“In March 1963, Pakistan did something rare. It handed over land five times the size of Hong Kong to another country, China. Under a boundary agreement with Beijing, Pakistan transferred control of the Shaksgam Valley, roughly 5,180 square kilometers in the Karakoram range, territory India considers part of Kashmir. There was a strategic logic to that deal. Pakistan did not possess uncontested sovereignty over the area, and the dispute remains unresolved today. But China had defeated India in their 1962 border war just three months earlier. Pakistan’s leadership concluded that Chinese control over the contested mountains made more sense than trying to fend off Indian claims alone.” writes Abid Hussien, describing Pakistan and China as “Iron Brothers” in Al Jazeera.

That was the cold beginning of what both countries now call an “iron brotherhood.” It was not born from romance, culture or ideology. It was born from geography, insecurity and a shared adversary-India and it is the two wars India has fought from its painful partition-its effective two state solution that the British implemented in 1947. China needed a partner on India’s western flank. Pakistan needed a great-power patron against India. Seventy-five years after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Islamabad, that bargain has only deepened. Its a warp from which Pakistan can neither exit nor win.

Pakistan today presents itself as a broker in the conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran. Islamabad wants to appear useful to Washington, credible to Tehran, acceptable to the Gulf and responsible before the wider Muslim world. But any Pakistani mediation must be read through the history that began in the Karakoram. Pakistan’s loyalty does not lie in neutrality. It lies with China, because Pakistan’s strategic survival increasingly depends on China.

On the seventy-fifth anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Pakistan, Islamabad has once again wrapped an old strategic bargain in the language of sentiment. The phrases are familiar: “all-weather friendship,” “iron brotherhood,” “higher than the Himalayas,” “deeper than the ocean.” They are meant to sound emotional, almost poetic. But behind the theatre lies a colder truth. Pakistan’s loyalty lies with China because its strategic survival increasingly depends on China.

That matters today because Pakistan is presenting itself as a broker in the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran. Islamabad wants to appear useful to Washington, credible to Tehran, acceptable to the Gulf and responsible before the wider Muslim world. But any Pakistani........

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