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Topic: Diplomacy, and Foreign Leaders Blog Brand: Silk Road Rivalries Region: Asia, and Eurasia Tags: Asim Munir, Central Asia, China, India, India-Pakistan War, JF-17, Pakistan, and South Asia Pakistan’s Place in China’s Eurasia Strategy February 7, 2026 By: Aparna Pande, and Vinay Kaura
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The constitutional militarization of Pakistan will serve China’s interests by constraining India’s strategic ambitions.
Pakistan’s recent defense trade diplomacy is less about sales of fighter jets and more about consolidating the power of the Pakistani military establishment. Remarks from senior Pakistani leaders that defense sales will ensure Pakistan is no longer dependent on Bretton Woods institutions for economic stability may appear flippant to many. However, such views reflect a continuation of the past: internal military consolidation and external support to counter India.
Through defense sales, Pakistan’s military-intelligence nexus hopes to create a network of partners with vested interests in Pakistan’s survival. The network effect might appear negligible and may never happen. But Pakistan has long hoped for a grouping of Muslim-majority countries that would depend upon Pakistan for their security. During the 1950s and 1960s, Pakistan’s first military dictator, Field Marshal Muhammad Ayub Khan, harbored similarly grandiose ambitions. It appears that Pakistan’s second field marshal, current army chief, Asim Munir, is seeking to fulfil them.
Pakistan is attempting to export JF-17 fighter jets to a range of foreign countries. On the surface, it may appear to be a normal defense export exercise, but it must be viewed as another indication of Pakistan’s metamorphosis into a constitutionally militarized state.
States in which military supremacy is institutionalized are inclined to maintain and promote coercion rather than consensus in their external behaviour. Pakistan’s path is no exception to global trends: active repression at home and belligerent assertiveness abroad are rather logical outcomes of a new constitutional design. India cannot wish away this emerging strategic reality.
The key challenge is not whether Pakistan is militarily capable of confronting India, but whether it can sway the regional security framework in a manner that constrains India’s influence. Pakistan under Field Marshal Munir is a state that is constitutionally militarized, diplomatically aggressive, and strategically opportunistic.
The Munir-led Pakistan is not the Pakistan of yesteryears, where the military orchestrated coups or influenced decisions behind the scenes. Today’s military dominance is constitutionally mandated. The difference, both domestically and externally, is concerning. Military supremacy, previously established by political expediency, is now enshrined in the constitution through the 27th Amendment to the Pakistani constitution. This change is symbolized by Munir’s promotion to the position of “chief of the defense forces,” a rank that confers lifetime privileges and immunity, as well as a constitutional mandate to oversee all three branches of the armed forces.
The constitutionalizing of military supremacy places Pakistan on an abnormal scale of praetorianism. Pakistan has never had civilian supremacy except in the first few years after independence. The army chief has been the de facto power in the country, and under Asim Munir, it appears that he would like to make the army chief the de jure power holder as well.
The May 2025 clashes with India provided him with the ideal pretext to expedite this militarization. The combination of internal repression, political engineering, and strategic messaging showcases the Pakistani army not only as a security guarantor but as a constitutional necessity. It is this domestic reconfiguration that is currently reflected in Pakistan’s calculated arms-export policy.
Co-developed with China, the JF-17 Thunder (Chinese designation is FC-1 Xiaolong) is at the center of Pakistan’s current military power projection. The JF-17 entered mass production in 2007. This aircraft enabled Pakistan to obtain a cheaper alternative to its US-made F-16 fleet. At the same time, it allowed Beijing to showcase its rising military technological capabilities and to emerge as a global competitor in high-end military aircraft through a joint-venture model.
Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh have either acquired fighter jets or are in various stages of negotiations to acquire them. It would be naïve to view these exports, whenever they materialize, as merely commercial. Though the JF-17 does not match the fifth-generation Western fighter, its symbolism and instrumental utility for Pakistan should not be underestimated. The India-Pakistan military conflict last year is being opportunistically repurposed as a self-serving narrative cover, allowing Islamabad to exaggerate its performance and convert that episode into post-conflict leverage, influence, and partnerships.
