I understand the baloney narrative of Pakistan. It isn’t feasible.
They are barely hanging on to their “Nuclear” arsenal and keeping their ranks at bay, who are Taliban sympathizers.
They just don’t have the resources, the manpower, the will or, or, or... the money.
Russia has all that and is more like a Faustian Genie than Pakistan could ever hope to be.
No, sorry, Pakistan can only influence the border and just beyond but that’s it.
There is some China work going on but they are way behind the Russians and the Russians have something more valuable to offer.
Shared resources and money from allowing a pipeline to be built and secured. It’s kind of like a jobs program.
Pakistan has nothing.
BTW, we have been desperate to find alternative supplier countries as China has become to big for their own britches and Krapganistan can act as both a new supplier and a foil, to China.
The Bush policy (43 and 41 both, and under Reagan, too, thanks to 41's wide influence in the Reagan Administration) has always been, as long as the producer country is selling into a transparent market to which we have access, we don't care who "controls" the asset -- the market will "control" the price, and the access.