CHIEF EXECUTIVE

ABID WAZIR KHAN Editorial

ADVISORY BOARD
SARWAR SUKHERA
Shakespeare to Qureshi
HASSAN NISAR
KHAN HASHAM BIN SIDDIQUE
DR. ZAFAR JASPAL
HUSSAIN SHAHEED SOHARWARDI

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
DR. SHAHID WAZIR KHAN

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SARAH SHAHID WAZIR

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M. SHAHRUKH

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B arabas, the Jew in Christopher
Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, and
Shylock, the Jew in Shakespeare’s
The Merchant of Venice could be read as the
portraits of individuals living in societies
dealing with anti-Semitism. On the other
hand, these are also the portraits of cunning
Jews claiming innocence after plotting
brutal acts, and alleging others of anti-
Semitism, as Shylock alleged Antonio’s
nation that their “own hard dealings teach
them suspect the thoughts of others” (The
Merchant of Venice, I-iii). Pakistani Foreign
Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi found
himself as a part of near Shakespearean plot
while in conversation with Biana Golodryga
in a television talk show. Qureshi, in
Golodryga’s opinion, was the member of a
similar anti-Semitic group that was
responsible for the alienation of Shylock.
Whereas the Qureshi supporters saw
Golodryga in the same light as they had seen
the cunning villainy of Shylock or Barabas.
On either end of the plot, Qureshi found
himself a rather unexpected claim to a
Shakespearean tradition. The missing string
was perhaps Qureshi’s lack of eloquence,
which Portia in the disguise of Dr Balthasar
had while pleading the case of Antonio.
Golodryga did not call her adversary as a
Daniel who had come to justice, instead,
Qureshi remained at the receiving end, and
perhaps this time it was not Shylock but Dr.
Balthasar who returned to a deserted, lonely,
and impoverished house.
Our spokespeople will have to take a leaf
out of the book of noble Portia. A study of her
character may pave the way for proper media
coaching of our spokespeople. Whatever
happened was reflective of the lack of media
coaching, which is required at this level. At
the world fora and international media, it is
not just sufficient to make a valid point. A
valid point must be protected and shielded
from all types of prejudice and bias. Winning
the confidence of an adversary is the
supreme art of dialogue and diplomacy.
Unfortunately, we do not have a history of
success in these spheres. Rhetoric is not the
solution to every problem. Expression with-
out purpose, and purpose without calcula-
tion often lands one into a sticky situation.
The noble Portia knew that the art of dia-
logue and diplomacy is intertwined with the
skill of acknowledging the stance of the
adversary before enforcing one’s own argu-
ment.
Both alleged, and real anti-Semitism
have not served the cause of Palestinians.
The long night of captivity keeps on extend-
ing in Palestine, while our rhetoric rant ech-
oes back to us with one word only – Anti-
Semitic. It might be a rather Islamophobic
analysis by Golodryga to call Qureshi’s refer-
ence to “deep pockets” as an anti-Semitic
trope, but Qureshi did not have enough
media coaching that could have earned him
Portia like respect of the adversary to exclaim
“Tarry a little… there is something else” that
human rights law does not give Israel a jot of
Palestinian blood. Anyone who wants jus-
tice, must get justice. Self defence must be
rooted in prudent defence of the righteous. A
wise and upright judge must speak elo-
quently enough that even the guilty may
themselves demand their “deeds upon their
head” and proclaim that “A Daniel has come
to Judgement” (V. I).

4 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021

globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
Current edition
June 2021

4 Editorial
Shakespeare to Qureshi

World Economics Refugees & Migration

8 Trade Wars
The fight over the global economy’s future
32 The Singular Chancellor
Merkel model and its limits

Israel-Palestine Conflict Rival Friends

9 Why Netanyahu Thinks America is Stupid
Israeli sadism meets American cynicism in Palestine
36 Cooperation or Conflict?
The world’s most critical relationship, between US and China, is likely to remain on an unstable course

War of Words Governance Challenges

11 Globalization’s Coming Golden Age
Why crisis ends in connection
38 The Institutional Imperative
Transformational change in the apparatus of governance is an imperative, not a choice

US Urban Policy Enemies Inside

15 Can Trade Work for Workers?
The right way to redress harms and redistribute gains
40 The Government’s Emerging Traits
The PTI leadership needs to shake off habits that often land it in self-created difficulties

Israel-Hamas Truce Peace Talk

17 Ceasefire in Palestine
“Israel is a dagger in the hearts of Muslims” – Muhamad Ali Jinnah
42 Terms of Engagement
Peace with honour should remain the immutable principle of Pakistan’s engagement with India

Poem Afghan Conflict

19 Human’s ironical agony
That pain, whether black, white, east, west, Rohingya or not Rohingya, Palestine or Israel, feels the same
46 Complicated Afghan Endgame
All stakeholders know if the path of negotiation is abandoned the country will descend into chaos

Public Health State Vision

20 The Covid-19 Pandemic
Resources should be put into such measures not just to honour the dead and the truth
48 A Reform Agenda
We urgently need an effective internal security and governance framework

British Politics Language Excellency

22 The Wrong Sort of Conservatism
The prime minister wants a big state that crimps civil liberties
50 Arabic Pakistan?
Every Muslim here is immersed in religious expressions

Analysis Palestine Rights

23 Military, Scientific, and Technological
The United States must learn to limit its ambitions even while continuing to defend core interests
51 Killing Field
Who exactly are the terrorists in Gaza?

Review World Environment

25 Economic, Social, and Environmental
Without modern, science-based farming, it would be impossible to provide adequate nutrition at affordable prices either in the US or globally
52 Competition with China Can Save the Planet
Pressure, not partnership, will spur progress on climate change

Review Essay War Crimes

28 The Two Rwandas
Development and dissent under Kagame
55 Who’s A Terrorist?
Some say freedom fighters are not terrorists

Politics & Society Dictatorship vs Democracy

30 A Prison Called Tibet
How China controls its restive regions
57 Leaders’ legacy
Which leader gave us lasting change?

6 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021

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June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 7
World Economics
Trade Wars
The fight over the global economy’s future
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
A
globalized economy was
supposed to bring people
together—or so went the
dominant strain of thinking in the
foreign policy world for most of the last
few decades. In a few short years, the
near consensus has collapsed. Gone are
the prophecies of ever-accelerating
integration and the paeans to trade and
investment promoting prosperity and
comity for all. Now, the discussion
centers on just how much the world’s two
largest economies should “decouple,” on
pandemic-addled governments taking
control of supply chains and vaccine
doses, and on techno-democracies vying
with techno-authoritarians to shape the
digital commons. Far from tempering
geopolitical competition, trade has
offered another means of waging it.
Yet might today’s pessimism miss as
much as the Pollyannaish visions of the
recent past did? Tracing patterns over
two centuries, Harold James foresees a
new wave of globalization, not in spite of
8 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
today’s fragmentation and discord but
because of it: in a crisis, leaders tend to
respond at first with nationalist postur-
ing, only to accept before long that recov-
ery demands more cooperation and con-
nection, not less.
Gordon Hanson—building on his
influential research documenting the
magnitude of the so-called China shock
to the U.S. economy—highlights the bro-
ken promises and acute harms of past
trade agreements. Even a “worker-
centric” policy, as the Biden administra-
tion has promised, will not be enough to
get trade on a better track. A bolder
approach is needed.
Adam Posen contends that blaming
trade and openness for the United
States’ ills gets the problem exactly
wrong: the culprit is a two-decade retreat
from international economic engage-
ment, which has increased inequality
and hindered growth. Audrye Wong
offers a similarly damning assessment of
China’s “economic statecraft,” including
headline-grabbing efforts such as the
Belt and Road Initiative, which backfire
as often as they succeed.
Finally, Matthew Slaughter and
David McCormick observe that even as
overall trade has plateaued, flows of data
across borders have grown exponen-
tially—yet spurred little in the way of
international action to manage the
momentous economic, political, and
security implications. The United States,
they argue, must take the lead in crafting
new rules for a world in which data is
power.
These diagnoses differ, and the pre-
scriptions point in varying directions.
But a common thread runs through them
all, highlighting what old assumptions
got wrong: ultimately, not immutable
economic forces but policy
choices—foolish or wise, myopic or far-
sighted—will determine where we go
from here.
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Why Netanyahu Thinks America is
Stupid
Israeli sadism meets American cynicism in Palestine
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T he United States has provided
Israel with the military means
and diplomatic cover it needs to
defeat Hamas in Gaza, while devastating
the livelihood of more than two million
Palestinians, in what qualify as war
crimes.
The Biden administration has cov-
ered for Israel at the United Nations and
lied about it. Its denial of having
obstructed a mere statement by the UN
Security Council (UNSC) calling for a
ceasefire, makes it look foolish, disin-
genuous and weak.
Washington has stood alone among
the members of the council in its opposi-
tion to consensus on a ceasefire, not
once, not twice, but three times in the
past few days.
The White House spokesperson
insisted that the US is pursuing an “effec-
tive” approach of “quiet, intensive,
diplomacy”, but as it turns out, President
Joe Biden has been merely buying Israel
time to get on with “finishing the job”.
According to a New York Times
report, the US president told Israeli
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
that he might not be able to deter grow-
ing international and domestic pressure
for much longer, with the mounting
death and destruction caused by days of
pounding Gaza.
When Biden finally asked
Netanyahu to start winding down the
war, the arrogant Israeli premier
rebuffed him, insisting instead on taking
his time to realise his objectives in the
war, come what may.
Israel has concluded from the previ-
ous three Gaza offensives that it could no
longer accept a “strategic tie” with
Hamas; that its military victory must be
quick, real and resounding; that Pales-
tinians and other regional nemeses must
learn that they cannot achieve by force
what they failed to achieve through
diplomacy; and that Israel will do what it
must to win, regardless of how long or
how much the world whines.
On that basis, Israel is making an
example of Gaza, sadistically destroying
its administrative, municipal and eco-
nomic infrastructure, including electric-
ity, water and sewerage systems, setting
it back years if not decades.
Netanyahu is making Gaza suffer in
a cynical ploy to satisfy his vengeful
ultra-nationalist base and continue to
maintain his grip on power.
If he loses his premiership, he is
likely to end up in jail, like his predeces-
sor Ehud Olmert, on any one of the three
serious charges he now faces in court –
fraud, breach of trust and accepting
bribes.
Netanyahu was in dire straits only
days before his fascist allies began to run
amok in occupied East Jerusalem, ter-
rorising its residents. He had failed yet
again to form a coalition government
and was finally forced to stand trial after
repeated postponements.
But, lo and behold, as soon as the
escalation got under way, his opponents
failed to form a government, and as the
escalation worsened, his chances to
remain in office improved dramatically,
with smaller right-wing parties like
Yamina rallying behind him.
One has to wonder if any of this is in
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 9
 Hamas has
consistently limited the
scope of its activities
and objectives to freeing
Palestine from Israeli
colonialism. Washington
has negotiated an
agreement with the
Islamist Taliban, which
it has also long accused
of terrorism and which
proved far more radical
and less compromising
than Hamas, in order to
bring peace to
Afghanistan
the US national interest.
The short answer is no, none of it.
Nada. Zilch.
Indeed, the ensuing grave humani-
tarian crisis and the deepening hatred
for Israel and its enablers in the region
and beyond is damaging to US credibility
and national interest.
This is especially true when the
Biden administration claims to put
human rights at the centre of its foreign
policy, while its spoiled brat of a client
takes advantage of its sympathy and sup-
port to commit war crimes.
Even the much-touted war on the
Islamist movement, Hamas, is not in the
US best interest, not when it destabilises
the region, and not when the alternative
is a negotiated settlement that could
achieve peace and security – peace for
Israel and security for the Palestinians –
based on freedom and justice.
Unlike other pan-Islamic groups
that threatened the US and Western secu-
rity, Hamas is a national liberation move-
ment with religious undertones, and like
countless liberation movements, it uses
force to achieve its objectives.
Like it or hate it, Hamas has consis-
tently limited the scope of its activities
and objectives to freeing Palestine from
Israeli colonialism, and it has long
entrusted the negotiations to the Pales-
tine Liberation Organization.
For its part, Washington has negoti-
ated an agreement with the Islamist
Taliban, which it has also long accused of
terrorism and which proved far more
radical and less compromising than
Hamas, in order to bring peace to
Afghanistan.
All of which begs the question: Why
is the Biden administration doing
Netanyahu’s dirty bidding, instead of
helping to reach a similar agreement in
Palestine?
8 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
Netanyahu called US
President Bill Clinton
radically pro Palestinian,
even though the US
president helped
improve Israel’s
regional and
international standing
in the 1990s, when
foreign investment
skyrocketed, the
economy prospered, and
trade increased while
illegal settlement
expanded
Netanyahu’s answer is simple:
“America is a thing you can move very
easily, move it in the right direction.”
This is what he said in 2001, while assur-
ing Israeli settlers that Israel could
destroy the Palestinian Authority and
continue with illegal settlement build-
ing, regardless of the US position.
In his view, America is gullible, and
in the rare case when its government
plays hardball, Israel can deploy its
influential lobby to whip it into submis-
sion.
Pro-Israel Democrat if he is to pass
his ambitious legislative agenda, not
when the Republicans are blindly follow-
ing Netanyahu. Israel could also count
on the overwhelming backing it enjoys in
Congress and in the US in general, which
is so substantial that Netanyahu aptly
called it, “absurd”. Paradoxically, the
two senators leading the effort for an
immediate ceasefire, Bernie Sanders and
Jon Ossoff, are Jewish.
More disturbingly, Netanyahu's
views reflect a general “disdain” among
Israelis for Americans, whom they
reckon are “inherently dupable people”,
according to a report in the Jewish Amer-
ican publication, The Forward.
Over the years, the US has provided
Israel with close to $150bn in direct
assistance only, and in return they are
rewarded with insult, for Israelis basi-
cally think the Americans, who long
showered them with money and weap-
ons, are suckers.
But then, these are the same Israelis
who willingly made an infamous, cheat-
ing, deceiving, liar their country's lon-
gest serving prime minister, heading not
one, not two, but five governments – and
counting. It is no coincidence that, after
engaging five US administrations over a
quarter of a century, Netanyahu behaves
so arrogantly towards US leaders. Not
only has he gotten away with almost any-
thing, even things contrary to US inter- War of Words
ests, he has also been rewarded for it.
Netanyahu called US President Bill
Clinton “radically pro Palestinian”, even
though the US president helped improve
Globalization’s Coming Golden Age
Israel’s regional and international Why crisis ends in connection
standing in the 1990s, when foreign
investment skyrocketed, the economy
prospered, and trade increased while
illegal settlement expanded.
Netanyahu's chutzpah is best illus-
trated by his humiliation of US President
Barack Obama, lecturing him on the
Middle East, denouncing him on the
Iran deal and his opposition to settle-
ments, and snubbing him in his talk
directly to the Congress.
And Obama's defeatism is best illus-
trated by his absurd rush in the last
months of his presidency to reward
Netanyahu with a $38bn military aid
package.
Such military assistance may have
been justifiable during the Cold War, but
today rich Israel is no longer a strategic
asset; it is a strategic liability for the US.
Israel may have served US strategy in the
past, but that strategy proved bad for the
US and the Middle East.
At any rate, if that was not weird
enough, Netanyahu stalled, insisting on
$45bn, before finally signing on it.
Bizarrely, other Israeli leaders also com-
plained about this “single largest pledge
of military assistance in US history”. By The KIPS Bureau
Shortly after signing the deal, Lahore, Pakistan
Netanyahu lashed out at the Obama-
Biden administration for abstaining
T
he thought that trade and course of trade and globalization has trade surged dramatically. The truth is
during a UNSC vote on Israel's illegal
globalization might make a been shaped by how governments and that historic ruptures often generate and
settlements that Washington long
comeback in the 2020s, picking people have responded to such crises. accelerate new global links. COVID-19 is
opposed, calling it a “shameful anti-
up renewed vigor after the pandemic, Globalization comes in cycles: periods of no exception. After the pandemic, glob-
Israeli ploy”.
may seem far-fetched. After all, COVID- increasing integration are followed by alization will come roaring back. The
Netanyahu. Among others, Trump
19 is fragmenting the world, destroying shocks, crises, and destructive back- 1840s were a disaster. Crops failed, peo-
recognised Israeli annexation of Jerusa-
multilateralism, and disrupting complex lashes. After the Great Depression, the ple went hungry, disease spread, and
lem and the Syrian Golan Heights, as
cross-border supply chains. The virus world slid into autarky, nationalism, financial markets collapsed. The best-
well as hundreds of illegal settlements in
looks like it is completing the work of the authoritarianism, zero-sum thinking, known catastrophe was the Irish potato
the occupied Palestinian territories.
2008 financial crisis: the Great and, ultimately, war—a series of events famine, which began in 1845 and led to
It was no coincidence that
Recession produced more trade often presented as a grim parable of the the deaths of nearly one million people,
Netanyahu made clear his support for
protectionism, forced governments to consequences of globalization’s reversal. mostly from diseases caused by malnu-
Trump during the elections, but after
question globalization, increased Yet history shows that many crises pro- trition. The same weather that made
becoming president, Biden resumed the
hostility to migration, and, for the first duce more, rather than less, globaliza- potatoes vulnerable to fungal rot also led
relationship with the ungrateful pre-
time in over four decades, ushered in a tion. Challenges can generate new cre- to widespread crop failures and famine
mier, as if nothing had happened and
sustained period in which global trade ative energy, better communication, and across Europe. In The Communist Mani-
even provided him with the diplomatic
grew more slowly than global a greater willingness to learn from effec- festo, published in 1848, Karl Marx and
cover to fight his ugly war.
production. Even then, however, there tive solutions adopted elsewhere. Gov- Friedrich Engels articulated how global
As Netanyahu plunged Palestine
was no complete reversal or ernments often realize that their ability integration was driving the world toward
into another dark and tragic chapter of
deglobalization; rather, there was an to competently deliver the services their social and political upheaval. “The devel-
violence, and rejected Biden's appeals to
uncertain, sputtering “slobalization.” In populations demand requires answers opment of Modern Industry,” they
de-escalate the violence in order to reach
contrast, today’s vaccine nationalism is found abroad. argued, “cuts from under its feet the very
a ceasefire, the Biden administration is
rapidly driving China, Russia, the United Modern globalization, for instance, foundation on which the bourgeoisie
rewarding him with a $735m arms sale
Kingdom, and the United States into began as a response to social and finan- produces and appropriates products.”
that includes precision-guided weapons.
open confrontation and sowing bitter cial catastrophes in the 1840s. The most Europe was a tinderbox.
But it is never enough, alas. Expect
conflict within the EU. It is all too easy to recent wave of globalization followed In 1848, it ignited in an inferno of
Netanyahu to ask for more in return for
extrapolate and see a future of scarring economic disruptions in the nationalist revolution, with populations
de-escalation, including more money
“nobalization”—globalization vanishing 1970s. In both cases, shocks laid the foun- rising up in France, Italy, and central
and arms, and an invitation to Washing-
in a viral haze. dation for new international connections Europe. But the economic shock of the
ton before Israel's fifth elections in two
Over the past two centuries, the and solutions, and the volume of world 1840s did not reverse the course of
years.
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June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 11
 Historians now think
of the second half of the
nineteenth century as
the first age of
globalization. Food
shortages highlighted
the need for broad and
diversified supply
chains, and leaders
realized that a modern
state needed reliable
access to supplies from
beyond its borders
global integration. Instead, trade
expanded, governments reduced tariff
barriers, capital mobility surged, and
people moved across continents. Migra-
tion was not only a response to social and
political immiseration; it also reflected
the promise of new prosperity. Histori-
ans now think of the second half of the
nineteenth century as the first age of
globalization. Food shortages high-
lighted the need for broad and diversi-
fied supply chains, and leaders realized
that a modern state needed reliable
access to supplies from beyond its bor-
ders. In the United Kingdom, the British
government initially responded to the
Irish famine by importing corn from
outside Europe. At the time, The Econo-
mist argued that “except Russia, Egypt,
and the United States, there are no coun-
tries in the world able to spare any quan-
tity of grain worthy of mention.”
Imports, however, failed cata-
strophically. This was in part because the
new food was unfamiliar, but above all, it
was because London couldn’t work out
how to pay for the goods. Trade deficits
generated currency shortages, which
pushed up interest rates in the United
Kingdom and France. This intensified a
manufacturing crisis—itself the result of
a decline in purchasing power caused by
surging food prices. Although the best
solution was to sell more goods abroad,
that would have required governments
to lower trade barriers and open up their
markets. These shortages generated
popular demands for more competent
governments. Although it was only in
1981 that the economist Amartya Sen’s
pioneering work on the 1943 great Ben-
gal famine definitively showed that fam-
ines are often manmade, that intuition
was already widely shared in the 1840s.
John Mitchel, an Irish nationalist who
emigrated to the United States, con-
cluded, “No sack of Magdeburg, or rav-
age of the Palatinate, ever approached in
horror and desolation to the slaughters
done in Ireland by mere official red tape
and stationery, and the principles of
political economy.”
Governments everywhere eventu-
ally responded to these demands. That
meant learning from successful efforts
elsewhere. The United Kingdom enacted
a series of civil service reforms, adopting
a competitive examination process in
place of arcane patronage. The most
striking extension of state capacity, how-
ever, occurred across the English Chan-
nel, where Louis-Napoléon, the nephew
of the emperor, was elected president of
France in 1848. After a coup and a series
of plebiscites advertising his compe-
tence and activism, Napoleon made him-
self president for life and, eventually,
emperor—Napoleon III. His policies
were designed to show the benefits of an
efficient autocrat over divided liberal
regimes. He initiated large-scale public
works projects—including railroad
expansions and Baron Haussmann’s
famous rebuilding of Paris. Napoleon
also demonstrated his competence by
negotiating the Anglo-French tariff
agreement of 1860, which reduced
duties on important goods traded across
the channel. Other countries quickly
followed suit and negotiated bilateral
trade deals of their own across Europe.
But even before 1860, improved
communication and transportation
meant commerce was surging: global
trade in goods accounted for just 4.5
percent of output in 1846 but shot up to
8.9 percent in 1860. The events of the
1840s also laid the foundation for a wave
of institutional changes to address the
proliferation of small states with a lim-
ited ability to deal with migration. The
creation of new nation-states with novel
currencies and banking systems, notably
Germany and Italy, and administrative
reform in the Habsburg empire—ending
internal customs duties and serf
labor—were all designed to push eco-
nomic growth.
In this context, the American Civil
War and the Meiji Restoration in Japan
were also nation-building efforts meant
to maximize the effectiveness and capac-
ity of institutions. The abolition of slav-
ery in the United States and feudalism in
Japan were profound social and eco-
nomic transformations. Both upheavals,
moreover, led to monetary and banking
reforms. Business competence was also
newly in demand. In 1851, the United
Kingdom celebrated its industrial
strength with the Great Exhibition—an
international fair intended to display
British ingeniousness and mechanical
superiority, as well as the virtues of
peaceful commerce.
Some of the most stunning prod-
ucts, however, were neither British nor
particularly peaceful—among them, the
steel cannon, invented by a German,
Alfred Krupp, and the revolver, devel-
oped by an American, Samuel Colt. Brit-
ish observers saw continental Europeans
catching up and overtaking their own
country. To the British scientist Lyon
Playfair, the exhibition showed “very
clearly and distinctly that the rate of
industrial advance of many European
nations, even of those who were obvi-
ously in our rear, was at a greater rate
than our own.” He went on: “In a long
race the fastest sailing ship will win, even
though they are for a time behind.” The
event taught world leaders a powerful
lesson: international trade was vital for
enhancing national performance. Com-
petition was central to generating com-
petence. The result was an abrupt psy-
chological shift from catastrophism to
optimism, and from despair to self-
confidence.
This new mood initiated the first
wave of globalization—its so-called
golden age, in which international trade
and finance expanded rapidly. Eventu-
ally, however, this optimism gave way to
complacency, then doubts about the
benefits of globalization and increasing
disillusion among those left behind (no-
tably European farmers). The upswing
came to an end with World War I. That
conflict prompted a massive interna-
tional rebuilding effort that faltered
bloodily with the rise of fascism in the
1930s and the advent of World War II.
The makers of the postwar settle-
ment in 1945 had learned a great deal
from the mistakes of the last century.
They created an extensive framework of
international institutions but left sub-
stantial economic control in the hands of
national authorities. As a result, the end
of World War II did not immediately
unleash waves of capital mobility like
those that had characterized the nine-
teenth century.
Nearly three decades later, how-
ever, the dilemmas raised by shortages
and scarcity that had led to earlier ver-
sions of integration finally returned —
setting the stage for the current era of
globalization. In the 1970s, after two
large oil price hikes, the industrialized
In the United States, car exports. The move backfired, how-
ever. Because of the new restrictions,
there was acute anxiety Japanese producers merely shifted their
about Japanese focus away from cheap, fuel-efficient
competition, and in 1981, cars and toward luxury vehicles.
Despite these gestures at economic
Washington pressured nationalism, the oil shock — paradoxi-
Tokyo to sign an cally at first — created more globaliza-
tion. In conjunction with price increases,
agreement that limited a financial revolution driven by the emer-
Japanese car exports. gence of large international banks trans-
The move backfired, ferred huge surpluses accumulated by oil
producers into lendable funds. The new
however. Because of the availability of money made resources
new restrictions, easily accessible for governments all
over the world that wanted to push
Japanese producers development and growth. International
merely shifted their demand thus surged. In contrast, in the
focus away from cheap, United Kingdom, Labour’s siege econ-
omy looked like it would cut off access to
fuel-efficient cars and markets and prosperity.
toward luxury vehicles Thus, crises in the 1970s led to the
same realization as in the 1840s: open-
world saw its way of life threatened. Oil
ness produced resilience, and financing
prices had been stable in the 1960s, but a
needed to be available for trade to
surge in demand taught producers that
expand. The eventual impact was obvi-
they could exploit control over the
ous: trade in goods and services, which
world’s most important commodity.
in 1970 had amounted to 12.1 percent of
Adding to the crunch, the first oil shock,
global GDP, increased to 18.2 percent by
in 1973–74, was accompanied by a 30
1980. The cycle swung back to globaliza-
percent rise in wheat prices, after the
tion once again.
Soviet Union experienced poor harvests
Protectionism in the 1970s also trig-
and bought up U.S. grain to compensate.
gered a discussion of whether govern-
Shortages reappeared. Some oil-
ments were handling the crisis compe-
importing countries imposed “car-free
tently. At first, the debate was personal-
days” as a way of rationing gasoline con-
ized and highly caricatured: in the
sumption. As states spent more on oil,
United States, it centered on Richard
grain, and other commodities, they
Nixon’s crookery, Gerald Ford’s sup-
found their balance of payments
posed inability to chew gum and walk, or
squeezed. Unable to afford vital goods
Jimmy Carter’s micromanagement.
from abroad, governments had to make
In the United Kingdom, commenta-
hard choices. Many floundered as they
tors focused on the detached bachelor
tried to ration scarce goods: mandating
existence of Prime Minister Edward
who could drive cars when or struggling
Heath and then on allegations of crony-
over whether they should pay nurses
ism against his successor, Harold Wil-
more than teachers, police officers, or
son. France went into the oil shock under
civil servants. The immediate and
the very sick President Georges
instinctual response to scarcity was pro-
Pompidou, who died of cancer in 1974.
tectionism.
In West Germany, the revelation
In the United Kingdom, where the
that Chancellor Willy Brandt’s closest
balance-of-payments problem appeared
assistant was an East German spy under-
earlier than elsewhere, the government
mined the country’s reputation for com-
tried a domestic purchasing campaign,
petence. His successor, Helmut
supported by all the major political par-
Schmidt, believed that Germany was
ties. Leaders encouraged citizens to wear
returning to the chaos of the interwar
stickers and badges with the Union Jack
Weimar Republic. The many examples
and the message “I’m backing Britain.”
of personal incompetence in rich indus-
(The press magnate Robert Maxwell
trial democracies generated the thesis
distributed T-shirts with a similar slo-
that such countries had become ungov-
gan, but they turned out to be made in
ernable. The political theorist Jean-
Portugal.) In the mid-1970s, after the
François Revel concluded that democra-
first oil shock, the government briefly
cies were perishing and that the Soviet
flirted with what the Labour Party’s left
Union was winning the Cold War.
flank called a “siege economy,” including
Autocracies such as Chile under
extensive import restrictions. In the
Augusto Pinochet and Iran under
United States, there was acute anxiety
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi
about Japanese competition, and in
appeared better suited to handle modern
1981, Washington pressured Tokyo to
global challenges. The autocrats lectured
sign an agreement that limited Japanese

