INDO-US Geostrategic Partnership in the Indian Ocean Region: Implications for Pakistan’s Maritime Security (2020-2025)

Abstract

This thesis explores how the Indo-US geostrategic partnership in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has developed from 2020 to 2025, and the implications of this partnership for Pakistan's security, diplomacy and regional strategy. Individual aspects of the relationship have been covered in various literature, such as defence cooperation, the Quad, CPEC, and Pakistan's naval modernisation but the developments have not been arranged in a chronological fashion in one single piece of literature in a single theoretical framework. This study is designed with a qualitative research approach employing document and content analysis techniques of primary sources (bilateral agreements like BECA, LEMOA, COMCASA; official documents of strategy; government statements) and secondary sources (peer-reviewed literature and think-tank reports) from 2020 to mid-2025. The analysis is based on a “theory of theories”, which is a combination of two theories, one for Indo-US relationship and the second for Pakistan's response, which is neorealism and neorealism hedging theory, respectively. The findings show that while 2020-2025 is a qualitative consolidation of Indo-US cooperation, it is an offensive-realist logic that is present in these instruments on the American side, and a defensive-realist and capability-without-commitment posture on the Indian side, as seen in instruments such as BECA (2020), the Quad Leaders' Summit (2021), AUKUS (2021), and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy (2022). This consolidation has tilted the balance of power in India's favour, while at the same time, Pakistan's diplomatic marginalisation (membership in IORA), deterrence concerns, and economic dependence on China, have all worsened. Pakistan's reaction is not passive drift, but is consistent hedge: naval modernisation, indifference towards Washington and Beijing as well as regional diversification through the Gulf and smaller states of IOR, but comes at a cost: security for CPEC and exclusion from regional institutions.