Connectivity, understood as the orchestration of highways, rail lines, ports, and logistics platforms that enable the movement of goods, finance, and political influence, has become one of the most potent instruments of modern statecraft. Far from being mere infrastructure ventures, connectivity corridors now serve as geopolitical templates through which states manage risk, cultivate dependencies, and reposition themselves within shifting regional hierarchies.
Nowhere are these dynamics more visible than in West Asia, where two initiatives, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the India–Middle East–Europe Corridor (IMEC), have emerged as competing visions for regional order. Their contrasting trajectories illuminate the changing character of U.S.–China competition and reveal the structural limits of strategic autonomy for aspirant middle powers such as India and Pakistan.
Launched in 2013 as the flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative, CPEC has evolved into a US$62 billion programme to connect Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea through a network of transport and energy infrastructure. Its progress, however, has been uneven, disrupted by Pakistan's macroeconomic fragility, cyclical political upheavals, and a deteriorating internal security situation.
Balochistan, which hosts CPEC's signature asset at Gwadar, remains the epicentre of violence. The BLA continues to target Chinese engineers, convoys, and energy infrastructure. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the TTP and TJP maintain operational tempo. The Taliban's 2021 takeover in Kabul further complicated Islamabad's security calculations, enabling TTP units to regroup and increasing cross-border frictions. By October–November 2025, the Pakistan–Afghanistan conflict escalated unprecedentedly, with mediation attempts failing to produce a durable de-escalation. Skirmishes along the Durand Line continue. These security dynamics, not an absence of strategic intent, explain the corridor's incremental pace.
Yet CPEC's underlying strategic logic endures. During Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's September visit to Beijing, China reiterated its commitment to "CPEC 2.0," with an expanded focus on industrialisation, agriculture, IT, and socioeconomic development. For Beijing, CPEC anchors its western strategic flank and provides partial mitigation against maritime chokepoint risks associated with a potential blockade in the South China Sea. It also carries significant reputational weight for Beijing to promote its non-Western infrastructure development model through the BRI. For Islamabad, it remains the backbone of long-term infrastructure modernisation, foreign investment, and capital attraction. Therefore, China's CPEC agenda is expected to make moderate progress with caution.
Unveiled at the 2023 G20 Summit in New Delhi, IMEC envisions linking India to Europe through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel, with onward transit via Mediterranean ports. For New Delhi, it represented a bold endorsement of India's expanding diplomatic and commercial footprint across the Gulf and Europe, and a demonstration of India's ambitions to position itself as a manufacturing and logistics node in the evolving global economy.
IMEC has long remained more aspirational than actionable
However, IMEC's momentum evaporated almost immediately. The 7 October Israel–Hamas war fundamentally altered the region's diplomatic landscape. Iran-aligned proxies intensified pressure on the Levant and Gulf, and the environment required for a multi-country corridor collapsed. Gulf capitals, especially Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, redirected attention toward crisis management and strategic de-escalation. Israel, once a core node, shifted entirely to wartime priorities.
Although India continued exploratory discussions with Gulf and European partners, and France and Italy appointed special envoys, IMEC's structural weaknesses were evident from the outset. The Gulf lacks integrated rail infrastructure, Arab–Israeli normalisation has stalled, and the political appetite for a high-cost, high-coordination project is thin. Egypt's foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, captured the essential dilemma by stating that progress on the Israeli–Palestinian question is indispensable to the corridor's viability. In effect, IMEC has long remained more aspirational than actionable.
CPEC and IMEC both seek to reshape the connectivity architecture of West Asia, yet their feasibility profiles diverge sharply. CPEC stands alone as the only corridor with partially completed, operational infrastructure, from highways to energy installations and port enhancements. Its vertically structured financing model, coordinated primarily between Beijing and Islamabad, has delivered consistency even amid adverse conditions in the Pakistani economy, including debt distress and foreign reserve issues.
IMEC, by contrast, is a textbook case of geopolitical overreach. Its success depends on coordination among India, the EU, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and the United States. Without a unified Gulf rail system, clear funding mechanisms, or sustainable Arab–Israeli rapprochement, the initiative cannot progress beyond planning documents. Equally significant, IMEC lacks a supporting trade ecosystem that needs free-trade arrangements, customs harmonisation, and regulatory convergence.