12 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021

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June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 13
others about their superiority. In reality,
however, they were bloody, corrupt, and,
in many cases, spectacularly unsuccess-
ful. The real insight of the debate over
administrative effectiveness was that
governments could overstretch them-
selves by taking on too many tasks. That
realization inspired a key tenet of what
was later widely derided as
“neoliberalism”: the belief that if govern-
ments took on microdecisions, such as
determining wage and price levels (a
central part of both Nixon’s and the Brit-
ish government’s bids to contain infla-
tion), they risked their legitimacy and
reputation for competence. Official deci-
sions would appear both arbitrary and
unenforceable because powerful groups
would quickly make sure that new settle-
ments favored their interests.
The shortages of the 1840s and the
1970s both seemed to have an apparent
cure: inflation. Inflation can help accom-
modate shocks, often painlessly.
Because people have more cash or bank
credit, monetary abundance generates
the impression that they can have every-
thing they want. Only gradually do con-
sumers realize that prices are rising and
that their money buys less.
In the 1850s, inflation may have
been partially unintended. It was largely
the result of the 1849 California Gold
Rush, which vastly increased the world’s
gold stock. Price increases were also
driven by financial innovation, primarily
Europe’s adoption of new types of bank-
ing that drove money creation, such as
the so-called crédits mobiliers, which
developed industrial lending in France
and central Europe. By giving people
apparently greater wealth, this increase
in the supply of money (and the resulting
mild inflation) helped governments
appear more competent and made busi-
nesses and consumers more confident. It
prompted a genuine global surge in pro-
duction, which generated greater pros-
perity and security. After 1971, when
Nixon finally severed the link between
the dollar and gold, monetary policy was
no longer constrained by a metallic stan-
dard. In times of crisis, governments
could now print more money to drive
growth.
In many countries, the immediate
response to oil price increases was there-
fore to accommodate the shock through
expansive fiscal and monetary stimulus:
people could still go on buying. That reac-
tion spurred inflation, which by 1974 had
risen to 11 percent in the United States
and beyond that in some other countries:
in 1975, the United Kingdom’s inflation
rate reached 24 percent. Although infla-
tion initially seemed to be the solution to
the scarcity problem, it soon appeared in
diagnoses of government incompetence.
14 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
Although lockdowns
have interrupted supply
and caused
unemployment to soar,
there is no overall
shortage of demand.
Large rescue and
stimulus packages in
rich countries have
generated a financial
buffer, and savings have
shot up as people spend
less. The best estimate is
that in 2020, the United
States piled up $1.6
trillion in excess savings,
equivalent to seven
percent of GDP
The economist Arthur Okun developed a
popular “misery index” by simply adding
inflation and unemployment. The metric
became an important political weapon.
The Democratic presidential challenger
George McGovern used it against Nixon
in 1972, Carter used it against Ford in
1976, and Ronald Reagan used it against
Carter in 1980. High inflation at first
superficially stabilizes societies, but over
time, it becomes a threat. Inflation often
pushes interest groups—internationally,
producer cartels such as OPEC, and
domestically, labor unions—to mobilize,
organize, and lobby in the hope of
acquiring a greater share of monetary
and fiscal resources. Depending on the
extent of that mobilization, it can pull
societies apart, as unions leapfrog each
other with aggressive wage demands and
inflation erodes the pay and pensions of
the nonunionized and the retired. By
demonstrating that governments are
vulnerable to organized pressure, infla-
tion is thus a destabilizing force in the
long term.
Indeed, analysts have argued that it
was at least in part generalized interna-
tional inflation in the 1960s that pushed
oil producers to organize—leading to the
price hikes of the 1970s. Monetary
experiments of this sort created
demands for new ordering frameworks.
After the surge in economic growth of the
mid-nineteenth century, the world inter-
nationalized the gold standard to create
a common framework for international
payments. Although policymakers went
a different route after the inflation and
liberalization of the 1970s, they were also
looking for a return to stability. To end
the monetary disorder, central banks
targeted a low inflation rate, and govern-
ments engaged in new patterns of coop- US Urban Policy
eration abroad—creating the G-5 and
then the G-7 and the G-20 as forums for
discussing collective responses to global
economic challenges. The quest for sta-
Can Trade Work for Workers?
bility was also aided by the steady march The right way to redress harms and redistribute gains
of globalization. Greater global integra-
tion lowered production costs and thus
helped correct the inflationary surge that
initially accompanied the shortage econ-
omy. Inflation, which first fueled global-
ization in the 1850s, was, by the end of
the twentieth century, eventually tamed
by it. Today, the COVID-19 pandemic
has produced a deep economic crisis, but
it is different from many past ones. The
shock is not a demand-driven downturn,
like the Great Depression or the 2008
recession. Although lockdowns have
interrupted supply and caused unem-
ployment to soar, there is no overall
shortage of demand. Large rescue and
stimulus packages in rich countries have
generated a financial buffer, and savings
have shot up as people spend less. The
best estimate is that in 2020, the United
States piled up $1.6 trillion in excess
savings, equivalent to seven percent of
GDP. People are waiting to unleash their
pent-up purchasing power. On top of
that, finance ministers and international
institutions are listening to U.S. Trea-
sury Secretary Janet Yellen’s demand
that “the time to go big is now” when it By The KIPS Bureau
comes to fiscal relief. Lahore, Pakistan
Yet the current crisis does share key
characteristics with the crises of the
1840s and the 1970s. The world of scar-
city, for one thing, is already here. The
pandemic has led to shortages of medical
F or decades, the promise of
globalization has rested on a
vision of a world in which goods,
services, and capital would flow across
borders as never before; whatever its
suffered when well-paid manufacturing
jobs dried up as factories moved abroad.
Those who managed to stay employed
saw their wages stagnate. The federal
government, meanwhile, did little to
icy—tweaking margins here and there.
That approach is unlikely to fix the prob-
lems caused by free trade—which,
despite the appeal of protectionist talk-
ing points, isn’t going anywhere.
supplies such as face masks and glass
vials for vaccine storage. Food prices other features and components, build a safety net to catch those who lost Instead, the Biden administration
have soared to their highest level since contemporary globalization has been out. should establish targeted domestic pro-
2014—the result of a combination of dry primarily about trade and foreign Unsurprisingly, Americans have grams that protect workers from the
weather in South America that has hurt investment. Today’s globalized economy complicated views on trade. Although a downsides of globalization. A responsi-
wheat and soybean crops and pandemic- has been shaped to a large extent by a majority of voters see free trade as a good ble policy would capture the gains of free
induced shipping disruptions. In the series of major trade agreements that thing, barely one-third believe that it trade but make up for domestic losses. In
initial stages of the pandemic, laptops were sold as win-win propositions: creates jobs or lowers prices. In recent years, the United States has done
became scarce as employees scrambled corporations, investors, workers, and response, political elites and elected neither. The skepticism about globaliza-
to update their work-from-home setups. consumers would all benefit from officials across the ideological spectrum tion that now pervades U.S. politics has
There is also a worldwide chip shortage, lowered barriers and harmonized have scrambled to distance themselves its origins in the failed promises of 1990s
as the demand for microprocessors in standards. American advocates of this from free-trade policies and from the trade liberalization. NAFTA and China’s
medical, managerial, and leisure use has view claimed that deals such as the North major pacts of the past. For its part, the accession to the World Trade Organiza-
increased. Freight rates between China American Free Trade Agreement would Biden administration has made a noble- tion disrupted economic life in the small
and Europe quadrupled at points in supercharge growth, create jobs, and sounding but vague pledge to pursue a and medium-size American cities that
2020. Steel, too, is in short supply. strengthen the United States’ standing “worker-centric” trade policy. The spe- once formed the country’s manufactur-
The challenge of the new upswing in as the world’s largest and most cifics are still unclear, but such an ing backbone. Resentment over those
the cycle of globalization will be to find important economy. According to then approach will likely include more changes helped Donald Trump win the
ways to learn and adapt—increasing the President George H. W. Bush, “NAFTA aggressive so-called Buy American pro- presidency in 2016. If President Joe
effectiveness of government and busi- means more exports, and more exports visions, which require government agen- Biden hopes to launch or modernize U.S.
ness—without compromising funda- means more American jobs.” A quarter cies to give preference to U.S. products trade policy, he will have to address this
mental values. As in the 1840s and the of a century later, such optimism when making purchases; increased pres- legacy. NAFTA was a bipartisan effort
1970s, financial and monetary innova- appears profoundly misplaced. NAFTA sure on trading partners to respect work- initiated in 1990 by Bush and concluded
tion, or the tonic of inflation, will drive and other deals did boost growth, and ers’ collective-bargaining rights; and a in 1994 by his successor, Bill Clinton.
transformational change. Memories of free trade remains a net benefit for the hawkish relationship with China. Leaders in Canada, Mexico, and the
crisis will push countries and govern- U.S. economy as a whole. But the overall Despite the rhetoric, these proposals put United States heralded the deal as an
ments to adapt in 2021 and beyond, just gains have been far less dramatic than the administration well within the economic miracle. Mexican President
as they have before. promised, and many American workers bounds of existing U.S. trade pol- Carlos Salinas de Gortari and his aides
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June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 15
 The economist
Timothy Bartik has
found that although such
measures expand output
in targeted industries,
they appear to do little
to raise local living
standards. And for each
job they create, such
incentives impose costs
that are nearly ten times
as high as those of some
other options for
creating employment,
such as redeveloping
defunct industrial sites
known as brownfields
promised that the agreement would turn
Mexico into the next South Korea.
Clinton waxed poetic not only about con-
ventional economic gains from trade but
also about how NAFTA would foster
“more equality, better preservation of
the environment, and a greater possibil-
ity of world peace.” These were bold but
arguably irresponsible claims. In the
end, NAFTA did what standard eco-
nomic models predicted: it delivered
modest net benefits, primarily by giving
U.S. companies access to manufacturing
components at lower prices, enhancing
their competitive advantage in global
markets. But NAFTA worked no mira-
cles. Although the deal hastened the
industrialization of northern Mexico, the
south of the country remained poor, over-
all productivity growth languished, and
Mexican immigration to the United
States surged to new highs during the
late 1990s and the early years of this cen-
tury—contrary to Clinton’s and Salinas’s
promises.
In the United States, the aggregate
gains in real income from NAFTA were
positive but meager—less than 0.1 per-
cent, by some estimates. Mexico’s econ-
omy, roughly the size of Ohio’s at the
time of the deal’s signing, simply wasn’t
large enough for the agreement to have a
substantial impact. Running for U.S.
president as an independent populist in
1992, the American businessman Ross
Perot famously predicted that Ameri-
cans would hear a “giant sucking sound”
as jobs crossed the border into Mexico.
No enormous shift materialized, but
many U.S. workers, especially those in
labor-intensive manufacturing indus-
tries, did lose their jobs. Some eventually
found employment in new truck and jet-
engine factories, but most did not. For
16 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
them, the upsides that NAFTA presented
to others offered no solace. Freer trade in
North America, however, was just the
warm-up act for the real show: China’s
emergence as a global economic power-
house, a process that began in the late
1970s under the leadership of Deng
Xiaoping, who reduced the state’s stran-
glehold on the economy, allowed private
enterprise to flourish, and opened China
up to limited forms of foreign invest-
ment. The impact of Beijing’s outward
turn was immense. Almost overnight,
China became the world’s factory.
Between 1990 and 2015, the country’s
share of global manufacturing exports
rose from 2.8 percent to 18.5 percent.
Aside from the speed and scale of the
transformation, however, another factor
amplified the disruptive power of Chi-
nese growth. In the 1990s and at the turn
of the twenty-first century, the Chinese
model of export-driven growth relied
almost exclusively on labor-intensive
products—apparel, footwear, and other
consumer goods that China could pro-
duce more cheaply than other countries
owing to its low labor costs, its proximity
to suppliers in East Asia, and a willing-
ness to let private companies make
exacting demands on workers. Although
China has since diversified its economy,
this initial surge in labor-intensive
exports proved deadly for U.S. manufac-
turing. Between 2000 and 2011, the
United States’ share of global manufac-
turing exports slumped from 14 percent
to 8.6 percent, and according to my
research with the economists David
Autor and David Dorn, between
600,000 and one million U.S. manufac-
turing jobs disappeared. Part of what
made the surge in Chinese exports so
painful for American workers was that
many of them lived and worked in indus-
try towns. When manufacturing jobs in
those towns disappeared in response to
rising import competition, it wasn’t just
factory workers who suffered: everyone
else did, too. Consider Martinsville, a
small town in southern Virginia that is
part of a manufacturing belt that
stretches through North Carolina and
into northern Georgia, Alabama, and
Mississippi. In 1990, 41 percent of the
working-age population in the three
counties surrounding Martinsville
worked in manufacturing, with half of
those workers employed by just two
industries: furniture and knitted
outerwear. This made Martinsville what
economists call an “industry cluster,” a
place that enjoys a productivity boost
from workers and firms specializing in a
narrow set of industries operating in
close proximity to one another. That
benefit, which the British economist
Alfred Marshall famously identified in
his analysis of the nineteenth-century Israel-Hamas Truce
Lancashire cotton textile industry,
explains why firms in certain industries
tend to locate near one another. The
Biden administration should instead try
Ceasefire in Palestine
to help communities such as Martins- “Israel is a dagger in the hearts of Muslims” – Muhamad Ali Jinnah
ville thrive. Doing so will require ingenu-
ity and experimentation. Federal offi-
cials should give their local and state
counterparts wide latitude to pursue
policies that are right for the places they
serve. Conventional approaches won’t
necessarily be the most effective. Take
tax incentives, for example, which offi-
cials often use to entice businesses to
move to their states or municipalities.
The economist Timothy Bartik has found
that although such measures expand
output in targeted industries, they
appear to do little to raise local living
standards. And for each job they create,
such incentives impose costs that are
nearly ten times as high as those of some
other options for creating employment,
such as redeveloping defunct industrial
sites known as brownfields.
So what actually works? Evidence
shows that active labor-market pro-
grams, designed to help young and dis-
advantaged workers succeed in the labor
market, are a good bet. Successful
approaches provide people with assis-
tance in their job searches, help the
young build the soft skills required to By Ahmad Hassan Arbi
find and hold a job, and deliver technical Lahore, Pakistan
training tailored to promising local
industries, such as health care or infor-
mation technology. Other alternatives to
tax incentives include attracting college-
educated workers to distressed commu-
nities through student-debt forgiveness
I ndeed, a giant statement by a
political genius, a true leader of
Muslims, who had the wisdom to
see through the piercing winds of
turbulent times. Another event to
which Prophet Soloman’s Beth ha-
Mikdas is erected. In 1901, five years
after the establishment of Zionism, Zion-
ists went to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and
asked him for a settlement in Palestine.
banker Allatini. Another famous freema-
son, Emmanuel Carasso, who was very
close to the Grand Vizier Talat Pasha and
was part of Sultan’s dethronement,
paved the way for first Jewish settlement
or the promise of an immigration visa,
providing services to help local firms vindicate Jinnah’s political intelligence. Upon their request, this dignified Turk in Palestine.
expand into new markets, and improv- Recent attacks on Palestinians by Sultan replied in these golden words, With Sultan Abdul Hamid
ing access to capital for small and Israel has shaken the conscience of the “While I am alive, I would rather push a dethroned, the last sword standing
medium-size businesses—many of world population. Social media has sword into my body than seeing the land between the Zionist and their diabolical
which are owned by members of minor- proven to be a tide turner in the war of of Palestine cut and given away from plans for the region, was gone. As an out-
ity groups and are poorly connected to perception that had previously been dom- the Islamic Caliphate”. come, it became an open hunting season
existing sources of finance. Helping left- inated by Israel. The state terrorism of Herzl than offered money on which for Zionists. The blood that started spill-
behind regions should be a core goal of Israel has been starkly stripped in the an even more courageous and honorable ing during that time still flows in the
Biden’s administration. But trying to last one month by content creators and reply came. Sultan said, streets of Middle East and the pain stabs
undo three decades of structural change influencers on social media and owing to “I will not sell a single inch of the coun- the hearts of the Muslim world.
in the global economy isn’t the right way the bravery and valor of Hammas fight- try because it is not mine, it belongs to In a letter from Sultan Abdülhamid
to get there. Biden and his team need to ers, Israel has asked for a ceasefire. all the Muslims. They paid for this II, to Shadhili Sheikh Abu'Shamat
be clear-eyed about what trade policy Which is a “lull before the storm”. empire with their blood. And, we will Mahmud, dating Sept. 22, 1913, Sultan
can and cannot do to help workers hurt In order to understand the Israeli redeem it with our blood. Let the Jews Abdülhamid said:
by globalization. The damage has been mindset and to predict the outcomes of keep their millions. If the empire is par- "I quit being caliph because of the
done, and free trade isn’t going any- this ceasefire, we have to go back and titioned, they can get it for free, but that oppression and threats by the Young
where. Protectionist measures and nar- unveil the “genesis of Israel”. Only then will happen over our dead bodies”. Turks. This group insisted that I
row attempts to placate labor unions will we would be able to grasp on how long After realizing that the sultan in not approve the establishment of a Jewish
do little to help workers who are already this ceasefire is going to last. going to budge, Zionists then went for state in Palestine. I rejected this propo-
hurting or to help others avoid a similar Roots of the state of Israel and the conspiracies and low life tactics. They sition. They finally offered 150 million
fate. Better to help the unemployed get darkness that surrounds its origins, penetrated the Young Turk movement British gold pieces. I rejected this as well
back on their feet with generous and dates back to the latter half of the 19th with the help of free masons and and I told them: 'I would never agree
direct assistance and to create a far century. In 1896, the foundation of Zion- Sabataists who were there within the with you even if you offer not 150 million
stronger safety net to protect future gen- ism was laid under the leadership of The- ranks of this insurgency which British gold but all the gold in the entire
erations of American workers. odore Herzl. The name “Zionist” is taken dethroned the Sultan. Sultan was then world. I served the Muslim community
from the reference of Mount Zion, on imprisoned inside the house of a Jewish for more than 30 years. I did not let my
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June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 17
 In 1947, almost half of
the population of
Palestine was Jewish. It
was the time when the
famous Balfour
Declaration was passed
by the British foreign
office and a letter was
written by the ruler of
England addressing the
Rothchilds, reassuring
them, the formation of
Israel. Israel was finally
established in 1948 as
an ideologically Jewish
state
forefathers down. Following my final
response, they agreed on my dethrone-
ment and sent me to Thessaloniki. I pray
to Allah, I did not accept to establish a
new state on Palestinian lands on the
Ottoman State and the Islamic commu-
nity."
After World War 1, Middle East was
divided into tiny, anarchic, intrinsically
chaotic ethnic pockets. The umbrella
identity of Islam was removed and many
other, previously dormant, ethnic and
sectarian identities surfaced. These
newly formed identities kept the region
18 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
in a permanent state of unrest and insta-
bility, while the Zionist were gaining
more and more power with every falling
Muslim. Eventually the era of second
global war began and the famous event of
holocaust took place, ironically this
event added an advantage to the Herzl’s
plan and helped Zionists in pushing the
European Jews in Palestine.
In 1947, almost half of the popula-
tion of Palestine was Jewish. It was the
time when the famous Balfour Declara-
tion was passed by the British foreign
office and a letter was written by the
ruler of England addressing the
Rothchilds, reassuring them, the forma-
tion of Israel. Israel was finally estab-
lished in 1948 as an ideologically Jewish
state.
Unlike Muslim leaders of today’s
world, Israeli leadership has been very
conscious and clear headed about their
plans for the region and the nations from
whom they feel threatened. 1948 was the
beginning of Israel and it is expanding
ever since, in territory, economy, indus-
try, military, weaponry, TERRORISM,
PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT and
MISINFORMATION. They have man-
aged to eradicate almost every potential
threat from the region.
In 1982 one the most influential
Israeli policy maker gave a glance of the
Israeli foreign policy for the coming 50
years, the designs given in the famous
Yinon Plan have shockingly come true.
“The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later Poem
on into ethnically or religiously unique
areas such as in Lebanon is Israel’s pri-
mary target on the eastern front in the
long run, while the dissolution of the
Human’s ironical agony
military power of those states serves as
the primary short term target. Syria
will fall apart, in accordance with its
ethnic and religious structure into sev-
eral states…so that there will be a Shiite
Allawi state along its coast, a Sunni
state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni
state in Damascus hostile to its northern
neighbour, and the Druzes, who will set
up a state, maybe even in our Golan and
certainly in the Hauran and in northern
Jordan. This state of affairs will be the
guarantee for peace and security in the
area in the long run, and that aim is
already within our reach today.”
We are witnessing these events
unfolding on the same lines in front of
our eyes around 50 years later.
After discussing the clear headed-
ness of Israelis about their perceived
enemies namely Syria and Iraq how can
we forget the famous policy statement of
Israel’s first Prime Minister
“The world Zionist movement should
not be neglectful of the dangers of Paki-
stan to it. And Pakistan now should be
its first target, for this ideological State
is a threat to our existence. And Paki-
By Zehra Vistro
stan, the whole of it, hates the Jews and Lahore, Pakistan
loves the Arabs. This lover of the Arabs
is more dangerous to us than the Arabs
themselves. For that matter, it is most
essential for the world Zionism that it Oh, agony! Making every numb nerve human
should now take immediate steps
against Pakistan. Whereas the inhabit- Doesn’t come announced Sweeping away the lines of estates
ants of the Indian peninsula are Hindus
whose hearts have been full of hatred Not one can evade its blow That once took hold of nous
towards Muslims, therefore, India is the
most important base for us to work
For it has its way to bog you down to the lowest of low We are together in this
there from against Pakistan. It is essen-
tial that we exploit this base and strike
and crush Pakistanis, enemies of Jews It’s akin to a contagious suffering that leaves no one behind Let’s see the silver lining in the storming murky clouds of
and Zionism, by all disguised and secret afflictions
plans.” It tolls one and all mired in this quandary
-David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Let’s find the commonality on the grounds of ailments
Prime Minister. His words, as printed in Deplorably, it can’t be kiboshed
the Jewish Chronicle, 9 August 1967 That pain, whether black, white, east, west, Rohingya or not
Keeping in view the personality and Rohingya, Palestine or Israel, feels the same
For it’s beyond anyone’s lucidity and mightiness
nature of the Israel, it will be foolish to
believe that the ceasefire is going to last
long. To deter its anguishing gnaws
In the last few days Israel has had its
first major setback in the past 70 years. It befalls everyone
Hamas has managed to shudder the
mighty image of Israel and Israel has For it isn’t bridled with the demarcations of color, gender and
taken a step back. The snake is wounded race
yes! But it will slither and bite back. In
the guise of this ceasefire Israel has taken
It reaches where it wishes to reach
it’s time to regroup, reorganize and
relaunch.
“ O Nation ! Be-aware of tricks, prepare Washing all of social titles of segregation in thin air
the horses.”
The pain has the power to succumb all and sundry
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June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 19
Public Health
The Covid-19 Pandemic
Resources should be put into such measures not just to honour the dead and the truth
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
O
fficial figures say there have
been 55,000 covid deaths in
South Africa since March 27th
last year. That puts the country’s death
rate at 92.7 per 100,000 people, the
highest in sub-Saharan Africa. It is also a
significant underestimate—as, it seems
safe to infer, are all the other African data
on the disease.
Over the year to May 8th the country
recorded 158,499 excess deaths—that is,
deaths above the number that would be
expected on past trends, given demo-
graphic changes. Public-health officials
feel confident that 85-95% of those
deaths were caused by sars-cov-2, the
covid-19 virus, almost three times the
official number. The discrepancy is the
result of the fact that, for a death to be
registered as caused by covid-19, the
deceased needs to have had a covid test
and been recorded as having died from
the disease. Although South Africa does
a lot of testing compared with neigh-
bouring countries, its overall rate is still
low. And the cause of death is unevenly
recorded for those who die at home.
South Africa is not particularly unusual
in its levels of testing or in missing
deaths outside the medical system.
20 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
Excess mortality has outstripped deaths
officially reported as due to covid-19, at
least at some points in the course of the
epidemic, in most if not all of the world.
According to the most recent data, Amer-
ica’s excess deaths were 7.1% higher than
its official covid-19 deaths between early
March 2020 and mid-April 2021. Stud-
ies of such mismatches have proved illu-
minating in some countries.
For example, Britain saw excess
deaths higher than official covid-19
deaths during its first wave, but lower
than the official covid death rates in the
second—an effect taken to show that
measures to stop the spread of covid had
saved lives which in another year would
have been lost to other diseases, such as
seasonal flu, perhaps.
Something similar was seen in
France. To try to put numbers on how
much of an underestimate it is—and thus
on how great the true burden has
been—The Economist has attempted to
model the level of excess mortality over
the course of the pandemic in countries
that do not report it. This work gives a
95% probability that the death toll to
date is between 7.1m and 12.7m, with a
central estimate of 10.2m. The official
numbers represent, at best, a bit less
than half the true toll, and at worst only
about a quarter of it. As well as providing
a new estimate of the overall size of the
pandemic, the modelling sheds light on
the distribution of its effects and on its
overall course. Unsurprisingly, most of
the deaths caused by covid-19 but not
attributed to it are found in low- and
middle-income countries. Our figures
give a death rate for the mostly rich coun-
tries which belong to the oecd of 1.17
times the official number.
The estimated death rate for sub-
Saharan Africa is 14 times the official
number. And the first-and-second-wave
structure seen in Europe and the United
States is much less visible in the model’s
figures for the world as a whole. Overall,
the pandemic is increasingly concen-
trated in developing economies and con-
tinuing to grow. To create these global
estimates of total excess deaths during
the pandemic, we drew on a wide range
of data.
Official counts of covid-19 deaths,
however imperfect they may be, are
available for most countries; they are
shown in the top map on this page. So,
frequently, are data on the number of
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
In general, if lots of
tests are coming back
positive, it is a fair bet
that many more
infections are being
missed by a testing
regime that is looking
only at those seeking
medical treatment and
those near them. The
fact that a relative lack
of deaths in developing
countries seems to be
due to age, rather than
anything else, has
various implications
covid cases and the share of covid tests
that are positive. In general, if lots of
tests are coming back positive, it is a fair
bet that many more infections are being
missed by a testing regime that is looking
only at those seeking medical treatment
and those near them. The fact that a rela-
tive lack of deaths in developing coun-
tries seems to be due to age, rather than
anything else, has various implications.
One is that the virus is spreading
easily among younger people—a finding
backed by seroprevalence surveys,
which find far higher rates of past infec-
tion in Afghanistan, India and elsewhere
than they do in Europe or America. This
suggests lots of non-fatal cases of dis-
ease, something which suggests that the
problem of “long covid” will be worse in
these countries. It also means that the
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virus is getting plenty of opportunities to
mutate. There is an exception to this
story. In some countries in South-East
Asia, deaths seem remarkably low, at
least so far. This is not an artefact of the
model: excess-death data for Malaysia
and Thailand have hardly risen at all. It is
possible that people there benefit from
“cross-immunities”—a level of protec-
tion against sars-cov-2 conferred by past
infection by other viruses circulating in
the region. Unfortunately, though, there
are signs that the figures are now mount-
ing. The Economist’s global excess-
death-toll estimates are, as far as we
know, the first of their kind. They are not
the only way to infer the total number of
deaths due to covid-19.
On May 6th the Institute for Health
Metrics and Evaluation (ihme) at the
University of Washington published the
results of a simpler model which applies
fixed multipliers, mostly based on test-
positivity rates, to official covid-19 death
tolls in different countries and territo-
ries. This methodology often provides
numbers which fail to match reported
excess deaths. For example, ihme esti-
mates that there have been 100,000
covid-19 deaths in Japan, far more than
have been reported, but the excess-death
figure for the year to March 2021 was -
11,000. However they are made, esti-
mates are no substitute for data, notes
Ariel Karlinsky, a statistician at the
Kohelet Economic Forum, an Israeli
think-tank, who as leader of the World
Mortality Dataset project has collected
many of the excess-mortality data on
which The Economist’s model relies.
Only by better tracking of mortality in
poor countries can estimates of the death
rate be improved. Resources should be
put into such measures not just to hon-
our the dead and the truth, but also
because, without such basic numbers,
estimates of other impacts—economic,
educational, cultural or in the health of
survivors—are hard to understand, or to
compare.
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 21
British Politics
The Wrong Sort of Conservatism
The prime minister wants a big state that crimps civil liberties
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
C
onservatism, as practised by the
British Conservative Party, is a
capacious creed, open to a wide
range of interpretations. For Margaret
Thatcher, it meant the moral and
economic discipline of the free market;
for David Cameron, liberal centrism and
the embrace of globalisation.
Boris Johnson’s interpretation has
been hard to decipher, partly because it
has been obscured by the chaos of covid-
19 and partly because he has never
shown any commitment to a set of politi-
cal ideas. So the Queen’s Speech, deliv-
ered on May 11th, in which the govern-
ment presents its programme for the
next session of parliament, was of partic-
ular interest. It was the clearest expres-
sion so far of what might one day be
called Johnsonism. That Mr Johnson is
now thought quite likely to be in power
for long enough to have his own “ism”
would have surprised many just a year
ago. His management of the early stages
of the pandemic was lethally slipshod,
and there was much grumbling about his
leadership.
However, on May 6th the Conserva-
tives thumped the Labour Party in a by-
election and in a series of local polls. Mr
Johnson’s popularity springs from sev-
eral sources. One is a successful vaccine
roll-out, and consequent liberation of
the population from lockdown. Another
is Mr Johnson himself. His boisterous
willingness to outrage liberal sensibili-
ties goes down well outside the cities,
and his finely tuned political instincts
have led him to espouse a combination of
cultural conservatism and statist eco-
nomics that has more in common with
Gaullism or Eisenhower’s “modern
22 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
Republicanism” than it has with
Thatcherism or Cameron-style conser-
vatism. Some of the intervention that the
government promises is welcome. It
plans to boost investment in r&d and to
“level up” the country by splashing out
on infrastructure and on vocational edu-
cation, which both need money and
attention. It promises to reform the plan-
ning system, which allows homeowners
to veto development and thus condemns
Britons to live in expensive rabbit-
hutches.
If local authorities do
not want development,
Mr Johnson’s answer is
not to give them more
say over taxation and
thus an incentive to
grow, but to force them
to accept it
Mr Johnson’s solution to the prob-
lem of nimbyism is to limit local authori-
ties’ say on planning, giving central gov-
ernment more control over develop-
ment. Whether or not he will really face
down angry suburbanites in the Home
Counties over new houses—he has
already bottled out of a previous
attempt—this approach derives from the
fundamental problem with Johnsonism:
his tendency to grab power. If local
authorities do not want development,
Mr Johnson’s answer is not to give them
more say over taxation and thus an
incentive to grow, but to force them to
accept it. If parts of the country are poor,
his answer is not to allow them to
develop their own growth strategies, but
to create a central fund to give them
money. The government is extending its
control over the economy, too. Its plan
for freeports is an attempt to direct
investment to particular parts of the
country. It is taking the opportunity that
Brexit offers to give itself more discre-
tion over handing out money to private
companies and over using public pro-
curement to further its levelling-up
agenda. Both should send shivers down
taxpayers’ spines.
The programme also includes a con-
stitutional power-grab. Mr Johnson has
had his sights set on the judiciary ever
since the Supreme Court prevented him
from proroguing Parliament over Brexit
in 2019. That explains plans to limit the
judges’ power to challenge the executive,
as well as to restore the executive’s dis-
cretion over when to call an election,
which Mr Cameron’s coalition govern-
ment had renounced. And as state power
extends, so civil liberties will be crimped.
The government has entertained new
restraints on protest, limitations on asy-
lum and voter-id requirements. It looks
set on meddling in culture and universi-
ties. These measures are all designed to
press culturally conservative voters’ hot-
buttons. For a prime minister who hopes
to use his newly recovered mandate to
call an early election and wants to be
seen to be doing stuff, the extension of
central-government power has a clear
appeal. For this newspaper, which puts a
high price on civil liberties and believes
that smaller states and freer markets
make for more prosperous countries, it
does not.
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
Analysis
Military, Scientific,
and Technological
The United States must learn to limit its ambitions even while continuing to defend
core interests
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T wo books raise awkward
questions about whether the
United States truly understands
the military challenges it faces. In an
important and innovative analysis,
Biddle takes issue with what he sees as a
lazy distinction between the regular
military strategy of states and the
guerrilla techniques of nonstate actors.
He sees instead a spectrum of methods,
with those intended for decisive battle at
one end and those intended to help avoid
battle at the other. Most actors seek the
strategy best suited to their capabilities
that is somewhere between these two
extremes. Biddle looks at five campaigns
waged by nonstate actors in Croatia,
Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, and Vietnam.
His analysis leads to the argument that
the best U.S. force posture for the future
may well resemble those of the past, with
more dismounted infantry than one
would assume would be needed for a
high-tech force and with more armor
and artillery than one would think for a
low-tech force.
Lambeth’s sharp, authoritative
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account of the role of airpower in the
recent war against the Islamic State, also
known as ISIS, points to the danger of
holding stereotypical views of an enemy.
Supported by numerous interviews with
commanders and pilots, Lambeth’s argu-
ment includes many criticisms of senior
civilian and military policymakers. The
most substantial one is that the U.S. cam-
paign against isis was a case of too little,
too late. President Barack Obama was
reluctant to authorize military action; by
the time he changed course, in 2014, ISIS
was already rampaging through Iraq and
Syria. Lambeth also complains that
American policymakers and the U.S.
military saw ISIS as an insurgent group,
when they should have recognized that
this new enemy was a quasi state, with its
own command-and-control network
and the makings of a conventional army.
U.S. officials eventually realized that
they were facing a very different kind of
enemy and belatedly relaxed the rules of
engagement to accelerate the pace of the
air war that would help defeat ISIS.
By making extensive use of the per-
sonnel files of the World War II–era
Office of Strategic Services, the precur-
sor to the CIA, Hayashi provides remark-
able insight into how the intelligence
agency used Asian Americans in the fight
against Japan. William Donovan, the
head of the OSS, insisted on recruiting
capable individuals for the war effort,
including those of Chinese and Korean
heritage—and even Japanese Ameri-
cans, who had the necessary linguistic
and cultural knowledge to design propa-
ganda materials to be broadcast to
Japan. Some Asian Americans worked
behind enemy lines, gathering intelli-
gence and engaging in sabotage. The
book focuses on many individual stories,
and in doing so, it raises interesting ques-
tions of race, gender, loyalty, and treach-
ery. After all, these spies largely came
from well-established families and were
not recent immigrants.
This fine and lucid scholarship has
the additional benefit of the eye of an
experienced practitioner as Zelikow
addresses the question of whether U.S.
President Woodrow Wilson could have
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 23

