ARTICLES OF THE DAY

December 10, 2021

TOM FOWDY, RUSSIA TODAY .......................................................................................................................... 2

RACHEL MARSDEN, RUSSIA TODAY.................................................................................................................. 4

JASON BORDOFF AND MEGHAN L. O’SULLIVAN, FOREIGN AFFAIRS ................................................................. 6

FAISAL BARI, DAWN NEWS ............................................................................................................................ 15

DELWAR HOSSAIN, THE DIPLOMAT ............................................................................................................... 21

SHIHOKO GOTO, THE DIPLOMAT ................................................................................................................... 26

ATIF SHAFIQUE, DAILY TIMES......................................................................................................................... 28

ATLE HETLAND, THE NATION ......................................................................................................................... 30

 The political fantasist who makes even Trump look humble
Tom Fowdy, Russia Today
ritain’s ongoing
B
struggle to fully
understand and accept
its role in the world is
perfectly embodied by its
latest foreign secretary, who is
attracting the wrong kind of
attention for her delusional
speeches and lack of humility.
Has Britain’s new foreign
secretary registered on your
radar yet? Liz Truss has only
been in the role for three
months, but she is
unquestionably the most
embarrassing top politician
the UK has ever seen.
That’s quite a claim, but it’s
not unfounded. On
Wednesday, she gave a speech
to the hawkish US, Japan, and
Taiwan-funded
neoconservative think-tank
the Henry Jackson Society,
titled ‘Building the Network
of Liberty’. The address was a
messy bombardment of Cold
War chauvinism,
exceptionalism, delusion,
arrogance, and dogmatism, all
of which was so aggrandising
that actually it made Donald
Trump’s bullish rhetoric on
America seem quite humble in
comparison.
Truss told her audience,
“Britain is the greatest country
on Earth. Whoever you are,
wherever you come from, you
can achieve your dreams,” and
“our foreign policy will
project pride in our country
and in all its elements,
including our great cities, our
towns and our countryside.”
She also made clear her
explicit intention to “pull
more countries into the orbit
of freedom.” Only days ago,
she was stating that Britain
shouldn’t worry about its
historical crimes, and was
then pictured posing in a tank
in a Margaret Thatcher-style
photo. The message is clear
enough.
Truss is the embodiment of
Britain’s foreign policy in the
post-Brexit era, which is out
of touch with reality and
increasingly built on
soundbites, ultra-nationalism,
and outright fantasy. She
occupies the office she holds
not because she is in any way
competent, but because of her
base brand value to domestic
voters, as seen in the kind of
nonsense trotted out in her
speech. Britain would be as
well having Al Murray’s
comic creation the Pub
Landlord as foreign secretary;
he says the same kind of
things.
Truss is obviously not a
strategist, but a salesperson,
peddling to the public the idea
that Britain is reclaiming its
lost status as a great power and
is on a crusade to dominate the
rest of the world with its
‘sacred values’.
Even worse is that these
egotistical soundbites are
somehow deemed to be an
adequate substitute from the
economic fallout of leaving
the European Union, showing
how identity politics – and not
practical thinking – are
increasingly at the helm. Who
could embody that more than
Truss?
Global Britain is a global
sham, and the so-called
“network of liberty” is a mere
foreign policy mantra that
might win some votes but will
deliver no tangible gains for
Britain.
Why? Because the world is
changing, mostly driven by
the rise of China. There is an
ongoing shift in the global
economy’s centre of gravity
from the Euro-Atlantic area to
the Asia-Pacific. The
countries of the West, who
have been globally dominant
since the rise of the European
colonial empires in the 17th
century, are sensitive to that
shift. There is a widespread
sense of insecurity derived
from a loss of status. As such,
Western countries have tried
to arrest this shift in the form
of Indo-Pacific strategies,
which are designed to both
contain the rise of China and
cement themselves as the
dominant powers within what
will become the world’s new
financial epicentre.
The US is spearheading this,
but the UK has specifically
blended this strategic
consideration in with the
marketing of Brexit, which
already incorporated Neo-
imperialistic themes of being
out of Europe, but embracing
the world.
However, what will bring
about the failure of Britain at
large – and Liz Truss
specifically – is the lack of
self-awareness and inability to
understand how offensive this
rhetoric comes across,
particularly in countries that
were previously part of the
British empire.
Truss is effectively spelling it
out that Britain's foreign
policy is about nothing more
than securing ideological
dominance, framing the
complexity of world affairs
into a binary struggle between
freedom and authoritarianism,
and talking about bringing
them into the “orbit of
freedom.”
She is so indulged in self-
exceptionalism that, similar to
the US, she is unable to see the
reality that some countries
might just not want that. Is
that kind of talk appealing to
Africa? Or Southeast Asia? Or
the Indian subcontinent? Or
the Middle East? As was seen
in some of the rhetoric
espoused following Barbados’
decision to scrap the British
monarchy and become a
republic, the contemporary
leadership of Britain does not
grasp that for all its successes
and soft power, countries are
not asking to be ‘rescued’ and
do not ‘belong’ in the British
sphere of influence.
If they don’t want Chinese country which makes up the
hegemony, they certainly numbers in aimlessly
don’t want Anglophone following America’s will.
hegemony either. While Truss There is also the unspoken
says she doesn’t care about the truth – which Truss will never
past, many countries do, acknowledge – that in a post-
having suffered atrocities on a Brexit world, Britain will have
scale the UK doesn’t take to rely on China as an
seriously and refuses to important partner in trade and
account for. It’s easy to investment, and doesn’t have
dismiss colonialism if you as many alternative options as
have never suffered from it it would like to think.
and don’t understand what it
The contradictions were on
means, but the trauma is still
clear display in Truss’s
fresh in the memories of
speech, where Beijing was
many. The English-speaking
mentioned just once. She said,
world has a mentality of “it’s
“China now spends over twice
in the past, get over it – but
as much on development
we’re still more righteous than
finance as the US. 44 low- and
you.” Not only is this
middle-income countries have
condescending, it is ridiculous
debts to Beijing in excess of
and plain ignorant. This is
10% of their GDP,” but then
why Truss’s rhetoric will be
proceeded to propose just a £9
met with indifference, if not
billion annual fund to try and
amusement, by so many
counter China.
nations.
As a reminder, the total value
Accordingly, the “network of
of China’s accumulative Belt
liberty” is destined to be a
and Road projects amounts to
failure, not least because there
$3.7 trillion. Such is the
is no obvious plan to
product of a foreign policy of
implement it and it massively
hot air, from a country that is
exaggerates Britain’s role and
increasingly pretending to be
influence.
something which it is not.
The reality is that modern
Britain is a passenger, a
 Is France ready to embrace a new revolution?
Rachel Marsden, Russia Today
T
he upcoming French
presidential election
isn’t just another vote.
According to one candidate,
it’s a potential opportunity to
reverse course and stop being
“vassals of the US, NATO,
and the EU.” Will the people
take it, though? For far too
long, French voters have
wanted their presidential
candidates to bring them
change. Just not too much of
it, s’il vous plaît. For far too
long, they have watched their
social security system provide
them with less and less –
meaning more out-of-pocket
costs – as taxation on their
increasingly poorly
compensated work fails to
follow the same trajectory,
while their cost of living
increases.
Meanwhile, France has fallen
into bed with the US-led
Western economic collective
suicide to the point of
mimicking the American
establishment’s worst
tendencies, from
deindustrialisation and
outsourcing of industry to
low-cost foreign jurisdictions,
to adhering to whatever
globalist narratives are cooked
up. The entire system is sold
as some kind of benefit to the
entirety of the Western
economic and political sphere,
but it really just benefits
global corporatism and its
ruling elites.
France is a middle power, like
Canada, the United Kingdom,
Australia, and others. And
there’s a real role for such
countries in the world that
they repeatedly fail to exploit,
preferring instead to shoot
themselves in the foot by
simply going along with the
conventional narrative. Yet on
the rare occasion when one of
these countries dares to assert
its own sovereignty and
breaks away from the
globalist straitjacket, it finds a
distinct advantage. Which is
why they should do so more
often. For instance, France
and Canada ultimately saved
themselves considerable
hassle (and money) by
refusing to blindly follow the
US into Iraq. Meanwhile,
critics assumed that when the
UK did the previously
unthinkable and broke away
from the European Union in
the interests of regaining full
sovereignty over its own
decision-making, it would
quickly wither away.