There is also the China factor. This defense collaboration is the most visible object of a more comprehensive Sino-Pakistani compact whereby law, weapons, and narrative are mobilized to create a unified geopolitical impact. It is not about thrust-to-weight ratios or avionics packages of JF-17, but what it really signifies: Pakistan’s “garrison state” as a subcontractor of Chinese military power.
Unlike the West, China only has client states, not allies or friends. However, if the relationship is strategic, and even if the state is weak, China seeks to strengthen that country to the extent necessary for Chinese interests. Pakistan is China’s secondary deterrent against India, just like North Korea is vis-à-vis Japan and South Korea. Pakistan is the ideal proxy in China’s grand strategy: politically shielded from Western criticism and structurally inclined toward a continuous struggle against India.
For a decade, China tried to stabilize Pakistan’s economy through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It was not very successful in that, and so it has turned to the military to stabilize Pakistan. The Sino-Pakistani collaboration through Pakistan’s export of JF-17 represents an amplification of Chinese strategic influence. Direct weapons sales from China are often in the public eye, and countries want to avoid them to ensure they can also purchase from Western countries.
Purchasing from a Major Non-NATO ally—Pakistan—provides countries with plausible deniability and yet simultaneously establishes a dispersed network of states dependent upon Chinese military equipment. Just as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) helped create a hub-and-spoke model of countries dependent on China, so will this. Today, Chinese goods are often sold through third countries, and Chinese components are integral to nearly all manufactured goods worldwide. China seeks something similar on the military front.
Pakistan also benefits. On the domestic front, it will enable deeper civilian political alignment and strengthen the assertions of the Pakistani military about its indispensability. It will also encourage the notion that these countries support all of Pakistan’s military priorities, including its support for regional terror proxies that target its neighbors, especially India. Pakistan also aims to gain strategic depth in foreign policy with the added benefit of military alliances with a network of countries.
This arrangement suits Islamabad’s new militarized constitutional order perfectly. A militarized state requires perpetual relevance; relevance requires threats; and threats require patrons who benefit from sustained instability. China supplies all three. On the other hand, Pakistan provides Beijing with something of enormous importance: an ever-ready, mobilized frontier state geared to absorb Indian attention, dilute New Delhi’s strategic bandwidth, and undermine the credibility of the Indo-Pacific narrative.
This calculus is troubling for India. It will once again lead Pakistan to develop a false perception of technological capabilities and strategic acumen. The last time this happened was during the Cold War, when American largesse helped build Pakistan’s military, resulting in wars and conflict. It also reinforces the two-front threat for India.
At a time of geopolitical flux and an inwardly oriented America, this is a contemporary variant of grand imperial statecraft where China is the strategist and Pakistan its outpost. The lesson for India is clear. Pakistan’s constitutional militarization would create a fertile ground for unmonitored and unscrupulous weapons export architecture, ably facilitated by China, while creating a web of strategic leverage abroad.
India is facing a constitutionally armored military state that serves as the western fulcrum of China’s Eurasian ambitions. Therefore, Pakistan’s emerging defense production system should be seen as part of a broader Sino-Pakistani strategic ecosystem—a node that provides financing, technology transfer, diplomatic shielding, and guaranteed markets.
About the Authors: Aparna Pande and Vinay Kaura
Aparna Pande is director of the Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia at the Hudson Institute. She has contributed to The American Interest, The Hindustan Times, The Times of India, The Live Mint, Huffington Post, The Sunday Guardian, The Print, and RealClearWorld. Dr. Pande’s books include Explaining Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: Escaping India(Routledge, 2011), From Chanakya to Modi: Evolution of India’s Foreign Policy(Harper Collins, 2017), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Pakistan(Routledge, August 2017), and Making India Great: The Promise of a Reluctant Global Power(Harper Collins, 2020).
Vinay Kaura is an assistant professor in the Department of International Affairs and Security Studies at Sardar Patel University of Police, Security & Criminal Justice, Rajasthan, India. He is also an adjunct faculty member on the Program on Terrorism and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany and a non-resident scholar for Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.
Image: Vectorkel / Shutterstock.com.
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Источник: nationalinterest.org