mediated a peace deal in 1916 or 1917 to
end World War I before the United
States joined the fray. The reader is
aware—although the policymakers of the
time could not have been—of the differ-
ence that an early deal might have made,
perhaps sparing the world the later trau-
mas associated with the rise of
Bolshevism in Russia and Nazism in
Germany. Wilson was certainly keen to
mediate a wider peace, and all the
24 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
For its part, Germany belligerents were aware of the benefits of
at least being seen to negotiate. After a
adopted a policy of promising start, however, Wilson never
unrestricted submarine quite managed to give the effort the push
it needed. The demands of winning
warfare. This led Wilson reelection inhibited him, as did his
to break diplomatic dependence on a lackluster State
relations with the Department. It didn’t help that in the
United Kingdom, David Lloyd George,
Germans, too hastily in who was then secretary of state for war,
Zelikow’s view correctly surmised that an aggressive,
uncompromising posture would help
propel him to the position of prime min-
ister. For its part, Germany adopted a
policy of unrestricted submarine war-
fare. This led Wilson to break diplomatic
relations with the Germans, too hastily
in Zelikow’s view. The opportunity for a
brokered peace was lost.
This thoughtful and reflective book
could serve as a guide for U.S. President
Joe Biden’s national security team as
they prepare for the challenges of the
next few years. O’Hanlon draws on his
experience of engaging in the big policy
debates of the last three decades, includ-
ing examining the preparation behind
and the legacy of the United States’
recent wars. Taking into account the
polarized nature of U.S. politics, he con-
cludes that the United States must learn
to limit its ambitions even while continu-
ing to defend core interests. He advo-
cates a strategy of “resolute restraint,”
which means, for example, that if China
attacks Taiwan, the United States should
move quickly to help defend the island
without believing that it has to then
defeat China in a wider war. This is a valu-
able addition to current policy debates,
on issues from climate change to nuclear
arms control to the challenges posed by
China and Russia.
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
Review
Economic, Social,
and Environmental
Without modern, science-based farming, it would be impossible to provide adequate
nutrition at affordable prices either in the United States or globally
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
M
ore than 60 years ago,
research by the economist
Robert Solow highlighted the
importance of innovation for growth but
shed little light on how to generate that
innovation. Aghion, Antonin, and Bunel,
who are responsible for much
subsequent research in this area, argue
that fostering innovation is all about
balance. Innovation thrives with
competition, but too much competition
will preemptively diminish the rewards
of new technologies, businesses, and
ideas. International competition can
stimulate innovation and efficiency, but
too much risks provoking a backlash
against globalization. Successfully
navigating the supply chain disruptions
created by COVID-19 requires strong
political leaders to implement smart
policies, but not leaders so strong that
they can suppress organizational
innovations that will disfavor them or
their allies. The authors explain these
dynamics and more in an eminently
accessible fashion.
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
Kahn reviews findings on how cli-
mate change and extreme weather
events affect key sectors of the economy.
Although he does not dismiss the need to
curb rising temperatures, he suggests
that American society is getting better at
adapting to climate change. Weather
shocks provide incentives for businesses
to develop new products, such as resil-
ient building materials and in-home
battery backup systems. Big data allows
utility providers to adjust electricity and
water prices in response to weather
events, encouraging consumers to mod-
ify their usage in environmentally
friendly ways. To be sure, it’s not just up
to markets to respond to climate change.
Kahn highlights the need for invest-
ments in public infrastructure to help
with climate change adaptation and for
reforms of urban planning rules and
flood insurance laws. Still, his book
shows that one need not be a climate
change skeptic to be a climate change
optimist.
Nearly a century ago, the historian
R. H. Tawney wrote an identically titled
book about the role of religion in the rise
of the market economy. Tawney was
responding to the German sociologist
Max Weber, who famously argued that
Calvinist religious thought had set the
stage for the rise of capitalism. Although
Friedman writes in the same tradition,
his focus is different: he is concerned
with the impact of religion not on the
economy but on economic thought. He
shows that a variant of Calvinism that
emphasized human choice and action
rather than predestination profoundly
influenced Adam Smith, the Scottish
political economist whose writings
shaped modern economic analysis.
Smith emphasized individual decision-
making and the capacity of the market,
as an aggregator of those decisions, to
improve the human condition. Over
time, the discipline of economics became
more rigorous and quantitative, and the
influence of religion tended to recede.
Even today, however, there remains a
connection between the religiosity that
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 25

distinguishes the United States from
other advanced economies and the
almost pious belief of many Americans
in the importance of human agency and
the virtues of the market economy.
The term “home economics” con-
jures up images of instruction in cooking
and sewing for generations of female
secondary school students. In her
account of the subject’s nineteenth- and
twentieth-century history, Dreilinger
shows that home economics has always
involved much more. It was a way for
female educators, in secondary schools
but also in universities and other
advanced settings, to develop and apply
their skills in an era when many aca-
demic disciplines were closed to women.
It allowed those educators to redefine,
sometimes in strikingly progressive
ways, women’s roles in society and the
economy, modernizing contemporary
perceptions of women as producers and
consumers. For more than a century,
research by home economists has been a
source of significant scientific and com-
mercial advances, improving food stor-
age methods, for example, and the
design of kitchens. Today, with other
fields available to women, the rebranded
discipline of “family and consumer sci-
ences” is dwindling, even if it has not
entirely disappeared.
Paarlberg, an economist, takes issue
with the slow-food movement, which
emphasizes organic and locally sourced
food. He shows that without modern,
science-based farming, it would be
impossible to provide adequate nutri-
tion at affordable prices either in the
United States or globally. In his view,
popular critiques of industrial farming
are often wide of the mark; in truth, tech-
26 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
nological advances are making farming
less damaging to the environment. Pre-
cision agriculture utilizing satellite posi-
tioning, drone-based sensors, and
machine learning allows farmers to pro-
duce more food using less water, less
energy, and fewer chemicals. Paarlberg
highlights plant-based protein as a sub-
stitute for meat and dairy as yet another
science-based innovation working in the
same direction. Notwithstanding this
positive slant, the author insists that
food processors, supermarkets, restau-
rant chains, commercial farmers, and,
above all, governments must make
important changes to successfully meet
the public’s demand for safe, nutritious,
and sustainable food.
Political and Legal
Today’s antidemocratic leaders, like
many of the fascists and authoritarians
who caused havoc in the twentieth cen-
tury, are using the tools and institutions
of the democratic state to consolidate
their power. A key to Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orban’s power grab, for
example, was a change in civil service
rules that allowed his party to place loy-
alists in supposedly nonpartisan govern-
ment positions. Authoritarians also seek
to gain control of the courts and intimi-
date the independent media (which they
often deride as “the enemy of the peo-
ple”). But as Müller argues in this impor-
tant book, the forms of popular authori-
tarianism seen recently in Brazil, Hun-
gary, India, Poland, and the United
States constitute a threat to democracy
but do not herald a return to the fascism
of the 1930s. With today’s authoritarian
regimes, there is not the mass mobiliza-
tion and militarization of societies, the
glorification of violence, or the remaking
of populations along racial lines that was
seen in mid-twentieth-century fascist
states. Müller argues that the genius of
democracy is its constitutional princi-
ples, which offer a road back from popu-
list authoritarianism. First and foremost
is the nonnegotiable claim that the gov-
ernment cannot deny the standing of
particular citizens as free and equal mem-
bers of the polity. A newly elected leader
cannot use the military to punish his
rivals or use the tax system to destroy the
opposition party. Losers accept their
losses, with the understanding that they
are limited and temporary. In elegant
and incisive terms, the book makes clear
that proponents of liberal democracy
must reclaim fundamental democratic
principles and values.
In the United Kingdom and the
United States in the late nineteenth cen-
tury, a multitude of thinkers advanced
new and often startling visions of the
future of the global order. In this mas-
terly book, Bell explores the ideas of
some of the most intriguing figures of
this era, illuminating their dreams of a
world-dominating Anglo-American
political community united by race and
empire. This is intellectual history at its
best. The book builds on Bell’s earlier
studies, which together offer a definitive
account of the British imperial ideology
and its deep entanglement with liberal
political thought and cultural and racial
hierarchy. The book focuses on four indi-
viduals: the American tycoon Andrew
Carnegie, the British colonialist Cecil
Rhodes, the British editor W. T. Stead,
and the British novelist H. G. Wells, who
were part of a loose network of thinkers
who believed that the United Kingdom
and the United States would together
inaugurate an era of global peace. Bell is
most provocative in his account of the
long tradition of Western thinking about
democracy and “perpetual peace” (a
notion made famous by the Enlighten-
ment-era German philosopher Imman-
uel Kant), which these pre–World War I
Anglo-American figures transformed
into a “racial peace thesis,” revealing the
intimate connections between global
utopianism and racism.
In the decades after the Cold War,
the United States and other leading
democracies championed the idea of an
empowered United Nations that would
actively intervene in countries to protect
human rights and safeguard civilians
from armed violence. Foot shows how in
more recent years, China has worked
behind the scenes at the UN to promote a
rival vision of security that emphasizes
economic development, a strong state,
and social stability. This groundbreaking
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
study considers China’s efforts to shape
UN peace operations, specifically the
organization’s response to the Syrian
crisis, and its broader attempt to subvert
human rights principles and undercut
the doctrine of “the responsibility to pro-
tect.” In Foot’s view, China is both
reshaping and being shaped by the
norms of the global system. It is pushing
back against the Western-led liberal
order in part by drawing on older notions
of state sovereignty and self-
determination. In an era of growing com-
petition between China and the West,
Foot offers a grand illumination of the
normative battlefield.
This fascinating book argues that
the growth of international law changed
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
International law
altered the calculus of
great powers.
International law is less
a formal constraint on
the conduct of military
policy than part of a
complex normative
environment in which
states operate
how powerful states decided to intervene
in weaker ones. Examining cases of U.S.
interventions in Latin America during
the Cold War, Poznansky studies overt
interventions, such as the deployment of
U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic in
1965, and covert interventions, such as
the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. He notes
that great powers in the era before 1945
rarely felt obliged to operate in the shad-
ows. This changed after 1945, according
to Poznansky, with the UN Charter,
which enshrined the principle of
nonintervention in treaty law, a princi-
ple that was soon adopted by far-flung
regional bodies. International law
altered the calculus of great powers.
Resorting to covert forms of intervention
allowed the United States to evade dam-
age to its credibility and charges of
hypocrisy. In chapters on U.S. interven-
tions in Chile, Cuba, the Dominican
Republic, and Grenada, Poznansky pres-
ents archival evidence of officials worry-
ing—to various degrees—about violating
international law, pushing decision-
makers to pursue covert rather than
overt military action. International law
is less a formal constraint on the conduct
of military policy than part of a complex
normative environment in which states
operate.
This thought-provoking collection
of essays surveys today’s troubled sys-
tem of global governance. The contribu-
tors paint a bleak picture: the scale and
scope of global problems—including
pandemics, global warming,
cyberwarfare, international extremist
networks, and the proliferation of weap-
ons of mass destruction—have simply
overwhelmed the old postwar gover-
nance institutions, starting with the
United Nations. The editors argue that
for scholars to grasp the extent and pro-
fundity of this crisis, the study of “inter-
national relations” needs to be expanded
into a multidisciplinary study of “global
affairs,” which spans the fields of eco-
nomics, politics, law, the environment,
and development. Only this approach
will help scholars understand an
increasingly “complex, dynamic, and
fragile” world. The environmental scien-
tist Michael Oppenheimer argues that
the world is entering an era of “illiberal
globalization,” defined less by multilat-
eral rules and more by raw power. In his
contribution, Ankersen argues that the
notion that globalization would over-
whelm and undermine countries and
lead to the “decline of the state” has not
come to pass. States are reasserting their
sovereign prerogatives, privileging
internal security over international
norms and human rights, and adapting
technology and supply chains to
geopolitical conflict. If the authors are
right, the idea of global governance in
this brave new world will be a quaint relic
of an earlier era.
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 27
Review Essay
The Two Rwandas
Development and dissent under Kagame
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
O
n New Year’s Day 2014, Patrick
Karegeya, once a top Rwandan
intelligence official, was found
dead in Room 905 of the up-market
Michelangelo Towers hotel, in
Johannesburg, South Africa. According
to the police report, Karegeya’s neck was
swollen, and a rope and a bloody towel
were found in the hotel room’s safe,
indicating that he had been strangled. As
news of his murder spread, fingers
pointed immediately to his childhood
friend and former boss Rwandan
President Paul Kagame. Karegeya had
fallen out with Kagame and fled to South
Africa, where he had helped start an
opposition party in exile. Kagame denied
any involvement in Karegeya’s killing,
but several days later, at a national
prayer breakfast in Kigali, Rwanda’s
capital, he hinted that he wasn’t
bothered by the assassination. “Whoever
is against our country will not escape our
wrath,” he said. “The person will face
consequences. Even those who are still
alive—they will face them.”
Who did it? In 2019, South African
investigators declared that Karegeya’s
murder was “directly linked to the
involvement of the Rwandan govern-
28 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
ment.” In Do Not Disturb, the British
journalist Michela Wrong describes in
chilling detail the buildup to Karegeya’s
killing and leaves the reader little reason
to doubt this conclusion. But her book is
about much more than one man’s mur-
der. Wrong situates Karegeya’s death in
the longer history of the Rwandan Patri-
otic Front, the Tutsi-dominated rebel
movement that invaded Rwanda in 1990
and defeated the genocidal regime of
Juvénal Habyarimana in 1994. In power,
the rebels turned politicians built
Rwanda into one of Africa’s most
dynamic states, achieving impressive
rates of economic growth and poverty
reduction. Yet alongside those successes,
the RPF has also forced numerous senior
members into exile and been accused of
killing dissidents at home and abroad,
raising questions about the state of
human rights in and the long-term sta-
bility of Rwanda.
Among Wrong’s principal audi-
ences are the Western policymakers who
have supported the RPF for the past
three decades because it halted the 1994
genocide against the Tutsis and, from the
ashes, built a peaceful and prosperous
state. She draws parallels between
Karegeya’s murder and Russia’s poison-
ing of the double agent Sergei Skripal in
the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia’s
murder of the Washington Post colum-
nist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, arguing
that when states cozy up to authoritarian
regimes, they shouldn’t be surprised
when those regimes commit crimes on
their territory. Wrong believes that
international donors have ignored
ample evidence of Rwanda’s growing
authoritarianism. What she hopes will
now rouse global attention—and lead to
criminal sanctions and a reduction in
foreign aid—are Rwanda’s extraterrito-
rial, extrajudicial activities in the back
streets and hotel rooms of London,
Brussels, and Johannesburg.
But in making this case, Wrong dis-
misses Rwanda’s substantial socioeco-
nomic gains since the genocide. Those,
too, are part of the Rwandan story, and
as outsiders grapple with how to deal
with Kagame, they must consider the
country’s tangible progress, as well as
these worrying cases of violence. At the
heart of Wrong’s story are the complex
entanglements of Karegeya, Kagame,
and another former high-ranking mem-
ber of the RPF, Faustin Kayumba
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Nyamwasa. After decades of Belgian
colonial favoritism toward Tutsis, in the
early 1960s, Hutu parties rose to power
in independent Rwanda, sparking mass
violence and a Tutsi exodus. Karegeya,
Kagame, and Kayumba grew up together
Whether fighting
together or falling out,
these comrades
irrevocably shaped the
politics of the Great
Lakes region
in exile in Uganda, where many Tutsi
families such as theirs had fled. The
three men all became senior figures in
Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance
Army as it fought its way to power in
Uganda and, later, leaders of the RPF as
it came to rule Rwanda (with Kayumba
becoming chief of staff of the Rwandan
army). Whether fighting together or
falling out, these comrades irrevocably
shaped the politics of the Great Lakes
region.
A former Africa correspondent for
Reuters, the BBC, and the Financial
Times, Wrong first traveled to Rwanda
after the 1994 genocide. In Do Not Dis-
turb, she makes good use of her long list
of contacts, built up over decades in the
region, as she crisscrosses central Africa
interviewing those who knew the trio at
every stage of their tumultuous journey.
Switching constantly from the personal
to the geopolitical, Wrong makes her
intentions clear: to challenge the percep-
tion of Kagame and the RPF as the archi-
tects of a model postconflict state worthy
of substantial foreign aid. “Kagame’s
regime, whose deplorable record on
human rights abuses at home is beyond
debate, has also been caught red-handed
attempting the most lurid of assassina-
tions on the soil of foreign allies, not once
but many times,” she writes. “Western
funding for his aid-dependent country
has not suffered, the admiring articles by
foreign journalists have not ceased, sanc-
tions have not been applied, and the invi-
tations to Davos have not dried up.”
The RPF, she argues, may have
started with a laudable vision of building
a Rwandan society in which Hutus and
Tutsis (and members of another ethnic
group, the Twas) would share equally in
the country’s development. Wrong
ascribes this aspiration to the RPF’s first
leader, the handsome, charismatic Fred
Rwigyema, who was killed days into the
invasion of Rwanda. She counts him
among a group of African nationalists
who were killed in their 30s, including
Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Steve Biko
of South Africa, and Thomas Sankara of
Burkina Faso—men who will be “forever
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bathed in a James Dean glow of What
Might Have Been.” It was Kagame who
succeeded Rwigyema as the head of the
RPF and, Wrong contends, turned
Rwanda into a dictatorship. First, his
regime eradicated any form of Hutu
political opposition, and then it turned
on its internal Tutsi critics, such as
Karegeya, pursuing them at home and
abroad. Close observers of central Africa
will find little new in Wrong’s historical
sweep through the RPF’s lifespan.
What she adds, however, is the inti-
mate biographical dimension of this
volatile period, which helps explain
Karegeya’s murder and its significance.
Wrong knew Karegeya before and after
his exile and spoke to him regularly. He
describes growing up in southwestern
Uganda, caught between his strong Ugan-
dan identity and the lure of the Rwandan
homeland, where the Hutu government
repeatedly blocked the return of the
Tutsi refugees. Even once he had
reached the top of the Rwandan security
apparatus, Karegeya continued to visit
his home village in Uganda. “Patrick
adored Biharwe,” Wrong writes, “sneak-
ing away whenever he could find the time
from his stressful job in Kigali, a four-
hour drive across the border with
Rwanda.” Karegeya’s younger brother
Ernest Mugabo tells her, “You wouldn’t
even know he’d arrived. He’d put on his
Wellington boots and go and milk the
cows. He loved that.”
Wrong captures the refugees’ rest-
lessness and burning sense of injustice,
which drove the RPF’s invasion in 1990
but also its subsequent alienation from
the Hutu majority in Rwanda, among
whom the Tutsi leaders of the RPF had
never lived. She superbly dissects the
lasting bonds that enabled the RPF to
build a formidable post-genocide state,
with Kagame, Kayumba, and Karegeya
at its heart. Through Karegeya’s eyes, she
also documents the fraying of those rela-
tions as RPF elites routinely fell out with
one another. Sometimes they clashed
over the movement’s political strategy,
at other times over the atrocities it com-
mitted (such as the reprisal killings, after
the genocide, of Hutu civilians in
Rwanda and what is now the Democratic
Republic of the Congo), and often over
personal grievances.
As the head of Rwandan external
military intelligence after the genocide,
Karegeya helped orchestrate the govern-
ment’s military campaigns in
Congo—including the Rwandan-led
toppling of the dictator Mobutu Sese
Seko in 1997—and the suppression of
Rwandan dissidents across the Great
Lakes region. He and Kayumba were
central to the RPF’s projection of mili-
tary power within and beyond Rwanda.
But they increasingly criticized Kagame
over his tightening grip on power within
the RPF. Karegeya was imprisoned, and
Kayumba was removed from his military
post and sent to India as Rwanda’s
ambassador. Both eventually went into
exile in South Africa. Only a fraction of
the multifaceted situation in Rwanda
today features in Wrong’s narrative. As
an account of Karegeya’s murder and the
need for accountability for the RPF’s
extraterritorial violence, Do Not Disturb
is a vital intervention.
The South African investigation into
Karegeya’s death seems to have stalled
and should be reinvigorated. Yet by
refusing to denounce the RNC’s threats
of an armed overthrow of Kagame’s gov-
ernment, failing to engage deeply with
present realities inside Rwanda, and
making damaging calls for donor disen-
gagement from the country, the book
loses much of its analytic and moral
potency. To ensure that Rwanda’s sub-
stantial post-genocide gains remain,
Rwanda needs agile leadership and an
effective political opposition. The exiled
leaders Wrong thinks can fill that role,
however, are not the answer. Several
years ago, a seasoned international
development official based in Kigali told
me that Rwanda gave him headaches as
no other country had before. “What do
you do with a state that brooks so little
dissent but uses foreign aid to benefit so
many of its citizens?” he asked. My
response was that donors should never
consider themselves the principal actors
in other people’s societies.
The primary work of building a
Rwanda that delivers for all its citizens is
being done by Rwandans, especially
those living in the country. The
neocolonial impulse to use aid as lever-
age over foreign countries is at once ethi-
cally dubious, routinely ignored by the
governments being sanctioned, and in
danger of undercutting vital welfare and
development programs for everyday
people. Donors must consult the many
energetic, critically minded Rwandans
who are working for the betterment of
their society. Some of those Rwandans
may want outside support, and others
may prefer to be left alone, worried about
the actual or perceived loss of independ-
ence that might result from becoming
too wedded to external interests.
As Wrong shows, Karegeya’s assas-
sination stemmed from complicated
historical and interpersonal factors,
none of which will disappear simply
because donors exert pressure through
aid or other means. Ultimately, it is up to
Rwandans themselves to hold their gov-
ernment to account and chart the coun-
try’s future—with or without help from
abroad.
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 29
Politics & Society China-based foreign correspondent for
The New York Times. As I watched the

A Prison Called Tibet uprising spread, I did everything I could

to get to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital,
where the unrest had started. I flew to
How China controls its restive regions Chengdu, the booming capital of
Sichuan, and hired a car with the idea of
driving northwest into heavily Tibetan
areas. From the reports of other col-
leagues, I knew this wouldn’t be simple.
Chinese police had set up checkpoints on
the major highways leading into
Sichuan’s Tibetan heartland and were
turning foreign reporters back.
For one long night, I rode with a
Chinese colleague and my driver. We
passed through a few roadblocks as I
slumped in the back seat, hiding my face
by pretending to be asleep and bundled
up against the cold. But it soon became
clear that it would only be a matter of
time before we would get stopped or
arrested, so we diverted to circuitous and
mountainous secondary roads, only to
discover that such routes would take
immeasurably longer to traverse. We
finally turned back after learning that
authorities had detained a few foreign
reporters who had found their way
through the lockdown, making it clear
how unlikely it would be for us to gain
access to any place where the protests or
self-immolations were occurring. Else-
By The KIPS Bureau where, I was able to collect plenty of
Lahore, Pakistan
accounts of Tibetan disaffection and
disgruntlement toward the Chinese gov-
ernment. But there was no denying that
Beijing had succeeded in keeping people