The arguments often used on
these countries by opponents
of their independence is that
they simply aren’t enough
unto themselves. These
nations are treated like trophy
wives who can’t survive
without their husband’s
protection. France needs the
EU, without which it would be
steamrolled by the US,
according to conventional
wisdom. Canada needs the
US, and particularly its
military might, for fear of
being targeted by pretty much
any imaginary global baddie
who might want to have a go.
As the UK has already shown
post-Brexit, leaving a December 5 which seemed to
dependent relationship can
allow you to date around, play
one suitor off the other, all
while enjoying your new-
found freedom.
Until now, every French
president elected this century
has attempted to convince
voters that they’d restore their
once-cherished way of life.
And every one of them has not
only failed, but has presided
over an overt decline. None
has truly had the courage to
take the more drastic
measures needed to restore the
kind of economic and political
independence and national
freedom of choice that would
even have the chance to trickle
down to the average citizen.
Into this breach has stepped
63-year-old former political
commentator Eric Zemmour –
a different kind of presidential
contender, running second to
incumbent Emmanuel Macron
in some early polls – who has
spent a career thinking about
the broad strokes of his
campaign platform, all of
which point to greater French
independence. Zemmour
referred to France at his
candidacy announcement as
the “country of the Concorde
and nuclear power plants,
which invented the cinema
and the automobile, this
country that you seek
everywhere with despair, of
which your children have
nostalgia without even having
known it, this country that you
cherish, and which is
disappearing.”
A few days later, at a massive
campaign launch rally on
be teeming with young
college-aged people, the
crowd cheered at each
statement as Zemmour
promised that, if elected, he’d
reduce the difference between
gross and net salaries, and
“massively reduce production
taxes for all companies,” in
the interests of France once
again becoming a “global
industrial power” to create
jobs and spark innovation. He
promised to put major
questions of national
importance to voters directly
via referenda, and pull France
out of NATO.
“We are France,” Zemmour
said. “We are not the vassals
of the United States, of
NATO, of the European
Union.” He added that France
should “talk to all countries,
the US, China, Russia, but
also be skeptical of all, since
geopolitics is never a long,
quiet river.”
This isn’t incremental change
that the former editorialist is
laying out. It’s revolutionary
change back to the era where
France enjoyed independence
and prosperity under President
Charles de Gaulle, whose
blueprint Zemmour seems to
want to follow. Some critics
are saying that the world has
changed too much for
Zemmour’s ideas, that he’s
living in the past and his
ambitions are useless
anachronisms. But it’s a bit
like buying a lottery ticket, in
that French voters can never
hope to win if they can’t find
the courage to even take a
chance.

Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Foreign Affairs
I
t is not hard to understand
why people dream of a
future defined by clean
energy. As greenhouse gas
emissions continue to grow
and as extreme weather events
become more frequent and
harmful, the current efforts to
move beyond fossil fuels
appear woefully inadequate.
Adding to the frustration, the
geopolitics of oil and gas are
alive and well—and as fraught
as ever. Europe is in the throes
of a full-fledged energy crisis,
with staggering electricity
prices forcing businesses
across the continent to shutter
and energy firms to declare
bankruptcy, positioning
Russian President Vladimir
Putin to take advantage of his
neighbors’ struggles by
leveraging his country’s
natural gas reserves. In
September, blackouts
reportedly led Chinese Vice
Premier Han Zheng to instruct
his country’s state-owned
energy companies to secure
supplies for winter at any cost.
And as oil prices surge above
$80 per barrel, the United
States and other energy-
hungry countries are pleading
with major producers,
including Saudi Arabia, to
ramp up their output, giving
Riyadh more clout in a newly
tense relationship and
suggesting the limits of
Washington’s energy
“independence.”
Proponents of clean energy
hope (and sometimes
promise) that in addition to
mitigating climate change, the
energy transition will help
make tensions over energy
resources a thing of the past. It
Green Upheaval
is true that clean energy will
transform geopolitics—just
not necessarily in the ways
many of its champions expect.
The transition will reconfigure
many elements of
international politics that have
shaped the global system
since at least World War II,
significantly affecting the
sources of national power, the
process of globalization,
relations among the great
powers, and the ongoing
economic convergence of
developed countries and
developing ones. The process
will be messy at best. And far
from fostering comity and
cooperation, it will likely
produce new forms of
competition and confrontation
long before a new, more
copacetic geopolitics takes
shape.
Talk of a smooth transition to
clean energy is fanciful: there
is no way that the world can
avoid major upheavals as it
remakes the entire energy
system, which is the lifeblood
of the global economy and
underpins the geopolitical
order. Moreover, the
conventional wisdom about
who will gain and who will
lose is frequently off base. The
so-called petrostates, for
example, may enjoy feasts
before they suffer famines,
because dependence on the
dominant suppliers of fossil
fuels, such as Russia and
Saudi Arabia, will most likely
rise before it falls. And the
poorest parts of the world will
need to use vast quantities of
energy—far more than in the
past—to prosper even as they
also face the worst
consequences of climate
change. Meanwhile, clean
energy will come to represent
a new source of national
power but will itself introduce
new risks and uncertainties.
These are not arguments to
slow or abandon the energy
transition. On the contrary,
countries around the world
must accelerate efforts to
combat climate change. But
these are arguments to
encourage policymakers to
look beyond the challenges of
climate change itself and to
appreciate the risks and
dangers that will result from
the jagged transition to clean
energy. More consequential
right now than the long-term
geopolitical implications of a
distant net-zero world are the
sometimes counterintuitive
short-term perils that will
arrive in the next few decades,
as the new geopolitics of clean
energy combines with the old
geopolitics of oil and gas. A
failure to appreciate the
unintended consequences of
various efforts to reach net
zero will not only have
security and economic
implications; it will also
undermine the energy
transition itself. If people
come to believe that ambitious
plans to tackle climate change
endanger energy reliability or
affordability or the security of
energy supplies, the transition
will slow. Fossil fuels might
eventually fade. The
politics—and geopolitics—of
energy will not.
PERSISTENT
PETROSTATES World War I
transformed oil into a strategic
commodity. In 1918, the
British statesman Lord
Curzon famously said that the
Allied cause had “floated to
victory upon a wave of oil.”
From that point forward,
British security depended far
more on oil from Persia than it
did on coal from Newcastle, as
energy became a source of
national power and its absence
a strategic vulnerability. In the
century that followed,
countries blessed with oil and
gas resources developed their
societies and wielded outsize
power in the international
system, and countries where
the demand for oil outpaced
its production contorted their
foreign policies to ensure
continued access to it.
A move away from oil and gas
will reconfigure the world just
as dramatically. But
discussions about the shape of
a clean energy future too often
skip over some important
details. For one thing, even
when the world achieves net-
zero emissions, it will hardly
mean the end of fossil fuels. A
landmark report published in
2021 by the International
Energy Agency (IEA)
projected that if the world
reached net zero by 2050—as
the UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change has
warned is necessary to avoid
raising average global
temperatures by more than 1.5
degrees Celsius above
preindustrial levels and thus
prevent the worst impacts of
climate change—it would still
be using nearly half as much
natural gas as today and about
one-quarter as much oil. A
recent analysis carried out by
a team of researchers at
Princeton University similarly
found that if the United States
reached net zero by 2050, it
would still be using a total of
one-quarter to one-half as
much gas and oil as it does
today. That would be a vast
reduction. But oil and gas Norway, the United Kingdom,
producers would continue to and the United States—could
enjoy decades of leverage in the future constrain their
from their geologic troves. domestic output in response to
rising public pressure and to
There is no way to avoid
hasten the transition away
major upheavals while
from fossil fuels. As a result,
remaking the entire energy
oil producers such as the Gulf
system. Traditional suppliers
states—which have very
will benefit from the volatility
cheap, low-carbon oil, are less
in fossil fuel prices that will
dependent on the financial
inevitably result from a rocky
institutions now shying away
energy transition. The
from oil, and will face little
combination of pressure on
pressure to limit production—
investors to divest from fossil
could see their market shares
fuels and uncertainty about
increase. Providing more or
the future of oil is already
nearly all of the oil the world
raising concerns that
consumes would imbue them
investment levels may
with outsize geopolitical
plummet in the coming years,
clout, at least until oil use
leading oil supplies to decline
declines more markedly.
