Historically, Pakistan’s private sector, projecting a neutral image, preferred to watch electoral politics from a safe distance. This is not the case anymore. In these changing times, as the country prepares for general elections next week, the business class, much like other segments of society, is engaged in the process.
President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin has all the makings of a political disaster. Millions of Americans believe Putin has some sinister influence over Trump. The Justice Department just indicted a dozen Russian military hackers for meddling in the 2016 election. Commentators and congressmen are demanding that Trump cancel Monday’s sit-down. And yet the howls of outrage seem to have made Trump only dig in deeper.
Also Read: What To Expect From The Helsinki Summit
Pakistan’s general election is set for July 25, and the battle lines are clear. Three parties are contending for the national leadership—the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the Pakistan’s People’s Party (PPP), and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)—and all three have big issues to confront: the problem of deep ethnic divisions, the implications of Chinese-backed economic growth, and the influence of the military.
Also Read: The Key Players In Pakistan’s Election
Pakistan today suffers from a crisis of governance. The radical right is ascendant. Institutional decay is advanced; the state’s writ is eroded. We soon go to the polls in a divisive, belligerent and to a great extent despondent environment. It is time for serious reflection and introspection.
Also Read: Who wants to be PM?
By allowing governments to monitor, understand, and control their citizens far more closely than ever before, AI will offer authoritarian countries a plausible alternative to liberal democracy, the first since the end of the Cold War. That will spark renewed international competition between social systems.
Also Read: Liberal World
On Monday, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet in Helsinki. Among the Russian foreign policy elite, there is a sense of cautious optimism about the summit. Despite a clear understanding of the current obstacle to improved relations between Washington and Moscow, many believe that the two presidents can find a way to begin easing tensions.
At this time last year, the global economy was experiencing strong, widespread growth, with even the long-stagnant European Union staging a robust recovery. But with key indicators of trade and investment now weakening, a new crisis – not least a global trade war – could quickly bring the global upturn to a halt.
The United States has a long history of intervening overseas to solve one problem and inadvertently creating others. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration armed rebels fighting Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed government only to find that some of them later targeted the United States…It’s worth remembering these precedents as the Trump administration prepares to reimpose sanctions on Iran as part of its withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.
China’s US imports aren’t large enough to match Trump’s tariffs dollar for dollar, but there are other levers available, such as taxes and added regulation on US companies, slowing deal approvals, or boycotts of American products.
It was a moment Germans might call a Katastrophe. No translation needed. At what was supposed to be a simple breakfast meeting, President Donald Trump kicked off this week’s annual NATO summit with a televised tirade belittling Germany as “captive to Russia” over its energy policy and sneering at the country’s military spending levels.
