Rubio Says US Keen to Court Pakistan; Modi's Strategy of Hiding from Trump Hurts India; Fake Yamuna Clean-Up Exposed; Adityanath Plays Place-Name Politics

China’s Fourth Plenum: Xi Tightens Party Control, Sets Course for Tech Self-Reliance

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Snapshot of the day

October 27, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

Call it what you will but less than six months after proclaiming victory over Pakistan in a short but intense military confrontation, India finds itself dealing with an adversary on the international up-and-up. “We know [the Indians are'] concerned for obvious reasons because of the tensions that have existed between Pakistan and India historically,” US Secretary of State Mark Rubio told reporters over the weekend, “but, I think they have to understand we have to have relations with a lot of different countries. We see an opportunity to expand our strategic relationship with Pakistan.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have attempted a pivot towards China last month at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin but the Chinese continue to set great store by their strategic investments in Pakistan. It now emerges that Islamabad is pushing Beijing to back its bid for membership of the New Development Bank – the BRICS’ multitateral venture – something India is bound to oppose.

“So dizzying has been the geopolitical turnaround,” the Financial Times writes today in a full page assessment of the economic consequences of Pakistani army chief Asim Munir’s strategic exertions, “that on October 18, the field marshal took to a stage at the Pakistan Military Academy to celebrate. Pakistan, he declared, ‘has gradually but surely started to regain its rightful place in the comity of nations’.”

Rubio, incidentally, met Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar on the sidelines of the Asean summit in Kuala Lampur on Monday – an event Modi ducked presumably because of his unwillingness to handle US President Donal Trump – but neither side provided any details of what transpired. Presumably because nothing much transpired.