I n the early twentieth century,

during a period when Tibet was
effectively self-governed, it was
known as “the hermit kingdom.” This
moniker reflected the general
remoteness of the place, reinforced by
the altitude of its habitable plateaus, the
forbidding mountain ranges (including
the Himalayas) that hem Tibet in, and
the supposedly insular character of its
people, whose abiding wish, it was said,
was to be left alone.
In more recent times, Tibet’s isola-
tion has been shaped by altogether dif-
ferent forces, some of which have
reduced it and some of which have
heightened it. After the Chinese Com-
munist Party emerged victorious from
the Chinese Civil War, in 1949, among its
earliest priorities was placing Tibet
under Beijing’s control and integrating
the mountainous region into the coun-
try. This was achieved at gunpoint, after
the senior CCP leader, Deng Xiaoping,
and other commanders led thousands of
People’s Liberation Army troops into
Tibet to establish Chinese authority.
Tibet’s traditional leaders bridled at
the encroachment and at the violation of
Beijing’s earlier promises of autonomy,
and in 1959, the most important of them,
the Buddhist monk known as the Dalai
Lama, fled overland into exile in India,
where he has remained ever since. Since
then, in its approach to Tibet, China has
oscillated between periods of oppression
and stretches of relative tolerance. But
the forced marriage has never been a
happy or stable one.
By the early years of this century,
Beijing was working hard to roll out
impressive modern infrastructure in
Tibet, including rail lines that passed
over large stretches of delicate perma-
frost at three miles of elevation. The
trains they carried were meant to facili-
tate a mass migration to Tibet of mem-
bers of the Han Chinese majority from
elsewhere in the country, reflecting the
CCP’s belief that a Tibet whose cities and
towns were populated in large part by
non-Tibetans would be easier to control.
At the same time, the CCP had begun
making it nearly impossible for interna-
tional journalists and independent
researchers to freely enter the territory.
Even ordinary foreign tourists required
special permits. This, one could only
surmise, was meant to conceal an accel-
erating project to bring the area more
firmly to heel and impose on it political
conformity and obedience—or “modern-
ization” and “harmony,” in the official
language of Beijing—whether the Tibet-
ans liked it or not. Many did not like it
one bit.
In 2008, a wave of major protests
broke out in the buildup to the 50th anni-
versary of the young Dalai Lama’s flight.
The protests reflected not just anger over
Chinese efforts to dilute local culture and
weaken the hold of Tibetan Buddhism
but also fears that the revered Dalai
Lama would die in exile and Beijing
would seek outright control of the reli-
gion by naming his successor. Despite
the CCP’s efforts to tamp down dissent in
Tibet, the unrest caught Beijing by sur-
prise and spread with remarkable speed.
Soon, large portions of neighboring
Sichuan Province were also engulfed by
demonstrations, led by saffron-robed
monks and nuns who filed out of their
monasteries to launch sit-down protests
in the center of the region’s cities and
towns. In perhaps the most radical form
of nonviolent protest imaginable, others
performed spectacular acts of self-
immolation, lighting themselves on fire
in public squares. At the time, I was a
like me away from the frontlines.
Memories of this struggle for access
came flooding back to me as I read
Barbara Demick’s recent book, Eat the
Buddha. (The title refers to desperately
hungry Red Army troops in Tibet who,
during the civil war, sometimes looted
Buddhist monasteries and ate religious
statues made of flour and butter.) More
than any other non-Chinese journalist of
this generation, Demick has managed to
overcome Beijing’s restrictions and pene-
trate the Tibetan world, to linger in it and
to bring its people vividly to life on the
page. Demick has made a special voca-
tion of such feats, including as chroni-
cled in her 2009 book, Nothing to Envy,
one of the most deeply reported studies
of North Korea, a place even more closely
guarded and closed off to foreigners than
Tibet.
As resourceful and inspired as her
reporting is, her book’s overall message
is a quietly dispiriting one: because of
China’s size, wealth, and power, and the
state of interdependence that prevails
between it and the United States, there is
little the outside world can do to halt
Beijing’s deliberate and systematic ero-
sion of its territory’s distinctive cultures
and religious traditions, despite their
ancient roots and long records of auton-
omous rule that predates modern China.
In Demick’s view, Buddhist Tibet is des-
tined to be marched toward an imposed
assimilation with the largely atheistic
ethnic Han majority—much as Xinjiang
is experiencing: Xinjiang borders Tibet
to the north and is currently in the news
owing to evidence that the CCP is using
concentration camps and forced labor to
bring the Muslim Uyghur population
there to heel.
In an attempt to lower tensions and
ease an atmosphere of repression, the
Dalai Lama has repeatedly renounced
the idea of Tibet separating from China.
This has won him no concessions from
Beijing, however, which continues to
hurl epithets at him and constantly warn
of “splittism.” “No matter what the Dalai
Lama says, the Chinese government
never tires of denouncing him,” Demick
writes. Their hatred of him appears
boundless. We journalists used to joke
that he was like Lord Voldemort—the
antagonist of the Harry Potter series, he
whose name cannot be mentioned and
(in many parts of Tibet) whose image
cannot be seen. . . . To purge the memory
of the Dalai Lama, however, is impossi-
ble. Tibetans content themselves in
places where the photograph is banned
by worshipping instead Avalokitesvara,
the thousand-armed bodhisattva of com-
passion whose likeness graces Tibetan
monasteries.
The Dalai Lama is considered the
reincarnation of the Avalokitesvara, who
stands in for the missing spiritual leader.
The situation in Tibet may come to a
head again before long. At 85 years old,
the Dalai Lama is likely approaching the
end of his life—and Beijing has a plan to
prevent the rise of another figure of his
stature. Rather than allowing his sect’s
normal succession process to play out,
the CCP has announced that it will over-
see the naming of the next Dalai Lama. It
would not be unreasonable to suspect
that in taking this extraordinary step,
Beijing will be lighting the long, slow fuse
of the next Tibetan uprising.

30 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021

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June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 31
Refugees & Migration
The Singular Chancellor
Merkel model and its limits
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
Y ears ago, at the Munich Security
Conference, I found myself
squeezed in on the steps of the
grand staircase of a hotel ballroom,
trying, dutifully but vainly, to follow a
more than usually humdrum speech by
Germany’s first female chancellor.
Tuning out, I recognized the one-star
general hunkered down beside me, a
senior staffer in the chancellery. I tapped
his sleeve and said, “So what’s it like to
work for her?” He turned to me and
grinned appreciatively. “It’s like working
next to a nuclear power plant. It just
runs, and runs, and runs.”
And how it ran. Angela Merkel is
now in the final months of her fourth
term in office, her last, which is set to end
with national elections on September 26.
Only Helmut Kohl, the chancellor who
oversaw the joining of East and West
Germany in 1990, held office for longer.
A Pew poll last year showed Merkel to be
the world’s most trusted leader. Forbes
magazine has ranked her the world’s
most powerful woman for ten years in a
row. In 2009, the toy company Mattel
even created an Angela Merkel Barbie
doll. For a while, some U.S. and British
commentators, dismayed by their own
leaders, even took to calling her “the
32 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
leader of the free world” (a title the chan-
cellor is said to detest). Yet at the same
time, Merkel’s opacity and technocratic
prudence have frustrated and often infu-
riated those who wanted Germany to
articulate a clearer vision of its role in a
liberal world order, to take on greater
responsibility for defending and shaping
that order—or just to acknowledge and
mitigate the impact of the country’s deci-
sions on its neighbors and allies. And
although the 66-year-old conservative
remains her country’s best-liked politi-
cian, public approval of her government
has dipped sharply as frustration with its
haphazard pandemic management has
grown. The looming end of the Merkel
era thus raises questions that should
hold important lessons—not least for
those who are currently seeking to suc-
ceed her. Just what was her recipe for
power, and is it replicable? Has her ten-
ure made Germany, its neighbors, and
its allies better off? And has she prepared
her country for the future?
MERKEL’S METHOD
At the beginning of her career, nothing
would have seemed less plausible than
that Merkel would become Germany’s
eighth chancellor, the successor to a line
of hard-drinking, smoking, womanizing,
and generally scenery-chewing Big Men
of West German politics. When the
Berlin Wall came down, in 1989, Merkel
was a divorced 35-year-old quantum
chemist working at an academic
research institute in East Berlin. She had
just joined the Christian Democratic
Union (CDU), when she was picked by
Kohl for the most patronizing job in the
chancellor’s first post-reunification cabi-
net: minister for women and youth. She
was as unmemorable there as she was in
her next job, minister for the environ-
ment. Kohl, busy burnishing his legacy
and weeding out rivals, referred to her as
“das Mädchen” (“that girl”). But when
Kohl found himself embroiled in a party
financing scandal in 1999, it was Merkel,
and not one of the half-dozen young con-
servatives circling the old man, who
felled him with a piece on the front page
of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Ger-
many’s conservative daily, that called for
his resignation as honorary chair of the
party. This audacious patricide led to her
election as head of the party. Six years
later, in 2005, she became the first East
German, and the first woman, to be
elected chancellor. Since then, Merkel
has weathered a punishing series of
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domestic and external upheavals,
including the 2008 financial crisis and
the ensuing eurozone meltdown, Rus-
sia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and
invasion of Ukraine, the 2015 refugee
crisis, the subsequent meteoric rise of
the far-right party Alternative for Ger-
many, and now the COVID-19 pandemic.
She has been in power longer than any of
her peers in the major industrialized
countries, with the sole exception of
Vladimir Putin. This has enabled her to
Merkel’s clear, light
voice carries the
unhurried intonation of
the pine-forested, sandy-
soiled Brandenburg
countryside northwest
of Berlin, where her
father was a Lutheran
parson
broker countless compromises at EU, G-
7, and G-20 summits, as well as to hold
together four coalition governments at
home (three with the center-left Social
Democrats and one with the pro-
business Free Democrats). She has out-
maneuvered authoritarian leaders,
allies, coalition partners, and party
frenemies. When necessary, she has
plowed through illness, exhaustion, and
even a pelvic fracture, suffered while
cross-country skiing in Switzerland. Yet
outwardly, the most striking thing about
the chancellor remains her determined
normalcy.
Merkel’s clear, light voice carries the
unhurried intonation of the pine-
forested, sandy-soiled Brandenburg
countryside northwest of Berlin, where
her father was a Lutheran parson. Her
working uniform consists of sensible
flats, black pants, and an endless supply
of hip-length jackets in every color. The
chancellor and her husband, a retired
chemistry professor, live in their old
Berlin apartment rather than the official
residence; the only visible security is a
police officer in front of the building. To
the approval of Berliners, Merkel is some-
times seen walking in the city center or
shopping in a supermarket, trailed by
her bodyguards. Arguably, Merkel’s
unpretentiousness is itself a calculated
expression of power. One German
described her to me as a walking force
field: “In conversation, you know you’re
being subjected to a quiet, all-
encompassing scrutiny, all the time.”
Another person remembers a meet-
ing Merkel had with then U.S. Vice Presi-
dent Joe Biden in Berlin in 2013. The
chancellor waved away his attempts to
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charm her and pursued her agenda
points until she was satisfied that she
had nailed down what she needed to
know. Then she canceled her next
appointment to continue the conversa-
tion. “He ended up telling her about look-
ing into the Russian president’s eyes and
saying, ‘I can look into your soul, and I
don’t like it,’ which she countered with
an absolutely spot-on impression of
Putin.” Merkel’s work ethic is as legend-
ary as her wicked sense of humor, her
command of her briefs, and her appetite
for information and arguments. An
American who witnessed some of her
phone conversations with U.S. President
Barack Obama told me that “they
sounded like a graduate seminar.” Her
ministers fear her ferociously retentive
memory for the details of their portfo-
lios—including the particulars of com-
plex technical and scientific issues, such
as trade, digital technology, and, lately,
the pandemic. But what really makes
Merkel stand out from her peers is her
ability to hold on to power against all
odds.
One of the most distinctive features
of her method is her anti-oratorical
speaking style, which anesthetizes com-
mentators and diplomats alike. She can
deliver devastating zingers in a parlia-
mentary debate or an interview when she
wants to. When a talk-show host once
portentously asked her what qualities
she associated with Germany, Merkel
dryly answered, “Well-sealed windows.”
But her default delivery mode is what
Germans now call merkeln: so deadpan
and convoluted that it’s impossible to
pin her down. Behind the style, however,
is what German strategists have called
“asymmetric demobilization”: dull the
issues, depoliticize conflicts, and thus
keep the opponent’s voters from going to
the polls. This approach has enabled
Merkel to modernize her conservative
party, dragging it into the political cen-
ter, pushing her Social Democratic and
Free Democratic coalition partners to
the sidelines, and co-opting elements of
their platforms, such as tax benefits for
parents or a statutory minimum wage. A
second key aspect of the way Merkel man-
ages power is that she devolves responsi-
bility but tightly limits trust. The chan-
cellor’s innermost circle consists of a
very small team of loyalists with whom
she has worked for years (in some cases
decades) and in whose discretion and
discipline she can place absolute confi-
dence. Everyone else, from cabinet mem-
bers to party functionaries, is kept on a
long leash. Success is rewarded with
approval and credit. But those who trip
or entangle themselves either come to
heel with a newly sober understanding of
their options or suddenly discover life
outside politics. The third element of the
Merkel method is assiduously gauging
and responding to her base’s mood. She
first nailed her national leadership ambi-
tions to the mast with a flaming liberal
economic reformist speech at a party
convention in 2003. When it became
clear that this was too much change for
the delegates and might cost her the chan-
cellorship, she backtracked swiftly, drop-
ping old party allies.
A few years ago, Der Spiegel dis-
closed that her chancellery was commis-
sioning, on average, three surveys a
week. Her two most daring
choices—deciding to decommission Ger-
many’s nuclear power plants within a
decade after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear
disaster and refusing in 2015 to close
Germany’s borders to one million mainly
Middle Eastern refugees—were fully
supported by polling. Merkel has twice
sailed against the political winds. During
the 2008 financial crisis, surveys
showed that Germans were strictly
against bailouts for EU member states.
But she steadfastly opposed her party
and public opinion by pushing through
the rescue packages and insisting that
Greece stay in the eurozone. The refugee
decision, for its part, became controver-
sial, and led to the rise of the far right. In
2015, Fiona Hill, a colleague of mine at
the Brookings Institution, asked about
the decision in a conversation with for-
mer Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lub-
bers, who had known the chancellor
through European Christian democratic
circles since her earliest days in politics.
Lubbers predicted that Merkel would
stand her ground despite the backlash;
for the steadfast Lutheran, he said, this
was “a matter of deep moral conviction.”
Merkel’s interpreters have labored hero-
ically to reconcile these paradoxes. The
simple truth is that Merkel the level-
headed empiricist has little patience for
visions when there are problems to be
solved. She has whipsawed on her princi-
ples for the sake of power, but she has
also been willing to pay a price for stand-
ing up for her deepest convictions. Few
of her peers have been able to accumu-
late so much political capital. Yet even
her admirers concede that although she
has been exquisitely adroit at riding out
the currents of politics, she has been far
too reluctant to shape them.
AN AMBIVALENT
LEGACY
With Germany’s election drawing closer,
what has become of all that political capi-
tal? What will Merkel’s legacy be—and
will she deserve to be called a great chan-
cellor? Three of Germany’s eight postwar
chancellors deserve that title. Konrad
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 33
Adenauer’s claim to greatness was
Westbindung—anchoring the young
West German republic in the transatlan-
tic alliance by joining NATO and recon-
ciling with France and Israel. Willy
Brandt’s enduring legacy was Ostpolitik:
asking forgiveness from Eastern Europe,
falling to his knees in the Warsaw ghetto,
and seeking détente with the Soviet
Union. Helmut Kohl steered the two
Merkel made an early
bid for the title of
“climate chancellor”
with her strong
advocacy of progressive
global climate policies,
but her domestic climate
policies have become
embroiled in the many
contradictions of her
energy policy
Germanies to reunification and gave up
the deutsche mark for the sake of a com-
mon currency, the euro, rooting the
reunified country in an enlarging EU.
Merkel unquestionably transformed
Germany’s post–Cold War politics, lib-
eralized her party, presided over an
extraordinary expansion of German
economic and political power in Europe,
and did much to defend the European
political project. And yet her claims to
greatness are inconclusive, perhaps
because so many of the significant
achievements of her tenure have come
with a darker underside.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic,
34 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
the Merkel era saw Germany’s economy
roar back from a deep malaise to become
the world’s fourth largest, with sharply
rising living standards, near-full
employment, and historic government
budget surpluses. Her economic policies
were notably business-friendly, but they
failed to push for urgently required tech-
nological adaptation in key industries or
the modernization of physical and digital
infrastructure. A series of scan-
dals—from the car industry’s manipula-
tion of emission data (“Dieselgate”) to
the fraudulent insolvency of the pay-
ment processor Wirecard—have
revealed a deeply flawed corporate cul-
ture and a resistance to accountability
and oversight. This makes the German
economy highly vulnerable to illicit
financial flows, a favorite tool of orga-
nized crime, extremists, and authoritar-
ian adversaries. Merkel made an early
bid for the title of “climate chancellor”
with her strong advocacy of progressive
global climate policies. But her domestic
climate policies have become embroiled
in the many contradictions of her energy
policy: her swerve away from nuclear
power in 2011 only intensified Ger-
many’s dependence on coal, and despite
spending a fortune on subsidies for
renewables, the country has had trouble
meeting its international emission tar-
gets. So far, none of this seems to have
given the far right, paralyzed by infight-
ing and the threat of observation by the
domestic intelligence service, the boost
it yearns for.
But Laschet may yet find himself
elbowed aside by Markus Söder, the
Bavarian premier and leader of the
CDU’s local sister party, the Christian
Social Union. Some are even speculating
about the possibility in the fall of a cen-
ter-left coalition of the Social Democrats,
the Free Democrats, and the Greens—a
“traffic light coalition,” so called for the
parties’ colors—with the CDU in opposi-
tion. Merkel, meanwhile, seems increas-
ingly frustrated and depleted, her end-
less patience eroded, her legendary nego-
tiating energy spent. Germans may some-
day come to appreciate that Merkel was
singularly lacking in the character flaws
of her three great predecessors,
Adenauer, Brandt, and Kohl, each of
whom left office under a shadow and
against his will. Her integrity and dedi-
cation are beyond question—and she will
be the first of Germany’s heads of gov-
ernment to relinquish power of her own
accord.
Nonetheless, and despite her con-
siderable achievements, the ultimate
responsibility for the state of the coun-
try, and its relations with its allies and
adversaries, lies with the chancellor. As
Germany ponders whom to elect as her
successor, it might heed a lesson from
the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
In the aftermath of the earthquake
and tsunami that led to the world’s worst
nuclear power accident since Chernobyl,
it became clear that studies about the
vulnerability of the plant’s architecture
had been ignored. In other words, disas-
ter might, with proper planning and
action, have been averted or mitigated.
Modern democracies, too, face a future
of increasing crises and upheavals. Ger-
many’s current state is an object lesson
in the dangers of failing to prepare for
and protect oneself, one’s neighbors, and
one’s allies against the next disruption.
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
Rival Friends of relations: “No conflict, no confronta-
tion, mutual respect and win-win.” This

Cooperation or Conflict? did not elicit a positive response from the

US side.
Off to a bumpy start, relations did
The world’s most critical relationship, between US and China, is likely to remain on an not transition into a ‘reset’ mode in sub-
sequent months. Far from normalising
unstable course they continued to be tense. While
Chi¬na’s interest lies in defusing ten-

China produces
almost everything that
American consumers
hanker to buy, which we
do using money
agreeably loaned by
Chinese banks. In
Washington,
denouncing Beijing’s
authoritarianism may
make for a good
applause line. Yet the
reality is that our two
nations are mutually
dependent
sions and establishing peaceful relations
to enable them to manage differences,
the US has continued to stoke tensions acknowledge the ‘cooperative’ aspect of tion. Biden told the Munich conference
by its aggressive stance. In fact, the only relations. But in fusing this with an in April that US and its allies faced “long-
adversarial dimension Washington term strategic competition” with China
By The KIPS Bureau difference bet¬ween the Trump
seems to adopt an incoherent or schizo- and needed to stand up to its “economic
Lahore, Pakistan approach and Biden’s is that the latter is
trying to round up allies and countries to phrenic approach that is contributing to abuses and coercion”. But Europe, much
join it to counter China. For example, the turbulent relations with China. less the rest of the world, doesn’t see it
US used the recent G7 meeting to mobi- US actions to counter China are also the same way. German Chancellor

