a shot. The recent US attack on Iran is a case in point: Washington and Tehran both lost face, while President Trump was left imploring Beijing to support sanctions against a country he had claimed to have militarily decimated.

Goliath stumbles

The crown of global hegemony intoxicates, but it also weighs heavy. Since returning to power for a second time—and the last, if the US Constitution remains intact—President Trump has oscillated between the high of power and the fatigue of running an empire no longer able to command easy obedience. The result has been erratic behaviour unbecoming of the President of the world’s most powerful state. President Xi now appears to exert greater influence upon the world without appearing too domineering.

Soon after returning to the White House, President Trump raised territorial claims over Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada and Venezuela. Recently, he declared the Strait of Hormuz “an American territory”. In January, US forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from Caracas. In a gesture recalling Knut Hamsun’s gift of his Nobel medal to Joseph Goebbels, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado presented her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Trump. But Washington spurned her overtures, settled for Maduro’s deputy as his replacement, and focused on Venezuelan oil rather than the sanctity of elections and democracy.

Perhaps Pakistan was the first in South Asia to recognise that Beijing was closer to Islamabad than Washington in every way. Ever since it served as the conduit for rapprochement between President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao, with Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to the Chinese capital in 1971 through Islamabad, Pakistan’s military brass has maintained close links with Beijing even as it feasted on aid dollars meant for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The Chinese bond has grown stronger with the passage of time, and North Korea has sometimes stepped in as a proxy for mutually advantageous barter deals in military hardware and technology.

What is taking shape, then, may not be a Pax Sinica in South Asia so much as an emergent Imperium Sinicum: A China-centred order in which smaller states retain their flags, seats, anthems and formal sovereignty, but learn to anticipate Beijing’s displeasure before acting. This is quite unlike Pax Americana, where the Yankee often came in guns blazing, with a few toffees in his deep pockets for the defeated, even as he lorded over the winners.

Kathmandu can no longer put full faith in Washington alone, as it has done since the 1950s. Indians appear to be swallowing their pride. In time, perhaps Nepal too will have to learn not to be too coy about admitting its honourable subservience to the will of Beijing.