Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir are set to meet US President Donald Trump on Thursday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, in what is being billed as a routine diplomatic engagement. But this is far from routine.

Islamabad finds itself at the crossroads of competing global agendas, including Washington’s desire to reassert influence in South Asia, China’s deep economic entanglement via CPEC, and the constant shadow of Pakistan’s security state. The meeting signals that the United States may once again be extending a soft embrace to a country long accused of sponsoring terror and instability.

For India, the event is not merely symbolic. It may set the tone for how the US treats Islamabad’s longstanding transgressions and how it balan

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