Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan I entered a new year In relative calm after 30 turbulent months marked by volatile politics, contentious elections and an economy teetering on the brink of collapse.

With domestic politics stabilizing and economic hopes for a turnaround in South Asia’s second most populous nation, foreign policy and security challenges are likely to emerge as the country’s most pressing concerns this year.

Analysts expect 2025 to be a difficult year for Pakistan, as it manages its relations with its immediate neighbors, allies and adversaries around the world, as well as with the United States, where Donald Trump is set to return to power later this month.

Most of the foreign and security policy challenges that Pakistan faces arise because of its neighbourhood, especially Afghanistan in the west and its arch-rival India in the east.

Violence by armed groups and insurgents intensified across Pakistan after the Afghan Taliban took over Kabul in 2021. In 2024, armed attacks claimed the lives of nearly 700 law enforcement personnel, making it one of the deadliest years in the country. Its population is 240 million people.

The attacks were primarily carried out by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a considered militant group Afghan Taliban Its ideological twin. Separate insurgent attacks targeted sites linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a massive $62 billion project that has brought Islamabad and Beijing closer than ever as political and economic allies.

Pakistan faces the “severest” national security challenges “in at least a decade and maybe perhaps,” says Christopher Clary, a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center, a US-based non-profit, and an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany. Since the 1990s.”

Pakistan has little strategic choice but to get its economic house in order and repair its relations with other great powers and regional neighbours. This will likely require years of work, and it is not clear that Pakistan has years to do this work before the house collapses.”

Below is detailed information about the countries that will be the focus of Islamabad’s foreign policy this year:

China

Pakistani authorities often tout their friendship with China as “deeper than oceans and longer than mountains.” But 2024 revealed cracks in that relationship.

Attacks on Chinese citizens and interests The matter came to a head, drawing a rare public rebuke from Beijing’s envoy to Islamabad. “It is unacceptable that we were attacked twice in just six months,” Jiang Zedong said at an event in Islamabad in October.

Muhammad Faisal, a foreign policy expert on China, warns that while China will continue to provide financial support to Pakistan, any further expansion of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project in the country is unlikely.

“Pakistan must skillfully overcome mounting pressure from Beijing to establish a ‘joint security mechanism’, essentially placing Chinese security personnel on Pakistani soil, which in turn will make them a target for militants who complicate existing security measures,” Faisal told Al Jazeera.

Chinese soldiers guarding the country’s projects on Pakistani soil would represent an admission of Islamabad’s security failure, increase the risk of Chinese citizens being targeted, and also amplify the politically sensitive possibility of Chinese fighters killing Pakistani citizens.

At the same time, experts also fear that Trump’s hostile stance toward China could prompt Beijing to seek popular support from Pakistan, which would then be forced to walk a diplomatic tightrope to avoid upsetting Washington, a long-time ally.

Trump has taken a consistently hardline stance on China, as his first term saw a trade war between the two economic powers. In his second term, the US President pledged to impose customs duties of up to 60% on Chinese imports.

But since Pakistan is not high on the Trump administration’s international agenda, there is a bright side. However, uncertainty is the common denominator among the challenges Pakistan faces with China.

Kamran Bukhari, senior director at the US-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, said China’s frustrations with Pakistan stem from its heavy investments in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that are yielding little returns. He added that China’s impasse could work to the United States’ advantage.

“China is already very disappointed with Pakistan, and relations have been tense for some time. But Beijing is in trouble because it is drowning in Pakistan, thanks to billions in CPEC investments, without getting any benefit from it. China is in a quagmire,” Bukhari told Al Jazeera. In Pakistan is good for the United States.

US

Pakistan Relations with the United States Pakistan regains its independence from British rule and its emergence as a new state in 1947. But relations between Islamabad and Washington have mostly focused on how Pakistan helps American policies in the region, especially in Afghanistan, which witnessed the Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1980s. Or the “war on terror” led by the United States in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

With the return of the Afghan Taliban to power in Kabul, the strategic partnership between Pakistan and the United States in the South Asia region has diminished. Although the United States is now less invested in Afghanistan, Pakistan has gradually moved toward China to meet its economic, military, and technological needs.

