I. The Five-Year Reversal
In June 2021, CIA Director William Burns flew to Islamabad carrying a sensitive proposal: after the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington wanted to establish a drone base on Pakistani soil. Then–Prime Minister Imran Khan refused the meeting and rejected the plan outright. The Biden administration answered with sustained cold-shouldering — repeatedly declining direct phone calls with Khan.
Five years later, the same cohort of Pakistani generals — now led by an army chief wielding unprecedented power — has signed a mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia, opened rare-earth mining rights to the United States, and volunteered to send stabilization troops to Gaza. The relationship has moved from mutual suspicion to political embrace.
This transformation was no natural evolution. It was a structural turn led by the Pakistani military, with the fall of Imran Khan as its watershed.
The structural turn in U.S.–Pakistan relations can be divided into five stages: the isolation of Imran Khan → regime change → the binding of interests → institutionalized deepening → declassified archives revealing Washington’s operational mechanics. Each stage is backed by clear documentary evidence, and each has been accompanied by a parallel cooling of China–Pakistan relations.
II. Stage One: The Strategic Isolation of Imran Khan
Weeks after Burns left empty-handed, Kabul fell and the American withdrawal descended into chaos. Documents leaked during the same period showed that Saudi Arabia was pressing Pakistan to sign a mutual defense pact — which the Khan government likewise refused. The military concluded that Khan was steering the country toward isolation.
In July 2021, without the prime minister’s knowledge, the military privately hired the CIA’s former Islamabad station chief as its lobbyist in Washington — meaning the military had begun running its relationship with the United States independently of the elected government.
III. Stage Two: The Pivotal Moments of Regime Change
In February 2022, the Russia–Ukraine conflict broke out. Khan, in Moscow, was planning to meet Putin; U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called to dissuade him, to no avail. Pakistan subsequently abstained on the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia.
The turning point came that March. A classified diplomatic cable, later leaked, showed that Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States had met with Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu — and that Lu had stated explicitly: if Khan were to fall in a no-confidence vote, Washington could shelve its grievances for the time being. “Everything would be forgiven.”
A month later, with the military’s support, Pakistan’s National Assembly passed a no-confidence vote removing Imran Khan from office. Since then, Khan’s party has been declared an illegal organization, and Khan himself and his wife remain imprisoned after being convicted on multiple charges.
IV. Stage Three: The Acceleration of Interest-Binding
After Khan’s fall, Pakistan–U.S. cooperation heated up rapidly:
- Munitions supply chain: Pakistan became a significant supplier of munitions to Ukraine, channeling weapons through U.S. defense contractors and third-country middlemen. Leaked documents show that Washington tied the IMF’s aid program for Pakistan to weapons deliveries — the IMF’s approval of a $3 billion Stand-By Arrangement in July 2023 carried explicit strategic quid pro quos.
- Military commitments: In October 2022, during a visit to Washington, outgoing Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa pledged to the Biden administration to limit missile ranges, constrain the nuclear program, and distance Pakistan from China. Under Munir, these commitments were further institutionalized.
- The 2025 constitutional amendment: Pakistan abolished the functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, and Army Chief Asim Munir emerged as an unprecedentedly powerful — and pro-American — leader. This institutional design fundamentally altered Pakistan’s decision-making power structure.
V. Stage Four: The Comprehensive Embrace and Its Network of Interests
Entering 2025, U.S.–Pakistan relations expanded from security cooperation into an all-around binding of interests:
- Mutual defense pact: In September 2025, Pakistan signed with Saudi Arabia the very mutual defense treaty that the Khan government had once refused.
- Rare-earth deal: In exchange for $500 million in U.S. investment, Pakistan granted access to its antimony, copper, tungsten, and rare-earth elements.
- Cryptocurrency binding: With Munir looking on, Pakistan’s finance minister signed a memorandum committing a portion of the country’s $36 billion in annual remittances to be transacted through a U.S.-dollar stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial.
- Military cooperation: When the Trump administration went looking for Muslim-majority countries to send stabilization troops to Gaza, the Pakistani military volunteered.
The U.S.–Iran conflict, however, has been the exception. Munir has vigorously championed the “Islamabad Accord,” seeking to play mediator between Washington and Tehran — but the mediation has bogged down. Pro-Israel forces inside the United States continue to press Trump to abandon Pakistan’s mediating role.