H enry Kissinger warns that the

turbulent relationship
between the US and China
carries the seeds of war. President Joe
Biden describes ties between the two as
“extreme competition”, not conflict. The
latest US intelligence report casts China
as America’s top national security threat.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
says there are three aspects of the
relationship with China — adversarial,
competitive and cooperative. Top
Chinese officials caution Washington
against engaging in a new cold war, and
stress that both countries have more to
gain by cooperation. American officials
shrug off the cold war analogy and claim
they are not seeking to contain China.
Many Western analysts see a fierce
contest rather than a cold war between
the economic and tech superpowers.
How should these varying charac-
terisations be viewed? What do they hold
for the future of the world’s most conse-
quential relationship? How are other
countries responding to this stand-off?
Will these global powers be able to
achieve a reset or will their confrontation
The general
expectation that Sino-US
relations would be less
fraught in the post-
Trump era has not
materialised. In
substance, maybe less in
tone, the Biden
administration’s
approach marks a
continuity with Trump’s
policy
become a lasting feature of the interna-
tional landscape? The world’s most criti-
cal relationship, between US and China,
is likely to remain on an unstable course.
The general expectation that Sino-US
relations would be less fraught in the
post-Trump era has not materialised. In
substance, maybe less in tone, the Biden
administration’s approach marks a con-
tinuity with Trump’s policy. Early indi-
cation of this came from the first diplo-
matic engagement between them in
March. This is worth recalling for its
insight into the stance of the two coun-
tries. Harsh exchanges followed in the
Anchorage meeting when Blinken
rai¬sed his country’s “deep concerns”
over China’s act¬ions in Taiwan, Hong
Kong and Xinjiang”, its cyber-attacks
and “economic coercion” toward US
allies.
To Blinken’s remarks, China’s top
diplomat res¬po¬nded bluntly saying
the US could no longer speak to China
from a position of strength and that it
could hardly lecture others given its
treatment of Native Americans and
when it faces race problems at home and
waning public confidence in its democ-
racy. As for Blinken’s claim that he was
speaking for the int¬e¬rnational com-
munity Yang Jiechi said the US didn’t
represent world opinion and neither did
the West.
Despite these tough messages Chi-
nese diplomats insisted that the new
global situation warranted a cooperative
relationship between the two countries.
They cited President Xi Jinping’s vision
lise a joint front aga¬inst China. The G7
communiqué criticised China on human
rights, policy in Hong Kong and sup-
ported Taiwan’s participation in WHO.
Another example is the so-called Quad
(Australia, India, Japan and US) Wash-
ington is lining up to confront China.
Why is the Biden administration
adopting this stance? For several rea-
sons. First, it is reflecting the anti-China
mood and bipartisan consensus in Amer-
ica that sees China as an adversary whose
rising power needs to be balanced.
Trump’s demonisation of China as a
manipulative economic power that
engaged in unfair trade practices became
a national narrative and set the context
for the Biden administration’s approach.
Moreover, the Republican Party’s con-
stant attacks on Biden for being ‘soft’ on
China also shaped a more hawkish posi-
tion than his administration may other-
wise have adopted.
But because American companies
see China as an attractive economic
opportunity, continue doing lucrative
business there and banks are keen to
expand, US officials are obliged to
a classic response of an established
superpower to the rise of a new global
power challenging its predominance.
This has been a common phenomenon
throughout history when power dynam-
ics have shifted fundamentally. The fear
of an economic and technological rival
and its growing global reach has created
insecurities being reflected today in US
behaviour.
Yet there are limits to how far Wash-
ington can escalate tensions. As Andrew
Bacevich, president of the Quincy Insti-
tute, has written, “Today, China pro-
duces almost everything that American
consumers hanker to buy, which we do
using money agreeably loaned by Chi-
nese banks. In Washington, denouncing
Beijing’s authoritarianism may make for
a good applause line. Yet the reality is
that our two nations are mutually
dependent.”
Limits are also imposed by the unen-
thusiastic response from countries Wash-
ington is wooing for its anti-China alli-
ance. Even close European allies, with
economic equities in ties with China, are
reluctant to be drawn into such a coali-
Angela Merkel says so openly, Japan is
reluctant to sanction China and other
Asian countries are even less willing to
join any contain-China coalition.
Whether this reality urges the US
towards a conciliatory policy is to be
seen.
Beijing has shown much forbear-
ance in the face of aggressive US conduct
but a more confident China has also
pushed back against what it perceives as
US bullying and intimidation. Growing
nationalist sentiment in the country
means that Beijing will continue to act
assertively even as it seeks a calmer, coop-
erative relationship with the US. As Pres-
ident Xi declared recently in the Boao
forum, any economic decoupling
between the two global powers would be
to the world’s detriment.
While predictions of a conflict
between the two countries are clearly
overdrawn the world’s most critical
bilateral relationship is likely to remain
on an unstable course for at least the
near term.

