US sanctions on Pakistan's missile program highlight concerns over regional balance, not global threat. The writer is a Research Fellow at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute Listen to article Pakistan’s nuclear and missile program has always remained a matter of great concern for the United States and, therefore, has been subjected to related sanctions since the 1980s. The apprehensions on missile capabilities date back to the late 1990s and early 2000s when the US official reports suggested that the Chinese entities were providing considerable assistance to Pakistan’s long-range ballistic missile program. Fast forward to 2024, based on similar suspicions, the US in October, imposed sanctions on three Chinese entities for supplying missile-applicable items to Pakistan and on four Pakistani entities including the National Development Complex (NDC) in December.…