faster than demand falls—or
Other countries whose oil
to decline even as demand
industries might endure are
continues to rise, as it is doing
those whose resources can be
today. That outcome would
brought online quickly—such
produce periodic shortages
as Argentina and the United
and hence higher and more
States, which boast large
volatile oil prices. This
deposits of shale oil—and that
situation would boost the
can thereby attract investors
power of the petrostates by
who seek faster payback
increasing their revenue and
periods and may shy away
giving extra clout to OPEC,
from longer-cycle oil
whose members, including
investments given the
Saudi Arabia, control most of
uncertainties about oil’s long-
the world’s spare capacity and
term outlook.
can ramp global oil
production up or down in An even more intense version
short order. of this dynamic will play out
in natural gas markets. As the
In addition, the transition to
world starts to use less natural
clean energy will wind up
gas, the market shares of the
augmenting the influence of
small number of players that
some oil and gas exporters by
can produce it most cheaply
concentrating global
and most cleanly will rise,
production in fewer hands.
particularly if countries taking
Eventually, the demand for oil
strong climate action decide to
will decline significantly, but
curb their own output. For
it will remain substantial for
Europe, this will mean
decades to come. Many high-
increased dependence on
cost producers, such as those
Russian gas, especially with
in Canada and Russia’s Arctic
the advent of the Nord Stream
territory, could be priced out
2 pipeline connecting Russia
of the market as demand (and,
to Germany. Today’s calls
presumably, the price of oil)
from European lawmakers for
falls. Other oil-producing
Russia to increase its gas
countries that seek to be
output to avoid an energy
leaders when it comes to
crisis this winter are a
climate change—such as
reminder that Moscow’s
importance to Europe’s
energy security will rise
before it declines.
POWER FROM POWER In
order to understand the
geopolitics of a world moving
away from fossil fuels, it is
critical to grasp which
elements of being a clean
energy superpower will
actually yield geopolitical
influence. Here, too, reality
differs from the conventional
wisdom, and the transition
process will look very
different from the end state. In
the long run, innovation and
cheap capital will determine
who wins the clean energy
revolution. Countries with
both those attributes will
dominate in at least four ways.
One source of dominance—
the power to set standards for
clean energy—will be more
subtle than the geopolitical
power that came with oil
resources but just as enduring.
Internationally, a country or
company that sets global
standards for equipment
specifications or norms of
engagement maintains a
competitive advantage over
others. For example,
Australia, Chile, Japan, and
Saudi Arabia have emerged as
early adopters in trading low-
carbon hydrogen and
ammonia across borders and
thus may be able to set
infrastructure standards and
certification norms for those
fuel sources, giving their
favored technologies and
equipment an edge. And for
technologies that involve vast
quantities of data, such as
digital tools that optimize
electric grids or manage
consumer demand, whoever
defines the standards not only
will be able to export
compatible domestic systems
but also may be able to mine
data from them.
Standard setting will be
particularly important when it
comes to nuclear energy.
According to the IEA, global
nuclear energy generation will
need to double between now
and 2050 for the world to
achieve net-zero emissions.
As of 2018, of the 72 nuclear
reactors planned or under
construction outside Russia’s
borders, more than 50 percent
were being built by Russian
companies and around 20
percent by Chinese ones;
fewer than two percent were
being built by U.S.
companies. This will
increasingly enable Moscow
and Beijing to influence
norms regarding nuclear
nonproliferation and impose
new operational and safety
standards designed to give
their own companies a lasting
leg up in a sector that will
need to grow as the energy
transition unfolds.
Moving to a net-zero global
economy will lead to
conflicts—and ultimately
produce winners and losers.
A second source
dominance in a clean energy
world will be control of the
supply chain for minerals such
as cobalt, copper, lithium,
nickel, and rare earths, which
are critical to various clean
energy technologies,
including wind turbines and
electric vehicles. Here, the
analogy to oil power holds, to
an extent. According to the
IEA, should the world begin to
move with haste toward a
more sustainable energy mix,
demand for such substances
will far outstrip what is readily
available today; in the
agency’s estimation, a world
on track for net-zero
emissions in 2050 will by
2040 need six times as much
of them as it does today.
Meanwhile, global trade in
critical minerals will
skyrocket, from around ten
percent of energy-related
trade to roughly 50 percent by
2050. So over the course of
the transition, the small
number of countries that
supply the vast majority of
critical minerals will enjoy
newfound influence. Today, a
single country accounts for
more than half the global
supply of cobalt (the
Democratic Republic of the
Congo, or DRC), half the
supply of lithium (Australia),
and half the supply of rare
earths (China). By contrast,
the world’s three largest oil
producers—Russia, Saudi
Arabia, and the United
States—each account for just
ten percent of the world’s
global oil production.
Whereas smaller, poorer
countries, such as the DRC,
may be hesitant to use their
mineral strength to exert
pressure on more powerful
countries, China has already
demonstrated its willingness
to do so. China’s embargo on
the export of critical
of mineralsto Japan in 2010, in
the context of rising tensions
in the East China Sea, could
be a sign of things to come.
China’s control over the
inputs for many clean energy
technologies is not limited to
its mining prowess; it has an
even more dominant role in
the processing and refining of
critical minerals. At least for
the next decade, these realities
will give China real and
perceived economic and
geopolitical power. Yet in the
long term, this influence will
wane. The oil price spikes of
the 1970s led new players to
search for new sources of oil;
the mere prospect of political
manipulation of scarce
minerals is producing the
same phenomenon. Moreover,
such minerals can be recycled,
and substitutes for them will
also materialize.
The third element of clean
energy dominance will be the
ability to cheaply manufacture
components for new
technologies. This will not
confer the same advantages as
possessing oil or gas resources
has, however. China, for
example, accounts for the
manufacturing of two-thirds
of the world’s polysilicon and
90 percent of the
semiconductor “wafers” used
to make solar power cells. By
suddenly removing these
items from global supply
chains, China could create
major bottlenecks. But inputs
for clean energy products that
produce or store energy are
not the same as the energy
itself. If China did restrict
exports of solar panels or
batteries, the lights would not
go out. China would not be
able to bring economies to a
standstill overnight or put the
well-being and safety of
citizens at risk—as Russia did
when it curtailed natural gas
exports to Europe during the
frigid winters of 2006 and
2009.
To be sure, China’s actions
would create disruption,
dislocation, and inflation akin
to the effects of the delays in
computer chip exports
throughout 2021. Such
turmoil could stall the energy
transition if it encouraged
consumers to turn back to
gasoline vehicles or cancel
plans to install rooftop solar
panels. Yet even if China
adopted that tactic, over time,
markets would respond, and
other countries and companies
would generate their own
substitute products or
supplies—in a way that is
much harder to do with a
natural resource available
only in certain locations, such
as oil. A final way in which a
country could become a clean
energy superpower is through
the production and export of
low-carbon fuels. These
fuels—especially hydrogen
and ammonia—will be critical
to the transition to a net-zero
world given their potential
role in decarbonizing hard-to-
electrify sectors, such as steel
production; fueling trucks,
ships, and other heavy
vehicles; and balancing grids
supplied primarily by
renewable sources of energy
that can experience
intermittent disruptions. The
IAE’s “net zero by 2050”
scenario anticipates that trade
in hydrogen and ammonia will
rise from almost nothing
today to more than one-third
of all energy-related
transactions. Over time,
hydrogen supplies are
projected to consist mostly of
green hydrogen produced in
places with abundant, low-
cost renewable energy, such
as Chile and the Gulf states,
which have vast quantities of
cheap solar energy. In this
way, some of the petrostates
threatened by the move away
from fossil fuels may be able
to transform themselves into
“electrostates.”
If a well-supplied and
diversified market for
hydrogen and ammonia
eventually develops, a gap in
one location can be offset with
supplies from another, much
as with oil today. This will
limit the geopolitical
influence of dominant
suppliers. In the near to the
medium term, however, the
evolving production and trade
of low-carbon fuels will create
tensions and geopolitical
risks. Much as was true of the
nascent global market for
liquefied natural gas decades
ago, the supply of low-carbon
fuels will at first be dominated
by a small number of
producers. As a result, if a
country such as Japan bets on
hydrogen and ammonia and
depends heavily on just one or
two countries for its supply of
fuel, it may face outsize
energy security risks.