36 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021

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June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 37
Governance Challenges
The Institutional Imperative
Transformational change in the apparatus of governance is an imperative, not a choice
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T here is national consensus that
the institutional capacity of the
state has eroded over time and
consequently the delivery of public
services has deteriorated and fallen
short of people’s expectations.
Weakening of the instruments of
governance has meant that even the
most well conceived and crafted
government policy cannot be robustly
implemented.
A case in point is the challenge of
raising government revenue on which
hinges the country’s ability to address its
chronic budget deficits and establish
sustainable macroeconomic stability.
Almost every government has declared
this as its priority goal. But it has always
remained elusive. Lack of political will
has of course been a factor but also
important is weakness of the apparatus
charged with performing this task.
Achieving economic recovery and set-
ting Pakistan on a path of growth and
investment depends critically on
strengthening institutional capacity that
can competently raise resources, ensure
efficient service delivery and create an
environment in which a level playing
field is assured to build business confi-
dence.
38 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
Worse, in the
seventies, eighties and
nineties, protracted
politicisation of the
bureaucratic and police
system distorted its
functioning and involved
a number of damaging
consequences
Transformational change in the
apparatus of governance is an impera-
tive, not a choice. The declining capacity
of the state machinery is the cumulative
result of several factors. Among these
two stand out. One, postponed reforms
and two, politicisation of the civil ser-
vice. Governance after independence
required transforming the colonial-era
administrative structures to those
responsive to the needs of a developing
country. For decades this was ignored
which left the state machinery poorly
equipped to deal with new challenges
and out of sync with public expectations.
Moreover, the elite that ruled the coun-
try had little incentive to reform as its
power and privileges derived from main-
taining the status quo. Lack of reform
meant that the administrative system
was unable to keep pace with a changing
society and the complex requirements of
modern governance.
Worse, in the seventies, eighties and
nineties, protracted politicisation of the
bureaucratic and police system distorted
its functioning and involved a number of
damaging consequences — erosion of
authority, undermining of efficiency and
draining of morale. For these reasons the
civil service ceased attracting the best
and the brightest as it once did. Merit
and professionalism were cast aside as
both military and civilian governments
used state machinery for political ends.
Ruling elites failed to see that this kind of
sustained manipulation would ulti-
mately leave governments with less
rather than more control. Over time the
consequences of these actions caught up
and left the country with a weakened,
unreformed state apparatus unable to
efficiently perform its core functions.
This created a compelling need for
institutional reform involving a compre-
hensive approach rather than piecemeal
efforts. A systemic problem needed a
systemic response. Several commissions
for government reform were set up and
measures announced at various times
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
Fast forward to 2018
when PTI came to power
pledging to make
reform a priority. Its
election manifesto
acknowledged that past
civil service reform
efforts were not able to
depoliticise the service,
or attract bright young
talent on merit, and
technical expertise
but they were isolated steps in select
areas and not what was required to make
the civil service fit for purpose and peo-
ple-friendly. Recommendations by the
National Commission on Government
Reforms, appointed in 2006 during the
Musharraf era, remained
unimplemented under subsequent gov-
ernments.
Fast forward to 2018 when PTI
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
came to power pledging to make reform
a priority. Its election manifesto
acknowledged that past civil service
reform efforts were not “able to
depoliticise the service, or attract bright
young talent on merit, and technical
expertise”. The government appointed
Dr Ishrat Husain as adviser for institu-
tional reform and set up two task forces
on civil service reform and restructuring
of government.
This was encouraging and showed
serious intent. Dr Husain did an impres-
sive job in casting a wide net for consul-
tations with stakeholders. But subse-
quently announced measures did not
translate into systemic reform. While
acknowledging that an integrated
approach was needed as different com-
ponents of reform were interrelated, a
patchwork of steps was taken. These
addressed some training and perfor-
mance aspects while other issues,
including recruitment and induction, as
well as compensation and benefits, are
said to be a work in progress. The expec-
tation that provinces would pursue their
own reform effort was never realised; no
province has undertaken such an
endeavor.
The limits of such reform measures
were also illustrated by the lack of impact
on a key ministry — the Ministry of For-
eign Affairs, whose requirements have
changed significantly over the years as
foreign policy has become more complex
and needs specialised knowledge and
new communication skills. It is unclear
how many of even the modest proposals
accepted by other federal government
branches have translated into changes at
the Foreign Office. There is little evi-
dence of any change in the training, skill
development, working methods and
outlook of the foreign service, which
needs its own set of reforms to make it fit
for purpose.
In March more changes were
announced by the government but these
did not go beyond dealing with efficiency
and discipline rules. What were billed as
‘new’ measures simply converted exist-
ing promotion policy into promotion
rules. This did not add up to the
transformational civil service reform
pledged by the PTI government.
Instead of this piecemeal tinkering a
comprehensive approach is needed
which transforms state institutions to
respond to the requirements of modern
governance. The interlinked elements of
reform should involve the following:
fundamental changes in recruitment
and training that are predicated on an
understanding of the complex nature of
contemporary governance, profession-
alising the service by acquisition of spe-
cialised skills and technological know-
how, incentivising performance by clear
criteria, spelling out measurable deliver-
ables, streamlining decision-making
processes to ensure quicker decisions,
promoting only the most competent to
higher grades and weeding out dead-
wood and poor performers by severance
packages.
Above all, the aim of reform should
be to depoliticise the civil service by
ensuring merit in postings and transfers,
a key element that remains conspicuous
by its absence so far. Frequent shuffling
of top personnel by ministers and chief
ministers exemplifies this. Civil servants
should be free of political influence to
perform their job rather than be
expected to do the bidding of political
patrons. Surveys show that public confi-
dence in government institutions has
been in long-term decline. If this is to be
reversed governance has to substantially
improve and make an appreciable differ-
ence in the lives of citizens.
Transformational change in the appara-
tus of governance is an imperative, not a
choice.
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 39
Enemies Inside
The Government’s Emerging Traits
The PTI leadership needs to shake off habits that often land it in self-created difficulties
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
O An earlier, well-known
ver halfway through its tenure
the PTI government's early
proclivities seem to be
hardening into traits that increasingly
characterise its whimsical style of
decision-making. At times these have
landed its leadership in embarrassing
situations while on other occasions it has
obliged the government to make U-turns
on pronouncements it has been hard-
pressed to explain.
Recent developments have laid bare
the first such proclivity — announcing a
decision without sufficient thought or
consultation and then reversing it. The
case in point was the newly appointed
finance minister's pronouncement that
Pakistan will be resuming trade with
India by importing cotton and sugar. The
decision was apparently approved by
Prime Minister Imran Khan as he holds
the commerce portfolio. This was also
indicated by a leaked summary to the
cabinet signed by him. In less than 24
hours the decision was revoked by the
cabinet. It was followed by reiteration of
Pakistan's position that trade with India
was not possible until Delhi reversed its
Aug 5, 2019 action in occupied Kashmir.
Apparently, the backlash after the initial
announcement as well as opposition in
40 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
example was when the
government announced
the PM would attend a
summit called by
Malaysia along with
Turkey which it later
went back on in
response to strong Saudi
objections. As widely
noted at the time this
episode entailed foreign
policy costs
the cabinet compelled the government to
backtrack.
What this episode revealed was a
governance style in which important
decisions are taken without forethought,
consultation or assessment of implica-
tions and whether they are consistent
with previously stated positions. In this
case there were far-reaching foreign
policy implications which were over-
looked as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
was obviously not consulted at any stage.
It was not the first time a decision with
foreign policy consequences was taken
without adequate thought and institu-
tional advice. An earlier, well-known
example was when the government
announced the PM would attend a sum-
mit called by Malaysia along with Turkey
which it later went back on in response to
strong Saudi objections. As widely noted
at the time this episode entailed foreign
policy costs. In statements made on a
range of other issues U-turns have been
even more common.
A second habit that has evolved into
a trait is to frequently change senior min-
isters and officials in a revolving door
approach to team members. The deci-
sion to remove Hafeez Sheikh and
replace him with Hammad Azhar meant
appointing a third finance minister in as
many years. Apart from the unseemly
manner in which this was done — a hall-
mark of this government — only two
weeks earlier Sheikh had been asked by
the PM to stay on when he offered to
resign following his defeat in the Senate
election. The PM had consistently been
praising his own government's economic
policies as well as Sheikh's performance
— until public criticism mounted over
rising prices.
This suggested that Sheikh may
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
Frequent bureaucratic
changes signify a
whimsical way of
governing and often
reflect knee-jerk
reactions to the criticism
of the day. PTI insiders
say the PM’s view of a
top team member has
much to do with who
has his ear and what he
may be whispering about
him/her
have been made a scapegoat to defuse
such criticism. The PTI leadership needs
to shake off habits that often land it in
self-created difficulties. This was only
the latest example of the government's
penchant for frequently changing key
ministers and top officials. The present
interior minister is the third to have been
appointed. The new chairman of the Fed-
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
eral Board of Revenue is the fifth to be
installed while the Board of Investment
has had four different chairmen during
this government's tenure. This approach
has been mirrored in even more pro-
nounced terms in Punjab. The chief min-
ister has constantly shuffled officials; the
present chief secretary is the fourth, the
IGP the sixth and commissioner, Lahore
division, is also the sixth in his adminis-
tration. At the centre, the interior secre-
tary has been changed five times and the
commerce secretary is the fourth to serve
under this government.
Frequent bureaucratic changes
signify a whimsical way of governing and
often reflect knee-jerk reactions to the
criticism of the day. Changing the
finance minister and top economic func-
tionaries every so often may also be a
reflection of a vain search for quick solu-
tions to vexed issues that require policy
continuity and patience to address. PTI
insiders say the PM’s view of a top team
member has much to do with who has his
ear and what he may be whispering
about him/her.
A third aspect of the government is
its increasing lack of confidence in insti-
tutions despite its leaders’ frequent
claims of strengthening institutions.
This is illustrated by the way its minis-
ters lashed out against the Election Com-
mission of Pakistan after the February
Daska by-election and losing the
Islamabad seat in the Senate. The PM
himself made ECP the target of criticism.
The government may be following a well-
established tradition of political leaders
attacking institutions when they don't
play ball, but that doesn't minimise the
significance of its conduct on this score.
For its part, the ECP reminded the gov-
ernment that it was a constitutional and
independent body that acted according
to the law and “if constitutional institu-
tions continue to be ridiculed in this way
it is tantamount to their (government's)
weakness and not ECP's”.
Another example of the same phe-
nomenon is the recent removal of the
head of the Higher Education Commis-
sion. The chairperson's tenured post was
for four years whereas the incumbent
had served only two. The government
reduced its duration to two years by ordi-
nance in order to force the chairman out
overnight. Again, it showed disregard for
an institution, that too in the education
sector. There was widespread criticism
of this assault on HEC's autonomy. It
also prompted a strong rebuke from
respected philanthropist, entrepreneur
and moving spirit behind HEC's cre-
ation, Syed Babar Ali, who in a letter to
the concerned minister, wrote that edu-
cation should not be destroyed in this
manner and HEC should be “protected
from such machinations”.
The government's fourth character-
istic is to treat publicity and projection as
a substitute for policy. The constant
meetings the PM holds with his media
spokespersons is one indication.
Another is the daily pressers by
spokespersons who have little of sub-
stance to convey other than hyperbolic
claims about government performance.
This underlines the leadership's reliance
on rhetoric to show it is governing effec-
tively rather than let policy measures
speak for themselves. When exaggerated
narratives clash with lack of policy deliv-
ery it is the government's credibility that
is undermined.
These traits disadvantage the PTI
government in dealing with the country's
multiple challenges. Its ability to seri-
ously address them depends on how far
it can shake off. Its ability to seriously
address them depends on how far it can
shake off habits that frequently mire it in
self-created difficulties habits that fre-
quently mire it in self-created difficul-
ties.
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 41
Peace Talk
Terms of Engagement
Peace with honour should remain the immutable principle of Pakistan’s engagement
with India
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
N ow that a backchannel between
Pakistan and India has been
confirmed by a senior official it
would be appropriate to evaluate its
nature and implications. Efforts to de-
escalate tensions between the two
nuclear neighbours are always welcome.
But given the history of false starts and
the one step forward, two steps
backwards engagement in this long-
troubled relationship it is important to
take into account lessons of the past and
on-ground realities, especially as the
dire situation created by India in
occupied Kashmir remains unchanged.
There is nothing unusual about a
backchannel. It is frequently used when
formal dialogue between countries is
suspended. This was often the case in the
past when Pakistan and India demurred
from engaging in open talks.
Backchannels are useful to confiden-
tially probe, explore and assess how
much give there is in the other’s position.
This is harder in a formal forum where
negotiating parties stick to maximalist
positions at least at the start. During the
Musharraf period backchannel negotia-
42 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
tions on the Kashmir dispute took place
over three years to find an interim settle-
ment. This marked the most serious
effort in recent decades to find a political
solution of Kashmir. The talks were con-
ducted by civil servants who enjoyed the
confidence of president Pervez
Musharraf and prime minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee.
What has been disclosed about the
current backchannel is that talks are
being conducted by the chiefs of intelli-
gence of the two countries. This isn’t the
only difference from past backroom
efforts. The Musharraf era process began
with a public acknowledgment by both
sides of the resumption of formal talks.
The joint statement of Jan 6, 2004 stated
that “the resumption of the composite
dialogue will lead to peaceful settlement
of all bilateral issues, including Jammu
and Kashmir, to the satisfaction of both
sides”. The backchannel subsequently
set in train was an accompaniment to
formal talks that covered all issues of
priority for both sides. Negotiators on
the backchannel were publicly named.
While information about the pres-
ent backchannel has been revealed by
Pakistani officials this has been met by
silence on the Indian side. There have
been no background briefings or leaks by
Indian officials. This one-sided admis-
sion may have unwittingly created the
impression of over-eagerness by the
Pakistani side. Moreover, making public
disclosures at a preliminary stage of sen-
sitive talks raises the question of whether
it is prudent before anything significant
has been agreed.
As the present engagement is being
cast as ‘talks about talks’ it might be use-
ful to keep the following factors and prin-
ciples in view.
One, Pakistani interlocutors should
seek to test and verify — assess if the
Indian move is tactical or strategic and
proceed cautiously. Our officials claim
India is prepared to talk on all issues.
What should be ascertained is what
exactly is meant by that. Whether it
means Indian willingness for substan-
tive discussion on outstanding disputes
including Kashmir or just a ‘dialogue of
the deaf’ and re-statement of its familiar
position that Kashmir is India’s ‘internal
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matter’ and the ‘new’ status quo created ‘relief to the Kashmiri people’, presum- has long been India’s aim to draw Paki-
by its Aug 5, 2019, action is non- ably through CBMs, this should be done stan into a process with no outcomes in
negotiable.
Two, Pakistan must maintain its red
lines on its principled position on Kash-
in tandem with and not as substitute for
substantive talks on the issue. Again,
past experience is instructive. Kashmir-
settling disputes and thus to demon-
strate to the world how reasonable it is
without conceding anything. Delhi has
mir especially as Indian media reports specific CBMs agreed in the composite sought to achieve normalisation on its
suggest that Delhi’s expectation is for dialogue during 2004-08 were an terms without resolving disputes and
Pakistan to cease insisting on reversal of accompaniment to and not replacement instead prioritising the two T’s, terror-
ism and trade. From this perspective,
India’s apparent suggestion in the backchannel normalisation for the sake of normalisa-
that issues should not be ‘bundled up’ in a tion should be avoided as this will be
transient, lack substantive content and
composite dialogue is fraught with risk. It seems a therefore durability. De-escalation of
way for Delhi to focus mainly on its priority areas tensions is an aim worth pursuing but
that is different from normalisation,
and avoid a broad-based, integrated dialogue that which should be predicated on efforts
Islamabad has long wanted. In any case agreements and progress in resolving differences.
reached in track two have to be formalised in front Normalisation can only come about grad-
ually and should be distinguished from
channel talks. Diplomatic negotiations should be managing tensions.
conducted by experienced diplomats who are best Four, the backchannel should not
equipped to deal with them. The foreign ministry become the sole track of Pakistan-India
engagement. It should lead to the
should also be consulted and kept fully on board resumption of formal and comprehen-
sive dialogue. India’s apparent sugges-
the illegal annexation of Kashmir. While of negotiations on Kashmir. tion in the backchannel that issues
pursuing the near-term aim, as identi- Three, ‘process’ in the backchannel should not be ‘bundled up’ in a compos-
fied by Pakistani officials, of providing should not be mistaken for substance. It ite dialogue is fraught with risk. It seems
a way for Delhi to focus mainly on its
priority areas and avoid a broad-based,
integrated dialogue that Islamabad has
long wanted.
Revival of track one peace talks is
also necessary because engagement con-
fined only to a backchannel will give the
other side much wriggle room precisely
because informal talks may not bind
parties to any commitment. In any case
agreements reached in track two have to
be formalised in ‘front channel’ talks.
Diplomatic negotiations should be con-
ducted by experienced diplomats who
are best equipped to deal with them. The
foreign ministry should also be con-
sulted and kept fully on board on
backchannel talks.
Five, announcements should only
be made once there is progress in the
backchannel and through mutual agree-
ment by both sides. Significantly, concil-
iatory statements by Prime Minister
Imran Khan and army chief Gen Qamar
Bajwa have not been reciprocated by
Indian leaders. This as well as Delhi’s
lack of comment on the backchannel
may be designed to convey that Pakistan
is keener on normalising ties owing to its
domestic vulnerabilities and compul-
sions. This plays off an unwitting
impression created by some Pakistani
officials who have said the country’s
weak economy is the principal motiva-
tion for its peace overture to India.
Last but not least, peace with hon-
our should remain the immutable prin-
ciple of Pakistan’s engagement with
India.
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June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 43
44 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
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Afghan Conflict
Complicated Afghan Endgame
All stakeholders know if the path of negotiation is abandoned the country will descend
into chaos
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T he postponement of the US-
orchestrated Afghan peace
conference marks an early
setback for renewed efforts to expedite
talks on a political settlement of the
conflict. It leaves the nascent peace
process in disarray at least for now. The
conference co-hosted by the UN, Turkey
and Qatar was scheduled for April 24-
May 4 in Istanbul. Announcing its
postponement until after the end of
Ramazan, Turkey’s Foreign Minister
Mevlüt Çavusoglu said that in view of the
Taliban’s non-participation it was
“meaningless” to press ahead especially
as there was “no clarity about the
formation of delegations and
participation”.
The conference was being calibrated
by Washington with its plans to com-
pletely withdraw from Afghanistan.
Announcing this in his much-
anticipated address on April 14 Presi-
dent Joe Biden boldly acknowledged
that nothing more could be achieved by
retaining US troops in the country and
all would be pulled out by Sept 11. He
said once Al Qaeda had been degraded
46 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
and Osama bin Laden eliminated a
decade earlier, the US goal was achieved
but its presence in Afghanistan contin-
ued for another decade for increasingly
unclear reasons. Rejecting the Penta-
gon’s preference for a conditions-based
drawdown, Biden said: “We cannot con-
tinue the cycle of extending or expanding
our military presence in Afghanistan
hoping to create the ideal conditions for
our withdrawal, expecting a different
result.”
Under the Doha agreement between
the US and Taliban, forged in February
2020, American forces were to fully with-
draw by May 1 in exchange for the
Taliban commitment to prevent Afghan-
istan’s soil from being used by terrorists
and agreeing to intra-Afghan talks. Even
before Biden’s announcement the
Taliban had declared they would not
participate in the Istanbul talks and
threatened “consequences” if the with-
drawal deadline was shifted. Washing-
ton probably hoped that by giving a final
and unconditional deadline for its
departure the Taliban would accept the
decision. But the Taliban maintained a
ference and said that creating expecta-
tions this would yield a peace deal was an
effort “to push the Taliban willingly or
unwillingly, to a rushed decision which
was needed by America”.
Plans for the ‘Istanbul Conference
on the Afghan Peace Process’ had been