Geographically, CPEC's strategic position at Gwadar provides direct access to the Arabian Sea but exposes the project to threats from insurgency and Afghanistan's unstable security trajectory. IMEC benefits from proximity to world-class logistics hubs in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, yet its implementation hinges on resolving one of the region's most intractable political disputes.
For Beijing, CPEC is a cornerstone of its westward connectivity strategy and carries significant reputational weight in shaping its global identity and formulating a non-Western infrastructural development model. IMEC, by contrast, constitutes a U.S.–India–EU–Gulf attempt to craft an alternative connectivity ecosystem that reduces dependence on China and accelerates the Arab–Israeli normalisation, which has previously relied on the broader scope of the Abraham Accords and smaller cooperation mechanisms like I2U2. As Arab–Israeli normalisation stalled in the post-7 October environment, the political foundation for IMEC that would give diplomatic legitimacy to the project has significantly collapsed.
CPEC and IMEC are far more than infrastructure projects. They are competing templates for how West Asia will connect to the global economy and organise politically in an era of intensifying great-power competition
Ultimately, the two corridors reflect competing models of regional order: one grounded in disciplined bilateralism and institutional continuity, the other in multilateral political convergence that has yet to materialise.
The trajectories of CPEC and IMEC intersect with broader efforts by India and Pakistan to manage strategic risk in an increasingly contested regional environment. India exemplifies the logic of strategic autonomy. Even as it champions IMEC, New Delhi is deepening its engagement with the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) alongside Iran and Russia. It has strengthened diplomatic influence in Gulf capitals and maintains working-level contacts with the Afghan Taliban, all of which are designed to counterbalance Pakistan's footprint while expanding its manoeuvring space across West Asia and Eurasia.
China's position in Afghanistan has become more precarious. The Afghan Taliban's volatile security environment, targeted attacks on Chinese workers in Badakhshan, IS-Khorasan's recruitment networks with ETIM, and stalled discussions regarding Afghanistan's integration into CPEC underscore the limitations of Beijing's influence in Kabul.
Pakistan faces an even more complex balancing act. Reliant on IMF lifelines but unwilling to jeopardise its strategic relationship with China, Islamabad is simultaneously broadening engagement with Washington. Cooperation on rare earth elements, the Reko Diq mining venture, oil extraction, and reports on a potential port development at Pasni signal a deliberate diversification strategy.
These hedging behaviours have been enabled by an unexpected geopolitical variable: the Trump administration's restrained approach to China in its early months. Despite expectations of a sharply hawkish turn, Trump 2.0 has refrained from escalating over Taiwan and pursued transactional diplomacy when commercially beneficial. Except for his disruptive tariff wars, Trump has not altered the tone of the competition in geopolitics. This ambiguity reduces pressure on India and Pakistan to adopt binary alignments and allows their multi-alignment strategies to persist.
However, if Washington ultimately frames IMEC as a hard geopolitical instrument of U.S.–China rivalry and insists that its partners curtail their connectivity engagements with Beijing, the corridor's prospects will become even more uncertain. Many Gulf stakeholders, at least for now, remain unwilling to replicate Cold War-era binary alignments. For them, strategic diversification is an asset, not a liability. An IMEC that forces a choice between Washington and Beijing risks losing the very Gulf actors whose participation is indispensable. This factor constitutes a major limitation for India to manage its strategic autonomy.
At the end of the day, CPEC and IMEC are far more than infrastructure projects. They are competing templates for how West Asia will connect to the global economy and organise politically in an era of intensifying great-power competition. CPEC reflects China's disciplined, state-led connectivity model, tangible but vulnerable to persistent security disruptions. IMEC embodies an ambitious multilateral vision that remains constrained by political fragmentation, the absence of essential infrastructure, and the volatility of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Their future will depend less on engineering and more on geopolitics: the trajectory of Arab–Israeli diplomacy, the evolution of Afghanistan's security landscape, and, most decisively, the moment Washington clarifies its China policy. Until then, India and Pakistan will continue to exploit the strategic slack created by global ambiguity, navigating between rival corridors to maximise autonomy. How long this window remains open will determine the shape of West Asia's connectivity map for years to come.