The dominant suppliers of
low-carbon fuels will also
evolve over time. Before
green hydrogen (or ammonia,
which is easier to transport
and can be converted back to
hydrogen) becomes dominant,
“blue” hydrogen will likely
prevail, according to the IEA.
Blue hydrogen is made from
natural gas using carbon
capture technology to reduce
emissions. Countries with
cheap gas and good carbon
dioxide storage capacity, such
as Qatar and the United States,
may emerge as some of the top
exporters of blue hydrogen or
ammonia. For countries that
lack natural gas but have the
capacity to store carbon
dioxide underground, the
cheapest way to get
hydrogen—which is hard to
transport over long
distances—may well be to
import natural gas and then
convert it into hydrogen close
to where it will be used, thus
presenting some of the same
risks and dependencies that
natural gas presents today.
And worst off will be
countries that lack both gas
and storage capacity, such as
South Korea, and so will have
to import blue hydrogen,
green hydrogen, and
ammonia; these countries will
remain vulnerable until a
much larger and more
diversified market for
hydrogen and ammonia
develops.
GREENER BUT LESS
GLOBALA net-zero global
economy will require large
supply chains for clean energy
components and
manufactured products, trade
in low-carbon fuels and
critical minerals, and
continued trade (albeit much
smaller than today) in oil and
gas. At first blush, then, a
decarbonized world might
seem likely to be more
globalized than today’s fossil-
fuel-dependent planet. But
getting to that net-zero world
will generate three forces that
will push against
globalization.
First, a decarbonized world
will rely more on electricity—
and a more electricity-reliant
world will see less global
trade in energy. The IEA has
projected that in a net-zero
world of 2050, total energy-
related trade will be only 38
percent of what it would be if
the world were to stay on its
current trajectory. The
cheapest and easiest way to
decarbonize several sectors of
the economy, such as cars that
run on oil products or heat
generated by burning natural
gas, is often to electrify them
and ensure that the electricity
is generated from zero-carbon
sources. For this reason, total
electricity usage in the United
States will likely be two to
four times as great in a fully
decarbonized economy as
compared with today,
according to the Princeton
researchers. And compared
with oil and gas, decarbonized
electricity is much more likely
to be produced locally or
regionally; less than three
percent of global electricity
was traded across borders in
2018, compared with two-
thirds of global oil supplies in
2014. That is because
electricity is harder and more
expensive to transport over
long distances,
notwithstanding the evolution
of high-voltage, direct-current
transmission technology.
Dependence on imported
electricity also creates more
energy security concerns for a
country than, say, dependence
on imported oil, since
electricity is much harder to
stockpile and store in the case
of supply disruptions or to
import from other sources.
Getting to a net-zero world
will generate forces that will
push against globalization.
Additional pressure against
globalization will come from
the fact that clean energy is
already contributing to the
trend toward protectionism.
Countries around the world
are erecting barriers to cheap
clean energy inputs from
abroad, fearing dependence
on other countries and seeking
to build job-generating
industries within their own
borders. A prominent example
of this is the customs duties
and tariffs that India is placing
on Chinese solar panels in
order to nurture its own
domestic solar industry. In a
similar vein, the U.S.
Congress is considering a tax
credit that would favor
companies that manufacture
electric vehicles in the United
States with union labor. And
international efforts to
eliminate obstacles to trade in
environmental goods, such as
wind turbines and solar
panels, have stalled.
Finally, countries taking
strong steps toward
decarbonization may try to
compel others to follow suit
through economic statecraft—
which in turn might lead to
global fragmentation. For
instance, policymakers in the
EU are intent on instituting
border adjustment
mechanisms related to
greenhouse gas emissions by
2023. Under this policy,
goods imported from
countries that do not match the
EU’s climate standards will be
subject to tariff-like fees
intended to equalize the price
of goods based on their carbon
content. That way, “green”
steel made in Europe, for
example, will not be
disadvantaged in the
European market relative to
“dirty” imported steel. Over
time, however, tariffs aimed at
leveling the playing field
might morph into tariffs
aimed at pressuring countries
considered too slow in
decarbonizing to pursue
stronger climate policies. And
although the idea of using
sanctions to compel speedier
decarbonization may seem
over the top now, in a world in
which carbon emitters are
increasingly seen as threats to
international peace and
security, sanctions could
become a common tool to
force laggards to act.
WINNERS AND
LOSERSMoving to a net-zero
global economy will require
an unprecedented level of
global cooperation but will
also lead to conflict along the
way and ultimately produce
winners and losers. Some
great powers, such as China
and the United States, are well
positioned to benefit from the
transition. Others, such as
Russia, seem more likely to
wind up worse off. These
diverging paths will, of
course, alter relations among
the great powers.
The relationship between
Beijing and Washington is
more fraught now than it has
been in decades. Thus far,
cooperation between the two
powers on climate change has
been minimal,
notwithstanding a last-minute
agreement to work together on
the issue that they reached at
the COP26 (26th Conference
of the Parties) meeting in
Glasgow this past fall. If
recent developments—such as
Chinese President Xi
Jinping’s failure to attend the
Glasgow meeting in person,
China’s lackluster revision of
its climate targets, and
Beijing’s softening on coal
policy in the face of recent gas
shortages—are indicative of a
trend, China and the United
States could increasingly
clash over climate change,
which may then sap the
political will of other
countries to take strong
climate action.
The transition to clean energy
seems likely to become yet
another sphere in which the
two countries compete
aggressively over technology,
talent, supplies, markets, and
standards. That competition
may accelerate the pace of
clean energy deployment, but
it will also fuel tensions
between the two great powers.
China will increasingly assert
its power, leveraging its
dominant position in clean
energy manufacturing and its
control of critical minerals. As
the transition progresses,
however, China’s influence
may wane as new
technologies emerge
elsewhere, supply chains shift,
and more plentiful materials
are used to produce clean
energy. Another great-power
relationship that the energy
transition might transform is
that between the United States
and its European allies. At a
time when transatlantic
relations require repair and
rejuvenation, climate policy
could potentially act as a
powerful bonding agent.
Washington and its partners in
Europe could ultimately use
their collective economic and
diplomatic power to spur
decarbonization around the
world; they might form a
“climate club” of countries
committed to net-zero
emissions that would impose
tariffs on imports from outside
the club—as advocated in
these pages by the Nobel
Prize–winning economist
William Nordhaus in 2020.
They could also put in place
joint mechanisms to
decarbonize the most energy-
intensive industries, such as
steel, cement, and aluminum,
and even repurpose nato to
focus on responding to
climate-related environmental
and security disasters.
Yet in the short term, the road
to a net-zero world may not be
smooth for U.S.-European
relations. Washington’s
convoluted climate politics
require tortured policy
approaches, such as trying to
use congressional budget
reconciliation to overcome
Republican opposition to
stringent emission standards
and carbon taxes and relying
solely on carrots (such as
subsidies) rather than sticks to
change corporate and
consumer conduct. This will
make it difficult to harmonize
policies across the Atlantic
and risks exacerbating trade
tensions as Europe commits to
measures such as carbon
border tariffs.
Finally, the energy transition
will inevitably transform
Russia’s relations with the
other major powers. Russia is
highly dependent on oil and
gas exports, and in the long
term, the clean energy
transition will pose significant
risks to its finances and
influence. In the messy
transition, however, Russia’s
position vis-à-vis the United
States and Europe may grow
stronger before it weakens. As
European countries come to
increasingly depend on
Russian gas in the coming
years and as volatility in the
oil market rises, both the
United States and Europe will
count on Russia to keep prices
in check through its
partnership with Saudi Arabia
as leaders of the OPEC+
alliance, which is made up of
the members of OPEC and ten
other major oil-exporting
countries.
Meanwhile, Russia’s largely
dismissive approach to
climate change will become a
growing source of tension in
Moscow’s relations with
Washington and Brussels—
even though Putin’s recent
rhetoric has become more
climate-friendly. And in a
decarbonized world that is
increasingly electrified and
interconnected digitally via
the Internet of Things, Russia
may find it hard to resist
targeting energy infrastructure
with cyberattacks, as it did
when it took down Ukraine’s
electric grid in 2015 and 2016.
Moreover, as traditional
energy consumers in the West
curb their fossil fuel use,
Russia will increasingly turn
to the Chinese market to
offload its supplies, fostering
the geopolitical alignment of
Moscow and Beijing.