set in train by the US weeks before its
withdrawal announcement. A leaked
letter from US Secretary of State Antony
Blinken to President Ashraf Ghani laid
out key elements of the American pro-
posal. They included a UN-led peace
conference in Turkey attended by
regional and other ‘partners’ to mobilise
a consensus to support the peace plan
followed by a meeting between the
Afghan parties to finalise a peace deal. A
joint statement by the UN, Turkey and
Qatar cast the aim of the conference in
ambitious terms: “The Conference will
focus on helping the negotiating parties
reach a set of shared, foundational prin-
ciples that reflect an agreed vision for a
future Afghanistan, a roadmap to a
future political settlement and an end to
the conflict.”
A leaked letter from
US Secretary of State
Antony Blinken to
President Ashraf Ghani
laid out key elements of
the American proposal.
They included a UN-led
peace conference in
Turkey attended by
regional and other
‘partners’ to mobilise a
consensus to support the
peace plan followed by
a meeting between the
Afghan parties to finalise
a peace deal
tough posture and responded to Biden’s
speech by reiterating their position that
delay in the pullout was a breach of the
Doha agreement for which “necessary
counter-measures” would be taken.
They refused to attend the Turkey con-
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Indications are that
the Americans will
remain engaged in
diplomatic efforts and
seem serious in wanting
a peace deal or at least
progress towards it
before their departure
Driving this effort with a sense of
urgency was, of course, the US in the
hope of accelerating the peace talks into
making significant progress ahead of its
withdrawal deadline. Intense shuttle
diplomacy by its special envoy Zalmay
Khalilzad in the region was aimed at per-
suading the Afghan parties to attend the
Istanbul Conference and give an impetus
to the peace process.
The postponement raises many
questions. Is the Turkey peace confer-
ence stillborn? Can the peace process be
revived? If so, can progress be made to
reach a settlement before the US with-
drawal? Will the US leave without a
peace deal? Will the Taliban wait for the
departure of American/Nato forces to
strengthen their hand in peace negotia-
tions afterwards?
The answer to all of the above turns
principally on the Taliban’s calculation
as well as to how much leverage — and
interest — the US has to push the peace
effort. Indications are that the Ameri-
cans will remain engaged in diplomatic
efforts and seem serious in wanting a
peace deal or at least progress towards it
before their departure. This would be an
important element of face-saving for
Washington and also enable an orderly
and ‘honourable’ exit. That is why
behind the scenes talks are also focused
on negotiating a 90-day reduction of
violence with the Taliban. As for lever-
age, while the effectiveness of coercive
pressure has been diminishing with the
withdrawal underway, the UN sanctions
process remains a source of leverage as
de-listing is among the Taliban’s main
demands. In any case, the Doha accord
committed Washington to begin this
process once intra-Afghan talks com-
menced. The US along with the interna-
tional community can also use economic
incentives by holding out the promise of
assistance after September. This is also
the hope expressed by top US diplomats
as well as Pakistani officials.
The Taliban while adopting a tough
posture have nonetheless kept space
open for engagement and significantly
refrained from announcing their spring
offensive. The thinking among field com-
manders may be that all the Taliban need
to do is wait it out for the US to depart
and there is little value in engaging in
peace talks where they will have to make
concessions. However, the leadership’s
calculation may be different. They may
feel they have more to gain from resum-
ing the peace dialogue than abandoning
it especially as they would not want to
risk losing the international recognition
and legitimacy they now have. Release of
their prisoners and removal from UN
sanctions can only be secured through
diplomatic engagement. They may also
see an opportunity after two decades of
military struggle to secure their goal
through negotiations — an option that
would help them elicit international sup-
port and assistance needed in post-
America Afghanistan and importantly,
offer a better chance of achieving lasting
peace.
For these reasons the Afghan peace
process is far from being dead even if it
faces daunting challenges ahead. All
stakeholders, and above all, the Afghan
parties know that if the path of negotia-
tion is abandoned Afghanistan will
descend into chaos and strife from which
no one will benefit.
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 47
State Vision
A Reform Agenda
We urgently need an effective internal security and governance framework
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
P ower and celebrity status act like
drugs, warping one’s sense of
reality and weaving a web of
deceit, wherein too many in positions of
power come to believe that laws and
rules do not apply to them. This must
change. While reflecting upon our follies
of the past, it is time to rethink and
change course for, as Khalil Gibran said:
“Progress lies not in enhancing what is,
but in advancing toward what will be.”
Can our planners focus on a vision
based on the concept of a care economy
— health, education, housing, jobs, pov-
erty alleviation, social welfare, justice?
Can we tax the rich and give relief to the
disadvantaged sections of society? We
talk about Islamic humanism, but can we
formulate concrete action plans around
this concept of the state caring for soci-
ety? While addressing structural
reforms in economic sectors, ideally a
charter of economy should be agreed
upon by all major political parties. How-
ever, in a divisive political milieu, this
appears to be wishful thinking. Can we
ever think of gross national happiness by
reducing the huge chasm between the
rich and poor?
48 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
There is an urgent need to agree
upon an effective internal security and
governance framework. The following
are some recommendations:
1) The National Internal Security
Policy 2018-23 is quite comprehensive
with a sound interprovincial institu-
tional coordination mechanism. The
cabinet may task the interior ministry
with initiating the process of implemen-
tation, for what good are the policies if
they are not to be implemented?
2) All provinces have come up with
rule-of-law roadmaps. The interior min-
istry must coordinate with them and
launch an initiative to improve the
capacity of police, prosecution, the
courts and prisons.
3) The Intelligence Bureau is a key
instrument of support in matters related
with criminal intelligence and facilitat-
ing law-enforcement agencies in com-
bating organised crime. It should make a
difference.
4) The National Counter Terrorism
Authority was established in 2009 to
come up with counterterrorism and
counter violent extremism policies and
strategies. Kinetic and CT-related mea-
sures adopted in the 20-point National
tee suggesting changes required for lat-
est CT and CVE strategies.
5) The cabinet approved the setting
up of a CE Commission in November
2020 and referred to its sub-committee
on new legislative measures. The terms
of reference may be finalised, and an
independent CE commissioner
appointed for three years.
6) The federal government must
come up with a national strategy against
organised crime. The FIA is the lead
A Police Reforms institution against interprovincial and
transnational organised crimes. An
Committee constituted inter-agency task force may be consti-
by the SC in May 2018, tuted to come up with a national strategy
against TOC (including money launder-
among whose members ing and terror financing). This institu-
are nine retired and all tional measure will also help Pakistan
the current serving address FATF’s concerns.
7) FIA and NAB are premier anti-
IGPs, submitted its corruption institutions, with overlap-
report to the Law and ping legal mandates. Unfortunately,
both have been often misused for politi-
Justice Commission in cal purposes at the behest of the ruling
January 2019. There is a elite and security establishment. An inde-
constant tension and an pendent commission against corruption
must be established to review their per-
undercurrent of formance and introduce meaningful
mistrust between the reforms to promote integrity, ensure
military and civilian neutrality and enhance professionalism
of these instruments of accountability.
leadership. It reflects a 8) The criminal justice system is
paradox of power broken and requires far-reaching
reforms. This involves a concerted effort
Action Plan since 2015 have resulted in a by the interior and law ministries, the
70 per cent reduction in acts of terror but attorney general’s office and the Law and
specific measures against religious Justice Commission to come up with an
extremism remain unimplemented. action plan. A criminal justice commis-
Nacta undertook a policy review of CT sion, to be headed by a former Supreme
NAP in 2019. Its national coordinator Court chief justice of impeccable creden-
may brief the National Security Commit- tials is the need of the hour. 9) The
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National Police Bureau in the interior
ministry should implement police
reforms. A Police Reforms Committee
constituted by the SC in May 2018,
among whose members are nine retired
and all the current serving IGPs, submit-
ted its report to the Law and Justice Com-
mission in January 2019. The report in
two volumes was sent to the federal gov-
ernment (interior and law ministries)
and provincial governments (chief secre-
Sadly, our political
leadership has often
faltered in promoting
good governance and
setting an example of
probity and wisdom
taries) for implementation. Vested inter-
ests have scuttled the efforts to introduce
meaningful police reforms.
9) Reforming the Punjab Police
should be accorded the highest priority;
what was achieved in KP in 2013-18 is
doable in Punjab too. A start could be
made by establishing an independent
police complaints authority under the
police law of 2002. A retired judge or
police officer of unimpeachable integrity
should be appointed for three years,
along with six non-political members by
the public service commission, to
address public complaints against the
police, especially at operational levels.
10) Civil service reforms are direly
needed. While some measures have been
recommended by the task force for
restructuring of government machinery,
what is really needed is to depoliticise
the bureaucracy and inculcate public
service ethos. This can only be achieved
through security of tenures, merit-based
recruitments and proper career plan-
ning.
Finally, let us frankly admit that in
Pakistan we have failed to resolve the
conflict between the state and the repub-
lic. Frequent military rule has resulted in
erosion of democratic institutions. There
is a constant tension and an undercur-
rent of mistrust between the military and
civilian leadership. It reflects a paradox
of power. The military draws a clear dis-
tinction between the defenders of state
— the embodiment of the national inter-
ests — as opposed to those who are per-
ceived as defenders of special interests,
like the leadership of political parties,
feudal barons and business tycoons. It is
in fact a crisis of leadership and institu-
tions. Sadly, our political leadership has
often faltered in promoting good gover-
nance and setting an example of probity
and wisdom in steering the ship of the
state under crises. The responsibility for
good governance is on the political lead-
ership. If they think that by giving exten-
sion in service to army chiefs, they can
attain stability of tenure and promote
the mantra of civilian and military on
same page, they are sadly mistaken. Both
may be on the same page but reading
different books.
Pakistan needs to choose between
decline under an authoritarian state or
the renewal of the vision of its founding
father to be a democratic, enlightened
and progressive republic. Both the state
and the republic need to converge
around this democratic way forward.
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 49
Language Excellency
Arabic Pakistan?
Every Muslim here is immersed in religious expressions
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T here is a curious contrast in how
the people of Pakistan have
consistently prevented religion-
based political parties from receiving
more than eight to 10 per cent of the
votes cast in all 11 general elections held
between 1970 and 2018 and, on the other
hand, the steady retreat into showy
religiosity and visible piety in the public
domain and in most media.
Though the recent upsurge of the
TLP and its mass violence are a disturb-
ing indicator, this manifestation has
more to do with lack of courageous gov-
ernance and strict enforcement of the
law than the accurate representation of
most people’s religious views. The fail-
ure to enforce public safety against vio-
lent extremism is shaped by sheer inhibi-
tion and gross incompetence — or covert
wilful support from some quarters — but
by no means does religious extremism
mirror the popular will.
For a country in which illiteracy,
ignorance and some primitive social
practices — particularly discriminatory
against girl-children and women — per-
sist in some areas and some segments,
the majority of Pakistanis are moderate,
balanced and quite open-minded. Their
pattern of usage of the internet and
social media platforms is a potent
expression of a remarkably cosmopoli-
tan facet of the Pakistani psyche. Adop-
tion of other symbols and facilities of
new technologies is another expression
of acceptance of modernity and change.
One demonstration of respect for
other religions by most Muslims is the
fact that across Pakistan, every day (ex-
cept during the pandemic) tens of thou-
sands of families, many of them fairly
conservative or orthodox, send their
daughters and sons to schools and col-
50 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
leges operated by Christian missionar-
ies. They do not think the strength of
their faith in Islam is vulnerable to nega-
tive influence from another faith even if
their innocent children spend five or six
hours every day in institutions managed
by non-Muslims. Mob attacks on Chris-
tian communities or accusations of blas-
phemy do regrettably occur. But these
are rare exceptions, not daily or weekly
occurrences.
In such a reality it is both amusing
and disturbing to learn how certain hold-
ers of high public office — especially the
Punjab governor and the Punjab Assem-
bly speaker —seem overly anxious to
ensure that the Holy Quran in Arabic and
Islamic studies are comprehensively
imbibed from Class I onwards not only
by Muslims but, in the case of Islamic
studies, if unavoidable, by non-Muslim
pupils too.
In Article 22 of the Constitution
‘Safeguards as to educational institu-
tions in respect of religion, etc.’, Clause
(1) prohibits forced learning of religion
by non-adherents. To circumvent this
obligation, it is reported that non-
Muslim students will be asked to leave
the classroom when Islamiat is taught!
In a population that is 97pc Muslim,
every Muslim child and adult is fully
immersed in expressions of religion and
the use and sound of Arabic. Examples
abound. The call in Arabic to prayer five
times a day is heard from mosques in
every nook and corner in every village,
town and city, often from more than one
mosque in the same neighbourhood,
followed by worshippers silently or audi-
bly reciting surahs or passages in Arabic
from the Holy Quran. Ramazan and
Muharram are observed with reverence
for about 40 to 60 days during which
holy verses are frequently recited.
Three major festivals (Eidul Azha,
Eidul Fitr, Eid Miladun Nabi) are cele-
brated by every child and adult with holy
verses remembered in special prayers.
Tens of thousands of families have at
least one member every year travelling to
Makkah and Madina (except during the
pandemic) to perform Umrah or Haj.
Hundreds of thousands travel long dis-
tances across the country to pay homage
to great Muslim saints at shrines. In
both, pilgrimages overseas and inter-
nally, Quranic verses in Arabic are
recited.
There is a copy of the Holy Quran in
Arabic, or portions of it in virtually every
single home, rich or poor, literate or illit-
erate. TV and FM radio channels broad-
cast religious content including the call
to prayer in Arabic and other Arabic lan-
guage content every day. Non-licensed
religious TV channels broadcast unim-
peded. Zakat is rendered visibly as well
as discreetly, often with respectful
remembrance of holy verses in Arabic.
Due decorum is maintained in all rituals
associated with marriages, births, funer-
als and soyems in families during which
the Arabic language and holy verses fea-
ture prominently. Offices, homes and
public places display Arabic words and
holy verses. Salutations and farewells
are mostly spoken in Arabic. In one
sense, we are already an ‘Arabic Paki-
stan’.
The leadership of the federal gov-
ernment and of Punjab, KP and
Balochistan would do well to learn from
how the Sindh government laudably
resists surrender to the irrational stress
on a language and on rituals in which our
society is already rich and replete.
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Palestine Rights
Killing Field
Who exactly are the terrorists in Gaza?
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
W ell before he plucked up the
courage to timorously call
for a ceasefire, Joe Biden has
been echoing the mantra recited by a
long line of his predecessors: Israel has
the right to defend itself. That
discredited framework glosses over
pertinent questions, such as: does that
entail the right to slaughter children,
including infants? Ignoring the scale of
the carnage in Gaza, the predictable
riposte would be: well, Israeli children
have also been killed, and remain at risk.
Besides, Hamas invited the retaliation.
That’s not an absurd argument.
Hamas could not possibly have been
unaware that its largely ineffective rock-
ets would elicit a brutal response. And
Israeli kids obviously have as much right
to safety as Palestinian children.
But that is not how the moral calcu-
lus operates in that part of the world.
Much of the mainstream Western media
has no qualms about implying some kind
of equivalence between the supposed
combatants. Notwithstanding the
extreme imbalance of military power,
there’s a kind of unacknowledged truth
in there: if Hamas can be framed as a
terrorist organisation, the Israeli state
qualifies for that accolade many times
over.
That is borne out by its behaviour
both historically and in the present
instance, where the ratio of casualties is
already roughly 1:20, and destined to
grow even more disproportionate. All
too often, the crude missiles lobbed by
Hamas and its allies land in the desert.
Sometimes they pose a hazard for Pales-
tinians. Israel claims that 90pc of the
rest are intercepted by its Iron Dome
defences. That’s worth bearing in mind
when reading about thousands of Hamas
rockets heading into Israel.
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Yes, they are ‘indiscriminate’. The
Israel Defence Forces, on the other hand,
are extremely discriminating in aiming
their attacks. Hospitals, schools and
towers housing media offices all fall in
the category of military targets. If entire
families are slaughtered in the process,
that’s always ‘inadvertent’.
As a senator in 1988, Biden declared
that if Israel did not exist, America would
have been obliged to invent it as a means
of defending US interests in the Middle
East. For ‘interests’, read ‘oil’. The signif-
icance of that fossil fuel has been dimin-
ishing in recent years, but the ardency of
the fossilised fools remains intact.
Biden faces a somewhat tougher
task in this context than most of his Dem-
ocratic predecessors. The Democratic
establishment’s hitherto more or less
unconditional allegiance to Israel is no
longer going unquestioned. Most Demo-
cratic senators, including several promi-
nent Jews, were calling for a ceasefire
long before the president chimed in,
after his administration resisted efforts
to produce a UN Security Council state-
ment. Of course, Israel is in no way
obliged to heed such requests, regardless
of their source, because it knows there
will be no price to pay. Key UNSC resolu-
tions have remained unheeded.
It’s unlikely the UN could make
much difference, but the US can. Apart
from the dogged moral support it prof-
fers, the nearly $4 billion it uncondition-
ally provides every year offers substan-
tial scope for leverage. That subsidy
feeds directly into the client state’s fas-
cist tendencies.
That grotesque US-Israel love affair
now faces a threat, with a growing num-
ber of American Jews wearying of the
Zionist project, particularly its manifes-
tations under Benjamin Netanyahu’s
reign. Netanyahu, though, is merely a
symptom of the problem which has been
writ large since the days of David Ben-
Gurion. The Zionist project wasn’t
incompatible with 19th-century Euro-
pean imperialism, but something of an
anachronism in the postwar 20th cen-
tury, when the broad trend was towards
liberation rather than colonialism.
In the wake of the horrendous Holo-
caust, the biggest global powers found
Israeli exceptionalism acceptable. The
consequences for the land’s indigenous
inhabitants were barely taken into con-
sideration. The plethora of potential
risks involved in implanting a mainly
European-run entity in the Arab world
were mainly ignored. The ethnic cleans-
ing of 1948 elicited no Western opposi-
tion: there was no alarm over certain
Nazi tendencies being echoed by their
victims.
The Arab world too has frequently
faltered in its (often foolish) response to
Israeli power. Lately, much of it has aban-
doned the pretence of caring for the
plight of dispossessed Palestinians. Last
weekend, the hashtag “Palestine is not
my cause” reportedly circulated in the
UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait. It never was,
frankly, but one must be grateful to the
over-privileged Gulf Arabs for admitting
as much. Israel, on the other hand, will
never admit that it encouraged the Mus-
lim Brotherhood precursors of Hamas
and Islamic Jihad to set up shop in the
occupied territories as a counterweight
to the broadly secular Fatah. The project
was a success: where would Netanyahu
and his ilk be today without Hamas? As
for how long this dance of death can be
sustained, the answer is still blowing in
the wind.
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 51
World Environment
Competition with China Can Save
the Planet
Pressure, not partnership, will spur progress on climate change
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
L ate last year, Chinese President
Xi Jinping pledged that his
country would reach “carbon
neutrality” by 2060, meaning that by
that time, it would remove every year
from the atmosphere as much carbon
dioxide as it emitted. China is currently
the world’s largest greenhouse gas
emitter, responsible for nearly 30
percent of global carbon dioxide
emissions. Targeting net-zero emissions
by 2060 is an ambitious goal, meant to
signal Beijing’s commitment both to
turning its enormous economy away
from fossil fuels and to backing broader
international efforts to combat climate
change.
But this rhetorical posturing masks
a very different reality: China remains
addicted to coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. It
burns over four billion metric tons per
year and accounts for half of the world’s
total consumption. Roughly 65 percent
of China’s electricity supply comes from
coal, a proportion far greater than that of
the United States (24 percent) or Europe
52 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
(18 percent). Finnish and U.S. research-
ers revealed in February that China dra-
matically expanded its use of coal-fired
power plants in 2020. China’s net coal-
fired power generation capacity grew by
about 30 gigawatts over the course of the
year, as opposed to a net decline of 17
gigawatts elsewhere in the world.
China also has nearly 200 gigawatts’
worth of coal power projects under con-
struction, approved for construction, or
seeking permits, a sum that on its own
could power all of Germany—the world’s
fourth-largest industrial economy.
Given that coal power plants often oper-
ate for 40 years or more, these ongoing
investments suggest the strong possibil-
ity that China will remain reliant on coal
for decades to come. Here’s the inconve-
nient truth: the social contract that the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has
forged with the Chinese people—growth
and stability in exchange for curtailed
liberties and one-party rule—has
incentivized overinvestment across the
board, including in the coal that powers
most of China’s economy.
China may be shuttering some coal
plants and investing in renewable
energy, but serious decarbonization
remains a distant prospect. Xi’s bullish
talk of combating climate change is a
smokescreen for a more calculated
agenda. Chinese policymakers know
their country is critical to any compre-
hensive international effort to curb
greenhouse gas emissions, and they are
trying to use that leverage to advance
Chinese interests in other areas.
Policymakers in the United States have
hoped to compartmentalize climate
change as a challenge on which Beijing