VI. The Cost to China–Pakistan Relations
As Washington and Islamabad drew closer, cold signals appeared in China–Pakistan relations.
The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has carried tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects in Pakistan — yet of the planned projects, only 38 have been completed, roughly one-third have never broken ground, and since 2022 not a single new flagship project has been added.
In 2024, Pakistan privately offered China a grand bargain: allowing China to convert Gwadar Port into a permanent military facility. But the package of conditions included — compensation from Beijing should the United States retaliate, assistance with Pakistan’s military modernization, and a sea-based nuclear second-strike capability. China judged the last demand a violation of nonproliferation principles, and the negotiations collapsed.
The analysis above is based on Drop Site’s investigative report published on May 18, “From Mutual Suspicion to Political Embrace: How America Stopped Worrying and Tilted Toward Pakistan” (English title rendered from the Chinese), as compiled and cited by Nanya Yanjiu Tongxun (South Asia Research Communications, a Chinese research newsletter focused on South Asian affairs).
VII. Stage Five: The Declassified-Archive Window — What Declassified Files Reveal About the Mechanics of Power Change
On May 22, 2026, Nanya Yanjiu Tongxun published an in-depth analysis based on newly declassified archives. Working from official U.S. documents, it supplied the direct evidence that had until then been missing for the “structural turn in U.S.–Pakistan relations” — namely, how Washington, through covert contacts with the Pakistani military between 2021 and 2022, set a change of power in motion.
The core findings of the analysis unfold through three progressive links.
Link One: The Systematic “Cold-Shouldering” Under Imran Khan and the Divergence Over the 2021 Afghanistan Upheaval
The declassified archives show that under the Khan government, Pakistan chose positions at odds with the United States on two critical fronts at once. During the Afghanistan upheaval, Pakistan declined to support U.S. military access to Afghanistan through Pakistani territory — a break with two decades of deep cooperation between the Pakistani military and intelligence services and Washington over the course of the Afghan war. After the Russia–Ukraine conflict broke out, Pakistan abstained in the UN General Assembly rather than immediately lining up to condemn Russia. These two instances of being “out of step” led the Biden administration to classify the Khan government as an “unreliable partner” — and thereby launch a procedure of “external intervention” in Pakistani politics.
Link Two: Washington’s Covert Contacts with the Pakistani Military — The Operational Mechanism of “You Can Be Forgiven Later”
The declassified archives confirm a link that Drop Site’s investigative reporting had hinted at but never detailed: Washington, through intelligence channels and its diplomatic team in Pakistan, made covert contact with senior ranks of the Pakistani military. Alongside signals conveying “disappointment with the Khan government,” it offered an explicit “alternative” — if the military pushed Khan out through a no-confidence vote, the United States would set aside its various grievances and restore normal cooperation. The phrase recorded in the archives — “everything will be forgiven” — was flagged by Nanya Yanjiu Tongxun’s compilers as “the most blunt signal transmission in the context of regime change.”
Link Three: The Institutionalized Remaking of the Power Structure
After Khan’s fall, the military’s grip on Pakistan’s diplomacy toward the United States rose from “de facto dominance” to “institutional monopoly.” With the 2025 constitutional amendment abolishing the functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Army Chief Munir became Washington’s axis of power in Pakistan. This institutional design means that any future elected government seeking to adjust the direction of its U.S. diplomacy faces the risk of a structural conflict with a foreign-policy decision-making apparatus controlled by the military.
The material compiled by Nanya Yanjiu Tongxun in this section aligns with the Drop Site investigative report that serves as this article’s primary source in its core narrative line — both unfold along the chain of “Washington’s proactive contact → the Pakistani military’s response → regime change → institutional lock-in.” But this section adds a key link that was previously missing: how Washington transmitted an “expectation of operability” to the Pakistani military through diplomatic signals. The Drop Site report focuses on decision-making motives in Washington (“why America stopped worrying about Pakistan”); this section focuses on the receiving end in Islamabad (“how the Pakistani military received the signals and acted on them”). Read together, the two analyses form the complete push–pull picture of the structural turn in U.S.–Pakistan relations.