FROM CONVERGENCE TO
DIVERGENCEFor the past
30 years, rates of growth in the
developing world have on the
whole exceeded those in the
developed world, fueling a
gradual economic
convergence of rich countries
and poor ones. In the long run,
the transition to clean energy
promises to reinforce that
trend. Although a net-zero
world will still entail
hardships, it will also mean far
less pain for developing
countries than a world of
unchecked climate change.
Moreover, many developing
countries enjoy abundant,
low-cost clean energy
resources, such as solar
power, which they will be able
to use at home or export as
either electricity or fuels. A
fair number also boast
geologic formations excellent
for storing carbon dioxide that
will need to be removed from
the atmosphere. (According to
some estimates, one-fifth of
the reduction in carbon
dioxide necessary to achieve
net-zero emissions will come
from carbon removal.)
The rocky pathway to
decarbonization, however,
also poses serious risks for
developing countries. The rift
between rich and poor nations
was on full display at the
climate meeting in Glasgow.
Lower-income countries were
emphatic in their calls for
industrialized nations to pay
for the damage their historical
greenhouse gas emissions
have caused. Climate change
is the result of cumulative
carbon emissions over time.
One-quarter of total emissions
from the beginning of the
industrial age until now have
come from the United States,
and nearly as much, from
Europe. A mere two percent
has come from the entire
continent of Africa. As rich
countries feel an increased
urgency to slash carbon
emissions and developing
countries remain focused on
the need to deliver growth to
their citizens, the two groups
are set to clash.
There was also evidence of
tension over the fate of the
$100 billion in aid to poor
countries that rich countries
pledged at the 2009
Copenhagen climate summit
to deliver by 2020. That
commitment remains
unfulfilled—and even that
large sum is a rounding error
compared with the roughly $1
trillion to $2 trillion needed
annually in clean energy
investment in developing and
emerging-market economies
to achieve net-zero emissions
by 2050. As the urgency of
decarbonization increases
along with the costs of climate
change, the failure of rich
countries to assist poor ones
will be a growing source of
geopolitical tension—
particularly as developing
countries disproportionately
bear the brunt of damage they
did not cause.
The clean energy transition
demands a complete
transformation of the global
economy. Given how long the
world has waited to act on
climate change, poor
countries will need to follow
development trajectories
different from the one taken
by rich countries; developing
countries will have to rely far
less on fossil fuels. Yet nearly
800 million people lack access
to any energy services, much
less the amount of energy
needed to drive meaningful
levels of economic growth
and industrialization.
Although solar power, wind,
and other renewable sources
of energy can be an excellent
way to meet some of the needs
of the developing world, they
are currently insufficient to
power industrialization and
other paths to growth, and
there are limits to how quickly
they can be scaled up. Some
developing countries will also
face obstacles that rarely crop
up in rich countries. For
example, charging an electric
car may not be viable in
countries that experience
blackouts every day or where
electric grids are backed up by
diesel generators.
If rich countries increasingly
seek to prevent the use of
fossil fuels and developing
ones see few viable,
affordable alternatives to
them, the gap between the rich
and the poor will only widen.
For instance, last April, the
U.S. Treasury Department
announced that the United
States would no longer
finance natural gas projects
overseas because of climate
change concerns—except in
the poorest of countries, such
as Sierra Leone—even though
60 percent of U.S. electricity
still comes from fossil fuels.
Shortly thereafter, Nigerian
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo
argued in Foreign Affairs that
it was unfair to ask his country
to develop without using
natural gas.
Tensions between developed
countries and developing ones
will escalate not only over the
use of fossil fuels but also over
their production. Several of
the world’s poor countries,
such as Guyana,
Mozambique, and Tanzania,
have significant hydrocarbon
resources they would like to
tap. But rich countries that see
themselves as climate leaders
will increasingly pressure
those and other developing
countries, or the companies
that want to partner with them,
not to drill, even as at least
some of those rich countries
continue to extract their own
oil, gas, and coal. And
financial institutions will face
growing pressure from
activists not to support
extractive projects in the
developing world. In a world
with less and less scope for
fossil fuel usage, poor
countries may understandably
ask why they should not be
allowed to have a larger slice
of a shrinking pie.
HOW TO LOWER THE
RISKSThe clean energy
transition demands a complete
transformation of the global
economy and will require
roughly $100 trillion in
additional capital spending
over the next three decades.
There is little reason to expect
that such a radical overhaul
can be completed in a
coordinated, well-managed,
and smooth way. An orderly
transition would be hard
enough if there were a master
planner designing the highly
interconnected global energy
system—and, needless to say,
there is not.
When the world does achieve
a fully, or even mostly,
decarbonized energy system,
many of today’s energy
security risks will be
significantly ameliorated
(even as some new ones arise).
The influence of the
petrostates and Russia’s
leverage in Europe will be
diminished, prices for
renewable electricity will be
less volatile, and conflicts
over natural resources will
wane. But if on the way to that
end state, the affordability,
reliability, or security of the
supply of energy, or other
national security imperatives,
comes into conflict with
ambitious responses to
climate change, there is a
significant risk that
environmental concerns will
take a back seat. International
climate leadership thus
requires far more than just
negotiating climate
agreements, making promises
to decarbonize, and mitigating
the national security
implications of the severe
impacts of climate change. It
also means lowering, in a
variety of ways, the economic
and geopolitical risks posed
by even a successful transition
to clean energy.
First, policymakers need to
expand their toolkits to
increase energy security and
reliability and prepare for
inevitable volatility. For
starters, it would be
shortsighted to scrap an
existing zero-carbon energy
source that can operate
consistently—namely nuclear
power. And it would be
foolish to get rid of existing
energy security tools, such as
the U.S. Strategic Petroleum
Reserve; Congress has
prematurely decided to put
fuel from the reserve up for
sale in response to near-term
U.S. oil abundance and in
anticipation of a post-oil
world. Indeed, as the energy
transition accelerates,
policymakers should
undertake cost-benefit
analyses to assess whether
additional strategic stockpiles
may be justified in order to
secure supplies of natural gas,
critical minerals, hydrogen,
and ammonia.
The transition to clean energy
will exacerbate already deep
inequalities and potentially
produce a political backlash.
Policymakers should also
maintain maximum flexibility
on energy sources even as
they phase out “brown”
energy. Arguments that the
United States saw “peak
gasoline” use in 2007 and that
the world experienced “peak
coal” use in 2014 proved to be
incorrect. Given the
uncertainty about future needs
and demands, policymakers
should be prepared to keep
some legacy fossil fuel assets
in reserve, in case they are
needed for brief periods
during the transition when
there is a disconnect between
supply and demand.
Regulators of utilities should
adopt pricing structures that
would compensate companies
for providing reliability. For
example, in order to prepare
for peaks in demand,
regulators should design
markets that pay energy
utilities for maintaining
capacity and supplies even if
they are rarely used and that
incentivize utilities to offer
plans that reward customers
for reducing their electricity
use during peak periods. More
broadly, policymakers should
enact measures to increase
efficiency in order to reduce
demand, thereby narrowing
potential supply and demand
imbalances.
Another way governments can
boost energy security is by
reducing supply chain risks—
but not in a way that would
encourage protectionism.
Officials shouldn’t chase the
chimera of independence but
instead try to build flexibility
in a diversified and
interconnected system. In
Europe, improved energy
security has come not from
reducing Russian gas
imports—indeed, those
imports have consistently
risen—but rather from
regulatory and infrastructure
reforms that have made the
European market more
integrated and competitive. In
contrast, during the 2021
power crisis in Texas, the
parts of the state with grids
connected to those of
neighboring states fared better
than the rest of Texas, which
was served by an isolated
electric grid and transmission
system.
Policymakers must also
address some of the ways in
which the jagged energy
transition will exacerbate
already deep inequalities in
society and potentially
produce a political backlash
against clean energy.
Communities dependent on
fossil fuel revenue and jobs
will suffer in the absence of
government-backed economic
development and workforce
training. Meanwhile, to help
low-income consumers deal
with price volatility,
policymakers should turn to
subsidies or temporary tax-
rate adjustments, as many
European countries have in
recent months.