and Washington can meaningfully coop-
erate, even as the two countries compete
elsewhere. John Kerry, the United
States’ senior climate diplomat, has
insisted that climate change is a
“standalone issue” in U.S.-Chinese rela-
tions. Yet Beijing does not see it that way.
After U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken declared in late January that
Washington intended to “pursue the
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
climate agenda” with China while simul-
taneously putting pressure on Beijing
regarding human rights and other con-
tentious policy issues, Zhao Lijian, the
Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesper-
son, warned the Biden administration
that cooperation on climate change “is
closely linked with bilateral relations as a
whole.” In other words, China will not
compartmentalize climate cooperation;
its participation in efforts to slow global
warming will be contingent on the posi-
tions and actions that its foreign inter-
locutors take in other areas. Zhao’s con-
spicuously sharp-tongued riposte is
already inducing key U.S. partners to
pull their punches in climate interac-
tions with China.
For instance, in a February video
call with Han Zheng, China’s top vice
premier, Frans Timmermans, the execu-
tive vice president of the European Com-
mission and the EU’s “Green Deal chief,”
reportedly steered clear of discussing
human rights and the EU’s plans for a
carbon border tax, issues China finds
contentious. Beijing will likely continue
using negotiations on climate issues to
shield its domestic human rights record
and regional aggression. Worse still, it
will probably demand economic, techno-
logical, and security compromises from
the United States and its allies—such as
their agreeing not to challenge China’s
coercive activities in the South China
Sea—for which those countries would
receive little, if anything, in return. As a
result, U.S. officials seem to face a stark
choice. If they make concessions to win
China’s cooperation in tackling climate
change, Beijing will offer only those cli-
mate promises that it would outright fail
to fulfill, find itself unable to fulfill amid
opposition from powerful domestic
interests, or, less likely, fulfill merely by
default if its economic growth slows
more rapidly than widely expected. But if
they refuse to deal with China, they may
imperil efforts to slow global warming.
There is another option, however. When
it comes to climate change, the United
States should compete, not cooperate,
with its rival.
COAL TRUTHS
For a quarter century, the United States
and other major powers have sought to
cooperate with China on climate change.
Saving the world from climate change,
the argument runs, requires broad inter-
national agreement, and no substantive
settlement can exclude the two biggest
players—China and the United States.
This multilateral effort has taken shape
under the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which
reached its apogee in 2015 with the sign-
ing of the Paris climate agreement. The
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
deal hinged on China and the United
S t a t e s — t h e t w o b i g g e s t e m i t-
ters—coming to terms. The two coun-
tries’ bilateral negotiations in advance of
the Paris meeting culminated in China
committing to the following key items:
reducing its carbon dioxide emissions
per unit of GDP by 60 to 65 percent from
its 2005 level by 2030; starting a
national system by 2017 to cap carbon
emissions in key energy-intensive heavy
industrial sectors and to incentivize emis-
Between 2009 and
2019, China emitted
nearly twice as much
total carbon dioxide as
did the United States.
That gap will only widen
as policy incentives in
Beijing preserve coal as
a core energy source for
decades to come, with
dire consequences for
the global atmospheric
and oceanic commons
sion reductions by forcing companies to
buy and sell permits to emit; prioritizing
the development of renewable energy
sources; and aiming to reach peak car-
bon dioxide emissions by “around
2030,” after which those emissions
would decline.
These targets were not especially
ambitious, and yet Beijing has still gen-
erally fallen short of them—for instance,
it launched a national emission-trading
scheme on only a limited basis and about
four years behind schedule. Tellingly,
the government work report delivered by
Premier Li Keqiang at the 13th National
People’s Congress in March makes no
bold commitments and says only that
China will meet targets for “intended
nationally determined contributions” by
2030. Current climate diplomacy, as
embodied by the Conference of the Par-
ties process, under the auspices of the
UNFCCC, treats China as indispensable
due to the scale of its greenhouse gas
emissions. But in the roughly six years
that have elapsed since Beijing signed
the Paris agreement, the country’s
actions have only exposed the agree-
ment’s fundamental weakness: its
inability to enforce true accountability in
the face of obdurate national interests.
Data from the nongovernmental
organization Global Energy Monitor
show that between 2015 and 2020, Chi-
nese firms added approximately 275
gigawatts of gross coal-fired power gen-
eration capacity—larger than the entire
coal-fired fleet of the United States, the
world’s third-largest coal consumer.
More than 85 percent of this recently
installed capacity uses modern super-
critical and ultra-supercritical boiler
technology—an expensive investment
meant to last a long time—locking in
demand for decades to come and under-
lining the renewal of China’s long-term
vows with coal.
When it comes to climate change,
the United States should compete, not
cooperate, with China. As multiple
UNFCCC participants now contemplate
stricter emission targets, Chinese lead-
ers will not do the same. Instead, they
will cater to domestic economic interests
and immediate energy security concerns
and reject emission-reduction commit-
ments that require significant deviation
from China’s present course. Beijing
insists that its enormous population and
relatively modest average income clas-
sify China as a less developed country for
the purpose of climate negotiations and
thus that Chinese leaders should not be
expected to curb emissions at the same
rate as developed countries. It is true
that China emits less per capita than
many wealthy countries. But its per
capita emissions are already higher than
those of some industrialized countries,
such as Italy and the United Kingdom.
Moreover, the absolute quantity of
China’s emissions—which, at the end of
the day, is the number that actually mat-
ters to the earth’s atmosphere—is stag-
gering. Between 2009 and 2019, China
emitted nearly twice as much total car-
bon dioxide as did the United States.
That gap will only widen as policy incen-
tives in Beijing preserve coal as a core
energy source for decades to come, with
dire consequences for the global atmo-
spheric and oceanic commons. It will be
incredibly hard to wean China off its
overdependence on coal. Leaders at both
the national and the local level are bound
to the cheap fuel, which spurs the eco-
nomic growth that ensures their political
survival.
Local officials hungrily tap into coal
to boost growth figures just long enough
to win promotion to higher assignments
elsewhere. They think in the short term
and typically prefer to invest in projects
under their jurisdiction, rather than
crafting more climate-friendly systems
that cross provincial lines and optimize
the use of energy but require political
negotiations and the possible surrender
of control. Consequently, China is lit-
tered with irrational energy-intensive
investments, including unnecessary coal
plants. A core pillar of China’s economy
remains its tremendous capacity to build
infrastructure, which is dependent on
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 53
emission-intensive industries.
To escape the economic downturn
that has accompanied the COVID-19
pandemic, China has relied on coal-fired
heavy industry to boost GDP growth. In
2020, Chinese blast furnaces and mills
produced over one billion metric tons of
crude steel—a historic high. Aluminum
smelters also produced record volumes
during 2020, as did cement plants, with
China’s production of each commodity
accounting for nearly 60 percent of the
global total. All of this will likely get
worse, since construction appears
poised to expand. Excavator sales, one of
the best leading indicators of economic
activity in China, hit a record high in
2020. Heavy-equipment buying sprees
suggest that local contractors, the people
outside government best positioned to
anticipate future construction projects,
see major new work on the horizon.
This, in turn, portends the substan-
tial continued production of steel,
cement, and other high-emission com-
modities in the coming years. China may
ultimately adhere to its pledged goal of
ensuring that its carbon emissions peak
by 2030. But even if China’s emissions in
2031 turn out to be lower than those of
2030, the high-carbon mark it is on pace
to set will make Beijing’s supposed vic-
tory a loss for the global climate overall,
not to mention a Pyrrhic victory for
China itself. The costs of China’s stub-
born coal habit will be severe. The coun-
try’s own coal users and the plants being
built abroad as part of the Belt and Road
Initiative could burn 100 billion metric
tons of coal between now and 2060. This
estimate is conservative, factoring in
existing coal-fired power plants, coal
power stations under construction, coal-
to-chemicals facilities, and industrial
boilers, while also taking into consider-
ation the meaningful expansion of
renewable and nuclear energy in the
country. One hundred billion metric
tons of coal would bury all five boroughs
of New York City under a 340-foot-tall
pile. Burning it would likely raise atmo-
spheric carbon dioxide levels by nearly
ten percent from their current levels.
A GREEN FAÇADE
China’s climate diplomacy stands at a
great remove from this carbonaceous
industrial reality. Chinese leaders insist
that their country is committed to fight-
ing climate change, pointing to its con-
siderable investments in renewable
energy and its efforts to boost power
generation through nuclear, natural gas,
wind, and solar sources. China’s power
generation investments on their face
suggest that coal might be yielding to
these renewables.
Between 2014 and 2020, the coun-
54 | GLOBAL AGE June 2021
try added 235 gigawatts of solar power
capacity and 205 gigawatts of wind
power capacity, according to China’s
National Energy Administration, a com-
bined sum nearly twice as large as the
roughly 225 net gigawatts of coal power
station capacity added during that time.
But intermittent electricity sources,
including many forms of renewable
energy, require backup power genera-
tion to maintain the stability of the grid.
The CCP cannot risk blackouts, which
would cripple economic activity and
undermine the party’s standing.
A significant electricity supply cri-
sis—or crises over time—could morph
into a fundamental crisis of political
legitimacy. As a result, China remains
committed to coal. In 2020, coal-fired
plants ran at an average utilization
rate—a measure of what percentage of
time in a given year a facility actually
produces electricity—of about 50 per-
cent, far higher than sources of wind (24
percent) and solar (15 percent) energy.
China also surges physical supplies of
coal to maintain the stability of the elec-
tric grid during cold spells and heat
waves. The Chinese rail system handled
In Chinese foreign
policy, climate change
does not hold the same
environmental and
moral importance that it
does for Americans
a record volume of coal bound for power
plants during a cold snap in December
2020. Challenges to the stability of the
electric grid will proliferate if invariably
intermittent renewable energy makes up
a greater share of China’s power supply.
The United States uses natural gas
to back up renewable energy, but China’s
attempts to replicate the U.S. shale boom
have failed, and the country already
imports more than 40 percent of the
natural gas it consumes. Herein arises an
underappreciated national security con-
cern. China’s gas imports used to come
primarily through pipelines from
Myanmar, Russia, and Central Asia, but
to satisfy future demand, China will have
to rely increasingly on seaborne imports
of liquefied natural gas. If gas-fired
plants become a larger part of China’s
electricity portfolio, maritime supply
lines will become all the more sensitive
for Beijing; a rival power could block
seaborne gas shipments and thereby
destabilize China’s electric grid. That
strategic consideration is yet another
factor favoring the persistence of coal in
China.
Chinese officials proclaim that they
are shuttering coal plants. Indeed, by
one count, China closed 46 gigawatts of
coal power capacity between 2015 and
2020. But a deeper look at the retirement
of these facilities reveals that China
remains as committed to coal as before.
Authorities have mostly closed coal
plants in wealthy coastal provinces such
as Guangdong to clear up local air and
open real estate for more revenue-
boosting projects. But they have then
simply shifted such facilities to poorer,
inland provinces, from where coal-
powered electricity is effectively
exported by wire to coastal industrial
hubs.
COMPETITION FOR THE
GREATER GOOD
In Chinese foreign policy, climate
change does not hold the same environ-
mental and moral importance that it
does for many American policymakers.
Beijing’s fundamental goal remains pro-
moting the CCP’s rule, image, and influ-
ence. It can further this goal through
participating in the global green econ-
omy: selling electric vehicles and batter-
ies, rare-earth minerals, and wind tur-
bine components. Or it can use climate
negotiations to demand that the United
States and others accommodate Chinese
economic, political, and security impera-
tives in exchange for promises that will
likely remain unfulfilled.
To force meaningful change, the
United States must build a climate coali-
tion to put pressure on China and its
exporters. Such action could bolster
reformers in China by allowing them to
advocate deeper and faster decarboniza-
tion on the grounds that it would
increase China’s national competitive-
ness. The pressure created by a carbon
taxation regime among industrialized
democracies would help empower
China’s domestic energy-transition advo-
cates against opponents who seek to
keep the country’s energy sources rooted
in near-term local imperatives that fos-
ter continued dependence on coal. Cli-
mate competition will allow the United
States to win twice, thwarting both Chi-
nese coercion and potentially irrevers-
ible ecological damage.
Negotiating proactively with China
cannot curtail climate change; Beijing
would impose unacceptable costs while
failing to deliver on its end of any bar-
gain. Only a united climate coalition has
the potential to bring China to the table
for productive negotiations, rather than
the extractive ones it currently pursues.
And only the bottom line—not moral
exhortations—will convince China to
mend its ways and seriously cut its emis-
sions.
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
War Crimes
Who’s A Terrorist?
Some say freedom fighters are not terrorists
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T
he banning of TLP as a terrorist
group has produced an oddity.
Many liberals oppose this action
against an organisation whose vile
ideology contradicts liberal tenets as
their respect for human rights extends
even to groups they oppose strongly.
To grasp why they oppose this label-
ling, one must first define terrorism.
Literally, it means spreading terror as a
tactic to achieve a goal. But this would
cover psychopaths torturing victims for
pleasure; husbands beating wives to
exact future docility and extortionists
threatening people. These divergent
events are serious issues but deserve
separate labels. The interest here is on
action with political goals.
How does one define such terror-
ism? The global community lacks a
shared legal one. Many analysts see ter-
rorism as “premeditated mass killing of
civilians to spread terror as a way to
achieve (just or unjust) political goals”.
Premeditation and mass murder of civil-
ians are then critical to terrorism. This
definition builds on the way entities
widely called terrorist, eg Al Qaeda, oper-
ate. It helps in analysing terrorism issues
broader than the TLP one.
Some say freedom fighters are not
terrorists. However, freedom is a goal
while terrorism a tactic to achieve it. Not
all those who pursue freedom use terror-
ism (attacking civilians) or even mili-
tancy (attacking only armies) as a tactic.
Some use peaceful means, eg Jinnah.
Even where these may not work, global
law, key philosophies and religions say
one must still not attack civilians, only
armies. So freedom fighters deliberately
killing civilians do commit terrorism.
States like Israel, India and Paki-
stan too are accused of state terrorism
when they kill civilians while attacking
fighters, as now in Gaza. Such action is
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
It would then be odd TLP riots were similar to the Janu-
ary attack on the US Capitol in causing
if the entity is declared death, destruction etc. The perpetrators
terrorist but none of its in the US were not charged for terrorism
but specific crimes like murder and
leaders who committed
arson given lack of proof of pre-planned
the acts are convicted of destruction. The same must happen with
terrorism the TLP. The fear is that while the entity
will be banned as terrorist, individual
terrorism if proof emerges, eg in ques-
perpetrators will be absolved of all
tioning officials or reviewing official
records, that the killing of civilians was
charges. It would then be odd if the entity
is declared terrorist but none of its lead-
premeditated state strategy. Suspicion ers who committed the acts are con-
exists but not clear proof yet that pre- victed of terrorism. This is possible as
meditation exists for some states. But if entities are designated as terrorist first
civilian deaths occur spontaneously dur-
via state administrative action. But indi-
ing combat without proof of premedita-
viduals can be declared terrorists only
tion, it wouldn’t be terrorism. It may still
via judicial trials with multiple appeals.
be war crimes though if proof emerges
The mass civilian deaths terrorists
the state didn’t take due care to avoid
cause is a huge threat that forces states to
civilian deaths. However, the US nuclear
relax laws to crush them, thus under-
attacks on Japan clearly constitute ter-
mining due process. Human rights activ-
rorism, in fact the single biggest attacks
ists oppose relaxing them too much even
in modern history, as they involved pre-
for blatant terrorism. To stretch the
meditated killing of civilians despite the
high-penalty terrorism definition to
goal being to end the war.
cover lesser acts that don’t involve pre-
TLP protests cause a few seemingly
meditated mass civilian deaths is even
spontaneous civilian deaths. But the
trickier. Thus, our Anti-Terrorism Act
state gives no proof they were premedi-
must be revised for its overly broad defi-
tated, based on un-coerced statements of
nition of terrorism. There is no mention
its leaders or its communication records.
of premeditation. It even covers attacks
Until it does so, it is wrong to call it ter- on non-civilians, eg combatants like
rorist. While the TLP shares its ideology
police and army. It covers situations well
with the TTP, their tactics differ. The
short of deaths like causing fear, extor-
latter clearly carries out premeditated
tion of money or threatening a public
killing of civilians which doesn’t emerge
servant. Such lesser acts must be covered
from open political protests but hidden
under regular criminal laws that give
attacks. However, TLP supporters must
sufficient due process rather than terror-
not go scot-free, but be charged for spe-
ism. Finally, there is nothing about pre-
cific crime they have committed, eg kid-
meditated killing of civilians by state
napping. The laws on these carry stiff
agencies. Thus, there is a big risk the law
individual penalties without letting
will be used to stifle political opponents
states ban a whole entity. State elements
on lesser wrongs while letting state per-
supporting it must be punished too.
petrators of terrorism go scot-free.
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 55
Dictatorship vs Democracy
Leaders’ legacy
Which leader gave us lasting change?
By The KIPS Bureau
Lahore, Pakistan
T ransformative leaders positively
change a state’s direction. They
induce big changes in political,
economic and social institutions and
policies whose influence lasts for
decades to give major progress. Lincoln,
Mahathir and De Gaulle adorn this
category.
Such leaders differ from revolution-
ary ones like Lenin or Mao who led
armed struggles to overthrow a regime
and change the basic political and eco-
nomic system, eg from autocracy to
democracy, though usually with mixed
results. Transformative leaders work
within the existing system but bring
about major changes in institutions and
policies.
Yet the literature on such leaders
eschews a messiah syndrome by tying
their success not to individual supernat-
ural qualities but to experience, a capa-
ble team and favourable context. Thus,
populist leaders promising change based
on personal traits like honesty or work in
unrelated fields like sports are perhaps
not transformative. Also, while the focus
is usually on those giving positive
change, one can also talk of
transformative leaders who gave lasting
negative change.
Which Pakistani leaders gave last-
ing positive or negative change? One
must begin with Jinnah. While he was a
transformative freedom fighter, his role
in setting the economic and political
direction of the new state was modest,
partly due to the short time he lived on.
Liaquat Ali ably dealt with the refugee
crisis and set up a governance apparatus
but one that replicated colonial institu-
tions. He failed to set a new economic
and political direction. His most lasting
legacy was becoming a US ally which we
globalagemagazine.kipscss.net
continued to faithfully be for decades.
US ties gave more pain than gain over the
years.
Ayub is wrongly seen by some as our
best leader. Yet his centralised political
system ended with his era and didn’t gel
with our ethnic diversity. His economic
model fuelled by short-term US aid was
elitist and ignored equity. Both directly
led to the 1971 crisis. His economic and
political policies were reversed soon
after his departure. His lasting legacies
were corruption in the highest office,
cementing of the army’s political role
and elite state bias. His industrial and
green revolution policies had some last-
ing impact but also led to elitism and
inequity.
Bhutto dismantled Ayub’s system
quickly. He introduced a devolved par-
liamentary constitutional system that
was well-suited given our ethnic diver-
sity and which has survived for decades
despite the best attempts by unelected
forces to end or hobble it. Yet, while
introducing it in theory, he himself
undermined it in practice via his auto-
cratic rule. He politicised the bureau-
cracy. His state-led economic model was
in line with the times but was poorly exe-
cuted. He crafted an independent for-
eign policy but it did not survive his end.
But his nuclear ambitions did. The ties
he formed with Gulf states continue to
give remittances that balance out our
perpetual trade deficits. But it also led to
brain drain and dependency.
It was Zia who mainly shaped the
deeply flawed social, political, economic,
security and foreign policy structures of
today’s Pakistan. In each sphere, he
injected new toxic strains, elevated exist-
ing ones hugely or reversed gains from
previous eras. Socially, he cemented
bigotry, deep conservatism and politics
of faith. Politically, he ensured a move
from issues-based to corrupt patronage
politics. Political corruption became
endemic in his era. The foreign policy
mix included raising militants to achieve
regional aims, which unleashed huge
terrorism at home later. The security
policy mix included extensive surveil-
lance of society by intelligence agencies.
Economically, he left a state that ran
high fiscal and external deficits and debt
levels. The involvement of the military in
business increased hugely to reduce pri-
vate sector space.
Pervez Musharraf ruled for long but
gave no lasting political or economic
change. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz
Sharif had brief, interrupted eras that
too gave little lasting change. That said,
the 2008-2018 civilian era preceding the
current failed hybrid one did produce
incremental and gradual positive politi-
cal change without being
transformative.
So our most transformative ruler
was Zia, but unluckily, one with a very
toxic legacy. Other dictators also gave
major negative legacies. The most posi-
tive legacy is Bhutto’s parliamentary
system though he gave many negative
legacies too. Unelected forces have
partly undermined even that positive
legacy. No leader gave a positive eco-
nomic legacy in the form of a vibrant,
sustainable and equitable economic
model. Given this sorry story, its unsur-
prising that Pakistan suffers today from
major perpetual political instability,
economic stagnation, external servility,
extremism and insecurity, even by South
Asian standards.
June 2021 GLOBAL AGE | 57
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