Twenty years ago next month, the British government gave the Bank of England the freedom to set interest rates. That decision was part of a trend that made central bankers the most powerful financial actors on the planet, not only setting rates but also buying trillions of dollars’ worth of assets, targeting exchange rates and […]
US President Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy – based on tactics and transactions, rather than strategic vision – has produced a series of dazzling flip-flops. Lacking any guiding convictions, much less clear priorities, Trump has confounded America’s allies and strategic partners, particularly in Asia – jeopardising regional security in the process. Read Here – […]
Since 1950, middle-income countries have nearly always grown faster than expected. Looking just at the past decade and a half, current middle-income countries that had an average gross national income of $2,381 in 2000 have seen that more than double, to $4,951 in 2015. U.S. income, in contrast, climbed just 15 percent over the same […]
Roscosmos has a near monopoly on the Russian space industry. It encompasses more than 60 companies and 250,000 people. And in the spirit of collaboration, it is using those resources to do new things, like develop technology, Earth observation capacity, and communications systems for Vietnam, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. Oh, and they are helping […]
Pakistan’s religio-nationalism started under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1972-77) and got a major impetus under General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation drive through the 1980s. This drive was also located in nurturing public acceptance of jihad as state policy in Afghanistan and later in India. Sadly, we have indoctrinated at least one or two generations with the idea that […]
The post-Cold War international system is coming to an end, and with it easy assumptions about the character of U.S. strategy toward the world’s great powers. After a period in which a dominant, U.S.-led Western coalition largely set and enforced the rules of the international order — and in which other major powers, such as […]
Jamsheed Marker has been Pakistan’s ambassador in more countries than any other diplomat. He has a plethora of information and memories from those assignments in different capitals of the world. He has seen the formative phase of Pakistan from close quarters and is witness to some of the most decisive phases of the country’s history, […]
Pakistani strategic culture stems from pathological geopolitics infused with a Salafi jihadist ideology, suffused by paranoia and neurosis. The principal but not exclusive reason that Afghanistan has seen discernibly improved quality and quantity in its forces as well as fighting capacity, yet continues to face a strategic stalemate, is the Pakistani security elites’ malign strategic […]
Relations between China and India have become strained of late. India complains China is preventing it from bringing to book Pakistan-sheltered terrorists, blocking its entry into an elite group of nuclear suppliers and pushing ahead with infrastructure projects in Pakistan that threaten its security interests. Read Here – South China Morning Post
Two international lending institutions and Pakistan’s central bank have raised concerns about the debt burden of a huge China-led infrastructure program on the country’s improving but fragile finances. Surging Chinese imports for the initiative, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor program, have complicated Pakistan’s balance of payments problems during its second year of economic recovery […]
looking beyond borders 