As much as governments need
to foster new innovation and
accelerate the clean energy
transition to curb climate
change, they also must take
conscious steps to mitigate the
geopolitical risks this change
will create. New technologies
can solve technical and
logistical problems but cannot
eliminate competition, power
differentials, or the incentive
that all countries have to
protect their interests and
maximize their influence. If
governments do not recognize
this, the world will confront
some jarring discontinuities in
the years ahead, including
new economic and security
threats that will reconfigure
global politics. But perhaps
the greatest risk of failing to
identify and plan for these
pitfalls is that if national
security concerns come into
conflict with climate change
ambitions, a successful
transition might not take place
at all. And the world can ill
afford more bumps on the
already rough road to net zero.

Faisal Bari, Dawn News
W HENEVER there is
an event that
shocks us — the
lynching of Mashal Khan, the
murders of the two brothers in
Sialkot, the gruesome killing
of Priyantha Kumara, and
even the events that happened
at Minar-i-Pakistan — one of
the first reactions from people
is that education has failed us.
But immediately, perhaps in
the same conversation, there is
also a demand that education
should be doing more. It is
only through education that
we would be able to reduce,
control or eliminate such
behaviour. This may appear to
be a bit of a paradox. But it is
not. It is true education is
important. But its content and
how this content is taught are
important too. This is where
we need to unpack things. For
instance, the Single National
Curriculum includes nazra
and a commitment has been
made to include Seerat-un-
Nabi (PBUH). Their study, it
has been said, even by the
prime minister, will help
children become better human
beings. There is still some
debate regarding our decision
to make Islamiat and Pakistan
Studies compulsory some
decades ago. Was it thought
that since everyone should
know the basic facts about the
country or articles of faith,
making these subjects
compulsory would ensure that
this objective would be
achieved? Did our decision-
makers believe that making
these subjects compulsory
would impact identity
formation too, making it
easier for the state to mould
Unpacking education
young Pakistani minds by
exposing them to a particular
vision of the country and
religion? And that this would,
in turn, make people stronger
or better Pakistanis and
Muslims?
If teachers teach poorly,
making changes in
educational content will not
have an impact.
How should we look for
empirical evidence for this?
The problem is that there has
been so much that has
happened in other spheres that
it is hard to know what should
or should not be attributed to
the changes in education. But,
clearly, things have not
improved as policymakers
may have expected. We do not
have ‘better’ Pakistanis and
Muslims today than we did in
the 1980s and 1990s. This
might, though, largely be
attributable to the much larger
global changes that have
happened in the region in
which Pakistan is situated
than what might have been
happening in the realm of
education alone. The Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan
changed a lot of things in
Pakistan: the inflow of arms
and US money, the import of
ideology from Saudi Arabia,
the creation of the
mujahideen, the Afghan war,
drug trade, the decimation of
Afghan society, the refugee
problem, and so much more.
And then came 9/11 and the
‘war on terror’. How do we
assess the exact impact of
making Islamiat and Pakistan
Studies compulsory when
there are so many other factors
to consider?
If an untoward incident
happens, adding a course on
ethics might not be the most
appropriate way to address the
issue. This observation may
extend to increasing content in
the subjects under discussion
if morals are not where we
think they should be. If
Pakistani children are not
‘good ‘Muslims’, simply
adding to existing content in
education may not prove to be
the solution.
There are many reasons for
this. It is not that educational
content has no impact. Clearly
it does. This is what education
is about. Content shapes
minds, determines knowledge
and understanding and hence
gives form to identities and
basic beliefs. No one is
denying that and there is no
way we can deny the
importance of education or the
importance of content in
education as there is a lot of
empirical evidence on
learning and connections
regarding content.
The issues are different. There
are limits to how much a child
can take: according to their
age, ability and prior learning
levels. Burdening a child, in
terms of more content per
subject and the number of
subjects that a child reads,
does not necessarily improve
learning, understanding and
knowledge. There is some
literature that already argues
that we, especially in South
Asia, are putting too much
pressure on our children.
What effect will adding more
content and more subjects in
such a situation have?
Literature also shows that the
teacher makes a large
difference in learning. How a
teacher teaches, how she
engages with students, makes
the content engaging, interacts
with her pupils and
encourages them, explains
content or makes the latter
relevant in the context of the
students’ reality and
understanding levels are
crucial. If the teachers teach
poorly, which we know is the
case for the vast majority of
schools in Pakistan, a change
in content will not impact
anything.
We also know student
learning is better when
students engage with the
content more, can question
things, critically examine
what is being taught and so on.
But many teachers would not
think of critical engagement in
the subjects under review.
And in most schools they are
not taught that way either. I
remember my own
experience: I learnt a lot of the
Pakistan Studies course just so
that I could reproduce it (rote
learning) for examination
purposes and get it over with.
So, if this is what added
content is going to do, how is
this going to make us better
Pakistanis/Muslims and how
will it address the social issues
that we want education to
address? And I have not talked
of the manipulation of content
at all. But that too, when
conservative and even
extremist views are already a
part of the mainstream, can be
an issue.
So, without thinking things
through, will we be making
the same mistakes we have
made many times before? It
seems so. But it is worse. As
has been said, we never step in
the same river twice. Every
time we fail we increase
stakes for the next
intervention and reduce the
probability of success. Are we
willing to take a chance again
or is it time to have a deeper
rethink before we change
things?
 Soon, the Hackers Won’t Be Human
John Bansemer, Foreign Affairs
I t has been a challenging
year for U.S. cyberdefense
operations. A dramatic
surge in ransomware attacks
has targeted such critical
national infrastructure as the
Colonial Pipeline—which
was shut down for six days in
May, disrupting fuel supplies
to 17 states—and halted the
operation of thousands of
American schools, businesses,
and hospitals. The hacking of
SolarWinds Orion software,
which compromised the data
of hundreds of major
companies and government
agencies and went
undiscovered for at least eight
months, demonstrated that
even the best-resourced
organizations remain
vulnerable to malign actors.
While the motley crew of
cybercriminals and state-
sponsored hackers who
constitute the offense has not
yet widely adopted artificial
intelligence techniques, many
AI capabilities are accessible
with few restrictions. If
traditional cyberattacks begin
to lose their effectiveness, the
offense won’t hesitate to reach
for AI-enabled ones to restore
its advantage—evoking
worst-case future scenarios in
which AI-enabled agents
move autonomously through
networks, finding and
exploiting vulnerabilities at
unprecedented speed. Indeed,
some of the most damaging
global cyberattacks, such as
the 2017 NotPetya attack,
incorporated automated
techniques, just not AI ones.
These approaches rely on
prescriptive, rules-based
techniques, and lack the
ability to adjust tactics on the
fly, but can be considered the
precursors of fully automated,
“intelligent” agent–led
required to apply them. There
is precedent for this. Some
hackers, after discovering a
vulnerability, sometimes
release proof-of-concept code
attacks. that is quickly weaponized
and diffused through the
Yet it is not just
hacker community. Given the
cyberattackers who stand to
open nature of AI research,
benefit from AI. Machine
there is little to prevent a
learning and other AI
similar diffusion of AI-
techniques are beginning to
enhanced cyberattack tools.
bolster cyberdefense efforts as
well, although not yet at the For the defense, machine
scale necessary to alter the learning is already benefiting
advantage the offense specific cybersecurity tasks. A
presently enjoys. There is strength of machine learning
reason to hope that AI will is its ability to recognize
become a game-changer for patterns in large data sets.
the defense. As offense and Algorithms similar to the ones
defense both race to leverage that classify objects or
AI techniques, the question is recommend online purchases
which side will manage to can be employed to detect
benefit most. PREPARING suspicious activity on
FOR AI-ENABLED HACKS networks. The application of
machine-learning techniques
There is currently limited
to traditional intrusion
evidence that hackers have
detection systems has
begun making significant use
undoubtedly already helped to
of AI techniques. This is not
thwart many attacks. For the
particularly surprising.
rather mundane task of spam
Current techniques are highly
email detection, for example,
effective, and adding AI to the
machine learning has offered
mix could be an unnecessary
qualitative improvements.
complication. And while
More recently, deep-learning
cyber and AI skill sets overlap
facial recognition algorithms
to some degree, they are
have allowed the
distinct enough that additional
authentication of users on
expertise is required to build
their mobile devices,
and integrate AI techniques
mitigating the long-standing
for cyberhacking.
cybersecurity problem of
If cyberdefenses improve weak passwords or personal
sufficiently, however, the identification numbers.
offense may be forced to
DISCOVERING
explore new approaches. An
VULNERABILITIESV
individual or organization
ulnerable software and stolen
could also develop AI-
user credentials are the basis
enhanced cyber-tools that are
of many cyberattacks.
simple to use, reducing the
Intruders gain a foothold,
cost and level of expertise
exploit newly discovered or
known vulnerabilities, and
repeat the process. For this
reason, two areas stand out as
important targets for greater
research and development
investment: automated
vulnerability discovery and
AI-enabled autonomous
cybersecurity.
