The relations among United States of America and People’s Republic of China have historically survived several bouts and rounds however the approach employed by the Trump Administration for a program involving reprisal hefty tariff-trade war against China has given a new face to the bilateral relations between the two states. The paper demonstrates that domestic and international agents played a vital role in initiating and nurturing the trade clash between Washington and Beijing since 2018 to date. The aim of the study is to ascertain that how the political climate and past pursuits of one country conditions policy outcomes in another, and how domestic political pressures on politician’s conditions their relations with foreign counterparts. The paradigm of rational choice theory is adopted to provide a conceptual understanding to the triggering of the trade war between the economic giants.

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The Indian Ocean offers the “global commons” the sea lanes of communication that connects the East with the West. These SLOCs nurtures the global economic world by providing for a classical instance of ‘multilateral maritime matrix,’ whereby merchant ships are manufactured in one country, maintained and owned by another, underwritten by third, registered in fourth and crewed by subjects of another. In this regard, the strategic and commercial concerns of nation-states extends from its immediate maritime borders to the protection of chokepoints where merchandise is most vulnerable to array of contemporary security threats. The third largest ocean, since the cessation of bipolar hostilities after the end of the Cold War, has been integrated to global market economics to a critical extent whereby any interruptions to the established trade networks is likely to have a ‘shockwave effect’. The Indian Ocean is presaged to continue as a ‘central shipment pathway’ for regional and inter-continental trade in wide scope of commercial commodity items. The patterns observed in the region consists of up gradation of existing port infrastructure and developing export markets and resources based on blue economy would strengthen maritime ties. These transformations have the potential to permit the Indian Ocean to be the “strategic heart of the maritime world”.

The Indian Ocean has gained prominence in the international geopolitical discourse. It is becoming a showground for major competition between the new and existing great powers. Maritime Diplomacy, in this regard, is a valuable instrument for averting conflict. The range of options available are from the cooperative ones to persuasive and coercive selection for the maritime forces. It is helpful not only to those utilizing it but also to academicians who are trying to decipher the more extensive ramifications of the utilization of sea-based strategy. Mahan documented, the most powerful state of the maritime realm is generally also richest and economically prevalent most in the international order. The study uses qualitative method to analyze the existing literature comprising of primary and secondary set of imperatives to provide structured insight that would be useful to policy-makers and academicians. The Pakistani perspective and interplay in the changing geopolitics is assessed in the region termed as “pivotal of the world”.