US intelligence assessments revealed that some countries are seeking to avoid the escalating confrontation between the United States, Russia and China. Secret documents published by the Washington Post revealed a group of leaked American secrets, revealing that these countries include India, Brazil, Pakistan and Egypt, which are trying to transcend loyalties in an era when America is no longer the undisputed superpower in the world.
Matthias Spector, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, considered that developing countries are resetting the balance at a time when the United States is facing strong competition from China and Russia, and pointed out that it is not clear who will end up in the center stage within 10 years, so they need to Risk mitigation and hedging of bets. The newspaper report pointed out that Pakistan, which received billions of dollars in US economic and security aid after September 11, now relies heavily on Chinese investments and loans.
According to a leaked document, Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Hina Rabbani Khar, said in March that her country was “no longer trying to maintain a middle ground between China and the United States.” In an internal memo titled “Pakistan’s Difficult Choices,” Khar warned that Islamabad must avoid the appearance of appeasing the West, and said Pakistan’s instinct to maintain Pakistan’s partnership with the United States would ultimately sacrifice the full benefits of what it saw as the country’s “true strategic” partnership with China.
Another document revealed on February 17, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s deliberations with one of his subordinates regarding voting at the United Nations, as Pakistan feared angering Russia and abstained from voting with 32 other countries.
The same applies to India, which avoids siding with Washington or Moscow during a February 22 conversation between Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Kumar Doval and his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, as indicated in one of the documents. During the G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi, the rift over Ukraine led to the failure to forge a consensus on broader global challenges.
According to the leaked document, Doval spoke of India’s resistance to pressure to support a Western-backed UN resolution on Ukraine, saying that his country “will not deviate from the principled position it has taken in the past.”
Another document noted that Central Asian countries are looking to exploit this competition and take advantage of the growing interest from the United States, China and Europe as they seek to reduce their dependence on Russia, according to an assessment released on February 17, but it did not identify those countries that seemed most likely to include countries such as Kazakhstan. Which seeks to reduce Russian influence and develop new partnerships in energy and trade.