Discovering vulnerabilities
has long been an important
part of the software
development process.
Attempts to automate this
process are more recent. In
2016, the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) hosted the Cyber
Grand Challenge, a AlphaGo, was in some ways a
competition aimed at building
fully automated systems
capable of detecting and
patching vulnerabilities in real
time. Although the winning
team, Mayhem, demonstrated
this potential, they relied
heavily on traditional
vulnerability discovery tools
fine-tuned for the
competition; relatively little
machine learning was
involved. The open question is
whether a broader application
of AI could discernibly
improve current techniques.
Autonomous cyber-agents
that roam networks and
launch attacks would be
devastating if realized. Many
software applications, and
operating systems in
particular, contain millions of
lines of code, making it
difficult to detect every
potential vulnerability.
Automated techniques can
help, in the same way that
spelling and grammar
checkers might help find
errors in a long novel, but
invariably a skilled human
editor must scan every
sentence. What has not yet
occurred at any scale is the
application of AI techniques
to remove some of the
cognitive workload or to
improve upon existing
capabilities.
While the Cyber Grand
Challenge was taking place,
another competition was
building toward a famous
showdown between human
and machine. In this second
contest, DeepMind, a
subsidiary of Google, began
building a system to play Go
against the world’s best
players. The game of Go is
notable for having far more
potential moves than its
Western counterpart, chess.
DeepMind’s system,
demonstration of AI’s
potential for broader
applications. More recently,
DeepMind applied AI
techniques to the Critical
Assessment of Structure
Prediction (CASP)
competition to determine a
protein’s underlying structure.
As one prominent researcher
described DeepMind’s
breakthrough AI program,
“This will change medicine. It
will change research. It will
change bioengineering. It will
change everything.” While
AlphaGo was intriguing,
AlphaFold provided a means
to better understand one of the
key building blocks of the
human body. Successes such
as these across unrelated
fields raise hopes that AI may
prove similarly useful in the
complex endeavor of
cyberdefense.
However, as impressive as
these new AI applications
have been, there are no
guarantees that it will be
possible to develop
autonomous cyberdefense
agents. For the defense, a
potentially potent tool has
proved hard to implement
across the entire range of
cybersecurity-related tasks:
threat identification,
protection, detection,
response, and recovery.
Instead, it has been applied
more narrowly to specific
tasks such as intrusion
detection. However, the
technology’s potential is too
important to ignore. In
particular, the threat of
autonomous cyber-agents that
roam a network, probing for
weaknesses and launching
attacks, could be devastating
if fully realized. Theoretically,
attackers could launch
thousands or more of these
agents at once, wreaking
havoc on critical
infrastructure and businesses.
COULD AI
REVOLUTIONIZE
CYBERDEFENSE? Will AI
techniques enable even more
devastating cyberattacks or
will they revolutionize
cyberdefense? Examining the
evolution of cyberdefense
operations over the last 30
years provides some clues as
to how the integration of cyber
and AI may evolve.
First, new attack tools will
continue to disperse rapidly.
The cyber-operations field has
traditionally encouraged
exploration and
experimentation. Many early
hacking efforts were simply
attempts to bypass controls in
order to gain access to more
computing resources. Soon,
the techniques pioneered by
these early hackers entered the
mainstream, becoming
accessible to users with far
more limited expertise. The
rapid diffusion of new
hacking methods continues to
this day. Part of today’s cyber-
challenge is that attackers
with limited skills can wreak
havoc on organizations with
sophisticated tools they likely
do not fully understand.
As new AI tools are
developed, they are likely to
quickly become available in
the same manner. Relatively
few people who launch
deepfakes understand the
underlying AI technology, but
thanks to the availability of
simple online tools, they can
create synthetic video or audio
with a few clicks of a mouse.
Once offensive AI capabilities
are developed, even
moderately skilled hackers
would be able to leverage
them in their attacks.
Cyber has proved to be an
asymmetric tool of statecraft.
China has leveraged cyber to
engage in the mass theft of
intellectual property, thereby
shortening the time frame to
acquire and use key
technologies. Russia has used
cyber-operations coupled with
disinformation campaigns to
disrupt the U.S. political
process. For cybercriminals,
ransomware paired with
cryptocurrencies offers an
enormously profitable
enterprise. If current
techniques are foiled, there
should be little doubt that
states and criminal enterprises
will turn to AI. The main
reason they still have not
leveraged AI capabilities is
that they are not yet essential;
simpler tools can still do the
job.
China has signaled its intent to
become the world leader in AI
and has been making
significant investments in
cyber. Since DARPA’s Cyber
Grand Challenge, for
example, China has held over
a dozen competitions focused
on automated vulnerability
discovery. This dual-use
technology can help secure
networks or provide new tools
to state-sponsored hackers.
China has invested heavily in
the education of its cyber-
workforce and in the
development of a domestic
semiconductor industry, and it
has repeatedly shown its
intent to match U.S. progress
in AI. For example, it claims
that its new large language
model, Wu Dao, is more than
ten times as large as GPT-3,
the current standard for
English-content creation. All
of this suggests that China will
attempt to leverage new
technologies to pursue state
policy whenever it can.
AI as applied to cyber will be
driven by two different
imperatives. For the offensive
minded, AI tools will be
designed to achieve maximum
impact. Thus, the offense will
seek tools that move fast, gain
entry, and accomplish
objectives. As NotPetya and
other cyberattacks have
demonstrated, attackers are
often less concerned with
controlling their tools than
they are with achieving their
intended effect. The defense is
significantly more
constrained. Its priority is
defeating attacks while trying
to keep networks operational,
often at levels above 99
percent. This is a much higher
bar. As new capabilities are
developed, defenders’ fear of
disrupting service may make
them reluctant to deploy fully
autonomous AI agents,
placing them at a reach and caused more
disadvantage to their
adversaries. Defenders will
have to weigh the potential
risks of an attack against the
impact of shutting down
essential services. However, if
the offense has fully leveraged
AI, greater autonomy for
defensive agents may be the
only choice.
THE WORST-CASE
SCENARIO
For this reason, a worst-case
scenario involves fully
autonomous AI cyber-agents.
These capabilities differ from
present-day autonomous
attacks in that offensive
cyber-agents would not be
reliant on a set of explicit,
preprogrammed instructions
to guide their activity. Instead,
they would be able to adjust
their operations in real time,
without additional human
intervention, based upon the
conditions and the
opportunities they encounter.
Conceivably, these agents
could be given an objective
without being toldhow to
achieve it.
In such a scenario, two of the
biggest concerns are speed
and control. Theoretically,
intelligent agents would be
able to move through
networks at machine speed.
Defensive detection-and-
response activities that relied
upon human operators would
be helpless to react. Perhaps
even more concerning is the
question of control: Can the
effects of an attack be
contained after launch?
Research has already shown
that machine-learning systems
can operate in bizarre and
unpredictable ways as a result
of poorly specified objectives.
Previous cyberattacks,
starting with the Morris worm
in the late 1980s, have
occasionally had far greater
damage than their creators
ever intended. Intelligent
agents could be even more
devastating, devising novel
attack vectors much the way
AlphaZero developed new
game strategies previously
undiscovered by human
players. Guarding against
even more devastating attacks
is just one reason to begin
defensive preparations now.
Another is that the
development of an AI-enabled
defensive agent that roams the
network looking for
illegitimate activity could
finally start to tilt the field in
favor of the defense.
A GROWING THREAT
Cyber attacks are already a
significant geopolitical threat.
Adding AI to this mix makes
an already potent tool even
more so. Therefore, it is
important for network
defenders and AI developers
to begin working together to
develop new defensive AI
cyber-capabilities.
First, researchers need
realistic data sets and network
simulations to help the AI
systems they build
differentiate between threats
and normal activity. Much of
the available data relies upon
public research and
development dating from the
late 1990s and is not
representative of current
threats. Armed with more
current data sets and
simulations, AI developers
can begin to explore
algorithmic approaches that
could enable cyber-agents to
detect incursions and, at a
minimum, take rudimentary
defensive measures.
