WASHINGTON: The United States needs to focus on regional stability, especially in the context of deepening hostility between India and Pakistan, while formulating its response to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), says a new US report.

The report `How the United States should deal with China in Pal(istan` also urges Washington to keep an eye on the longer-term geopolitical challenges posed by China`s increased involvement in the region while responding to CPEC.

`CPEC cannot fail that is a political and diplomatic impossibility,` argues author Daniel Markey while advising Washington on how to deal with thisproject. `For Pakistan, China remains an important partner and lifeline. For China, CPEC remains both a closely watched test case for the export of China`s development model and a prestige project.

Mr Markey, a China expert at the Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, Washington, also underlines the need for focusing on growing tensions between India and Pakistan while reviewing China`s influence in Pakistan.

`Over the past year, India and Pakistan have again reached the brink of war. Another IndiaPakistan military crisis may be brewing this summer,` he warns.

He urges the Trump administration to appreciate Beijing`s role as a potential diplomatic partner for restraining India and Pakistan from war. `If tensions in China-US relations inhibit cooperation in the midst of a South Asian crisis, all sides will lose,` he adds.

Mr Markey notes that at present Washington tends to see Indian military strikes against Pakistan as `justified responses` while Beijing emphasises Pakistan`s `strategic obligation to respond forcefully` to aggression by its much larger neighbour.

`This mismatch is dangerous and warrants an intensive round of strategic stability talks between US and Chinese diplomats,` says the author while urging both to `better choreograph future diplomatic engagements`with New Delhi and Islamabad.

Mr Markey argues that while India-Pakistan tensions should be `the first and most immediate concern` for US policy makers, they should also be mindful of China`s impact on their plans for a complete military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He notes that Washington has long perceived Beijing`s close ties with Islamabad as a potential leverage point, specifically as a means to encourage Pakistan to place greater pressure on its friends among the Taliban. `Although China never delivered a breakthrough in support of US war aims in Afghanistan, neither has it played a spoiler,` says the author while urging Washington to remain engaged with Beijing for persuading Islamabad to play a more positive role in the Afghan dispute.

Mr Markey reminds Washington also to watch how Beijing`s growing political influence in Pakistan is allegedly `strengthening repressive, illiberal governance` in the country.`Over the long run, the United States will want to weigh the geopolitical implications of the ChinaPakistan defence partnership, including how it will enable China to `project military power into South Asia and the Middle East,` he argues.

According to the author, Washington`s future policies should take two ground realities into account: First, Pakistan has no particular desire to take a side in the brewing geopolitical competition between the United States and China. Second, CPEC is only one slice of the China-Pakistan relationship.

He reminds US policy makers that many Pakistanis tend to question US motivations, `doubting Washington`s noble, liberal rhetoric about freedom and assuming those words mask ulterior aims, from safeguarding commercial and security interests to practicing outright imperialism`.

Similarly, `Chinese rhetoric about noninterference in the sovereign affairs of other states strains credulity for many Pakistanis,` he adds.

`But in the aftermath of a terribly fraught two decades of dealing with the United States, Washington`s claims of beneficence ring equally hollow.` Instead of framing the US policy response to CPEC as a narrow competition over the commercial and economic issues of `cost, debt, transparency, and jobs`, Mr Markey urges US policymakers to `train their focus on ... broader aspects of China`s relationship with Pakistan`, which includes Islamabad`s concerns about New Delhi.