The contemporary international terrain is currently undergoing a rapid transformation. It is shifting away from a previous ‘unipolarity’ towards a more fragmented and even fractured ‘multipolar’ reality.
While this transition presents significant challenges for many developing nations, Pakistan has demonstrated a fluid capacity to navigate these shifts through a policy of principled multipolarity and strategic dynamism.
By strengthening its diplomatic role and positioning itself as a regional economic hub, the country is anchoring itself in a global environment where stability and pragmatism are increasingly in demand, over the volatile political and economic outcomes of the previous decade.
As discussed by academics Syed Umair Jalal, Syed Ali Shah, Muhammad Sheharyar Khan and Tasawar Hussain in the Journal of Regional Studies Review (2025), the foreign policy of Pakistan is being increasingly shaped by “neorealist” pressures rather than internal ideological preferences.
This has necessitated a decisive move toward strategic hedging and flexible alignment.
As the global order shifts from unipolar dominance to multipolar fragmentation, Pakistan is recalibrating its foreign policy by focusing on strategic realism and geo-economic priorities
The modern governance model in the emerging new order demands steady hands capable of managing complex economic and security manoeuvres, while strictly committing to essential structural reforms. There is no longer any viable space for the hyper-nationalist rhetoric or the confrontational foreign policy stances that characterised earlier eras.
Instead, the institutional framework of the Pakistani state has moved towards a “transactional realism” that prioritises long-term economic corridors and institutional continuity over the volatility of politics practised and implemented in the past.
However, despite this shift, a significant disconnect persists in how the nation is portrayed by certain observers. Western media outlets and segments of the local liberal and left-leaning groups have, rather ironically, quietly (and sometimes otherwise) started sympathising with populist narratives that they once found problematic. This, I’m afraid, demonstrates intellectual bankruptcy and ideological desperation.
These local and Western defenders of ‘liberal/democratic values’ remain stuck in outdated perceptions of the country, frequently relying on tropes of imminent collapse or radicalisation. Their narratives, which were perhaps more applicable to the previous decade, are increasingly contradicted by contemporary empirical data.
For instance, while reports by a Pakistani journalist in Nikkei Asia in 2025 continued to warn of a ‘mega economic crisis’ in Pakistan and potential sovereign default, the actual figures recorded in 2026 suggest a story of gradual recovery.
Recent reports from the State Bank of Pakistan (2026), endorsed by the bank’s governor, Jameel Ahmad, indicate that the KSE-100 Index reached an unprecedented high of over 189,000 points, while the national growth outlook has also been revised upwards. While certain critics highlight persistent inflationary pressures, they often overlook the fact that inflation has stabilised within a manageable single-digit range of five to seven percent.
This reality stands in stark contrast to the collapse predicted by several Western analysts. Of course, the current war in the Gulf can severely dent optimistic projections, but the doom-laden ‘predictions’ by Western media were made before the eruption of hostilities in the Gulf.
The local ‘jamhooriat pasand [democracy loving]’ activists and media personalities, due to their new-found admiration for populist narratives, tend to focus heavily on the civil-military hybrid nature of the state.
They posit that stability is unsustainable without a specific brand of populist consent. By this they mean consent from former prime minister Imran Khan, who was convicted on corruption charges and is in jail. This is an exhibition of naivety, rooted in a now-eroding strand of politics.
Another thing being ignored by the critics is the state’s pragmatic move toward geo-economics. Research by the scholar Syed Wahid Aleem in the Qlantic Journal of Social Sciences (2026) suggests that the state’s current trajectory is embedded in a multipolar world order that offers a historic opportunity for the country to achieve balance through regional trade and resource utilisation.
Recently, the veteran political commentator Najam Sethi suggested that if the Strait of Hormuz remains vulnerable or is closed, Karachi and its port, which has already started to accommodate an unprecedented traffic of large ships, can become one of the most important in the region. The importance of Gwadar will also be amplified.
Observers fixated on the traditional civil-military binaries continue to miss the fact that the state and government are projecting a clear priority for long-term regional connectivity over short-term ideological fervour.
Much of the critique emanating from the liberal circles remains framed within the principles of liberal democracy. But the manifestations of these principles have increasingly begun to face their own internal contradictions. This is also true in established democracies. As argued by the academic Uzma Malik in the Advance Social Science Archive Journal (2026), the old liberal framework is struggling to keep pace with the rapid transformations occurring globally. By adhering to a singular model of political legitimacy, critics fail to recognise the adaptive hybridity that now defines the success of middle powers in a multipolar century.
The intellectual lag in local activist groups and individuals, and in Western media, is preventing a nuanced understanding of how Pakistan is restructuring its internal governance to meet the unsentimental demands of the new world order. The era of the populist disruptor and hyper-nationalism is fading, replaced by a requirement for interest-based leadership.
The populist presidency of Donald Trump is often cited in diplomatic circles as an era that plunged the international system into a dangerous geopolitical vacuum without a viable long-term strategy. The foreign policy of another populist, India’s Narendra Modi, has faced increasing scrutiny for failing to account for new multipolar realities, leaving India sidelined during important regional dialogues, with Modi favouring domestic optics.
Writing in the Journal of Regional Studies Review (2025), Jalal and his colleagues argue that populist frameworks fail to meet the demands of modern international realism. Pakistan has moved away from this. The Pakistani state is now in favour of robust, pragmatic sovereignty. It is aggressively confronting Islamist militants, populists and ethnic separatists, to clear the path for it to achieve what it has envisioned.
It has also begun to treat the ‘democratic values’ rhetoric, often championed by liberals, as an outdated theory that is increasingly fracturing in its own regions of origin as well.
Published in Dawn, EOS, April 5th, 2026