Hassan Abbas, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., believes Pakistan must “handle carefully” its relations with the United States amid tensions with China and India. “While the tension is clear” on Pakistan’s part, he says, radical changes in the relationship seem unlikely.

“Security issues and regional challenges, such as instability in Afghanistan, are likely to dominate bilateral interactions,” Abbas told Al Jazeera. Abbas is also the author of The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan After the Americans Are Gone.

Bukhari said Pakistan remains a low priority for the United States, which has more pressing global issues such as the Russia-Ukraine war and several conflicts in the Middle East to address.

He added: “At the moment, I do not see any tensions rising to significant levels between the two countries, and Pakistan is playing its cards quite safely. “In the capital, the perception around Pakistan is that it is a weak and chaotic country that needs to figure out its own affairs first before anything else.”

India

India remains The biggest dilemma in foreign policy For Pakistan.

Although limited interactions occur in multilateral forums, relations have remained practically frozen for years. Tensions over Kashmir rose after New Delhi stripped the Indian-administered part of Kashmir of its limited autonomy in 2019, drawing strong condemnation from Pakistan. India and Pakistan both control parts of Kashmir, but claim the entire Himalayan region, making it one of the world’s longest and bloodiest military conflicts.

“The asymmetry with India is increasingly stark, and Pakistan has few options to force India to take the matter seriously that does not jeopardize other Pakistani foreign policy objectives,” analyst Clary told Al Jazeera, adding that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has “ A little ideology. “Interested” in rapprochement with Pakistan and “sees this as impractical during a period of internal instability” in Pakistan.

Abdul Basit, the former Pakistani envoy to India, views the Kashmir issue as a persistent impasse that requires behind-the-scenes diplomacy. “India has not shown any willingness to be flexible after the constitutional amendment,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the Modi government’s repeal of Article 370, the law that granted Indian-administered Kashmir partial autonomy.

As India approaches the West, especially the US, over its common enemy in China, Basit believes Islamabad must find ways to engage with New Delhi.

“Otherwise, we will continue to move from one dead end to another and will never be able to put our relationship on the path of building normal relations. “That, to me, is the crux of the matter when it comes to India,” the retired envoy said.

However, Bukhari of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy believes that India may be in the crosshairs of the US this year and find itself under pressure due to its competition with China.

“India has closer, working relations with Iran, where it is building a port. It also buys oil from Russia, which is at war in Ukraine. So they [India] They have a greater chance of being pressured by expatriates [Trump] Management,” he said.

For Pakistan to attract US interest, according to Bukhari, it must offer strategic value as it did during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and during the US wars after 9/11.

“If you want the attention of the United States, you have to offer them something that can generate significant interest for the United States, and only then can you attract interest,” he said. “It was not that the United States loved Pakistan or became best friends, it was just that Pakistan served a purpose.”

Iran

2024 turned out to be a disastrous year for Iran, as it saw its geopolitical interests in the Middle East suffer heavy losses, and Israel even launched direct attacks on its territory on several occasions.

But the year started with… Iran launches attacks Within Pakistan’s Balochistan province, citing an armed group called Jaish al-Adl as a threat to its security in the border areas. The attack led to a rapid military response from Pakistan. But tensions between the two Muslim-majority neighbors did not escalate, as Tehran resorted to diplomacy to resolve the issue.

Omar Karim, a researcher at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, expects the “uneasy rapprochement” to continue, as well as the emergence of new challenges with Trump’s return to the White House.

Karim warns that deteriorating Pak-Iran relations could deteriorate border security, emboldening Baloch separatists who are said to have hideouts in Iran. Baloch rebels have been fighting for a separate homeland for decades.

“Pakistan will continue positive engagement with Iran to avoid further hostility amid escalating domestic violence,” Karim said.