Second, the federal
government should prioritize
research and development into
a full spectrum of AI-enabled
cyberdefenses. As part of
these efforts, it should also
significantly increase the use
of cybersecurity competitions
that focus on the development
of new AI-enabled security
tools. These competitions
would differ from those that
presently identify and reward
the most capable human
defender teams. Ideally, these
contests would be public and
the results would be broadly
shared. Organizers should
design competitions around
specific cybersecurity
challenges such as the
detection of novel attacks or
the identification of
anomalous activity.
Improvements in automated
vulnerability discovery could
make software more secure
from the outset and find
vulnerabilities in software that
is already deployed.
Competitions should be
organized with enough
frequency to encourage
continued innovation. The
2016 Cyber Grand Challenge
undoubtedly helped improve
automated vulnerability
discovery, but it was held only
once. Biyearly competitions
with lucrative prizes and a
path to government
acquisition would incentivize
sustained innovation and
could uncover promising new
techniques. Although
Congress has authorized
federal agencies to conduct
these competitions, their use is
sporadic and limited.
Conducting more frequent
competitions around specific
cybersecurity challenges
would encourage sustained
innovation. The CASP
competition for protein
folding, which has been held
every two yearsor over 25
years, offers a useful model.
Sometimes strategic patience
is needed for major
breakthroughs.
The impact of uncontrolled
cyberattacks is becoming ever
more costly. It is past time for
the United States to explore
the potential for AI to improve
its cyberdefenses to better
protect critical infrastructure
providers and state and local
governments. There is little
reason to believe that strategic
competitors will not turn to
AI-enabled attacks if
traditional techniques lose
their effectiveness. The stakes
are high, and AI techniques
are a double-edged sword.
The United States must
commit the resources to
ensure that it is the defense
that benefits.
 Bangladesh’s Evolving Relations with India and Pakistan
Delwar Hossain, The diplomat
T
he emergence of
Bangladesh as an
independent nation
was a watershed event in the
early 1970s. The founding
Father of the Nation,
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman, declared the
independence of Bangladesh
on March 26, 1971.
Eventually, Bangladesh
emerged as a free nation from
under the brutality of the
Pakistan regime. The birth of
Bangladesh on December 16,
1971 was influenced by the
dynamics of the Cold War era.
Bipolarity, alliance building,
the non-aligned movement,
and liberation struggles in the
Third World were important
factors that shaped the
directions and outcomes of
Bangladesh’s Liberation War.
The country’s diplomatic
journey through the heyday of
the Cold War dawned in the
maze of subcontinental
politics, deeply influenced by
the dynamics of the 1947
Partition. The events related to
Bangladesh’s Liberation War
provide a strong historical and
philosophical basis for
contemporary Bangladesh’s
relations with India and
Pakistan.
Bangladesh received critical
support from different nations
for the cause of liberation.
Such support was
instrumental to overcoming
the forces and propaganda
against the creation of the
Bangladeshi state. India was a
leading external power in
supporting the emergence of a
free and independent
Bangladesh.
For Bangladesh, the conduct
of foreign policy during the
days of the Cold War and into
the post-Cold War era has
been deeply challenging. Over
the past 50 years, India and
Pakistan have prominently
featured in the foreign policy
of Bangladesh, demonstrating
a complex cyclical patterns of
inter-state relations.
Bilateral Relations With
India: The Beginning
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,
often referred to as Mujib, laid
the foundation of Bangladesh-
India bilateral relations while
he was returning to Dhaka
from a Pakistani jail on
January 10, 1972. With its
recognition of Bangladesh on
December 6, 1971, India laid
down the path for a bright
future in Bangladesh-India
relations. A high watermark of
Mujib’s statesmanship was
reflected during his visit to
Kolkata on February 6-8,
1972. During the visit, a joint
declaration between the two
countries announced the
withdrawal of Indian troops
from Bangladesh by March 25
of that year.
Undoubtedly, India’s active
support of the freedom
struggle in Bangladesh
contributed to a warm start
Bangladesh-India relations.
One can go back to Mujib’s
remarks in Kolkata on
February 6, 1972:
I have no doubt in my mind
that India, our next door
neighbor, will proudly march
on as the largest democracy of
the world under the dynamic
leadership of Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi. We, on our
part, are striving to advance
ideals of nationalism,
democracy, secularism and
socialism at home and
nonalignment in international
relations. In a high note of
friendship, Mujib concluded
the address by saying
“Bangladesh-India Bhai-
Bhai” – brother-brother. Both
prime ministers expressed
their determination for
cooperation between the
governments and people of
the two countries, inspired by
a vision of lasting peace,
amity, and good
neighborliness. Indian Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi said in
the Indian Parliament that the
relationship between the
countries was “cemented
through blood and sacrifice.”
Apart from the recognition of
mutual friendship and
interests, both India and
Bangladesh focused on certain
principles to shape their
bilateral relations.
Domestically, the principles
of socialism, democracy,
nationalism, and secularism
and externally, the principles
of anti-imperialism, non-
alignment, and peaceful
coexistence guided the
parameters of Bangladesh-
India relations at the very
beginning.
Lost Decades?
The assassination of Mujib on
August 15, 1975 plunged
bilateral relations with India
into a period of darkness and
hostility. The assumption of
power by General Zia, after a
bloody coup, disrupted the
healthy evolution of
Bangladesh-India ties.
The honeymoon phase in
Bangladesh-India relations
had already started to suffer
by the first quarter of 1973,
and took a further negative
drift from the second half of
1974. Several factors initially
contributed to worsening
relations, including strong
nationalism in the newly
emerged Bangladesh,
smuggling, and a currency
crisis. Eventually, the post-‘75
political regimes moved away
from a strategic partnership
with India and were rather
engaged in a strategic rivalry.
The preponderance of
linguistic nationalism was
questioned and attacked by
new political forces in
Bangladesh that emphasized
Islam as the most important
symbol and ethos influencing
national identity. The debate
between Bengali vs.
Bangladeshi nationalism took
center stage in the national
politics of Bangladesh.
As a result, both nations were
entrapped in a long spell of
inter-state tensions and
conflict as demonstrated in a
range of bilateral issues from
water to borders to migration.
Issues such as the dispute over
the maritime boundary, the
land border conflict, the
sharing of the Ganges River,
and disputes over the Muhurir
Char (an islet on the Muhuri
River, the boundary between
Bangladesh and the Indian
state of Tripura), the Tin
Bigha Corridor, and Purbasha
Island in the Bay of Bengal, as
well as allegations of
domestic interference,
seriously undermined friendly
relations between India and
Bangladesh. Non-cooperation
and rivalry have characterized
much of the bilateral
relationship since, creating
mistrust and suspicion.
Political regimes in both
Bangladesh and India have
made every effort to politicize
the relationship and use it for
their domestic electoral
ambitions. Relations suffered
for more than two decades,
particularly from 1975 to
1996.
The electoral victory of the
Awami League, led by Sheikh
Hasina, reversed the trend and
to an extent rebuilt
Bangladesh-India relations
during the 1996-2001 period,
only to witness a new phase of
deterioration from 2001 to
2006.
A New Paradigm of Relations,
But Challenges Remain
The Awami League’s
landslide victory in the
December 2008 general
elections provided another
historic opportunity to forge
closer cooperation between
Bangladesh and India.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina’s determined
and bold initiative to allay
India’s long-standing security
concerns regarding its
northeastern region benefited
the country immensely. For
example, the Bangladesh
government supported India’s
capturing of top separatist
leaders, including Anup
Chetia. Then came a bevvy of
agreements addressing long-
standing concerns and
opportunities for future
cooperation: the resolution of
the maritime boundary dispute
in 2014, the ratification of the
1974 land boundary
agreement (LBA) in 2015, a
coastal shipping agreement
for the use of Chittagong and
Mongla ports in 2015, the
signing of a bilateral
extradition treaty in 2016, a
memorandum of
understanding on defense
cooperation in 2018,
increased energy cooperation,
a memorandum on sharing of
the Feni River water, and
cross-border LNG pipeline
cooperation. Enhancing
transit and connectivity, with
the important inclusions of
Nepal and Bhutan, was also a
new milestone. Trade
cooperation between the two
nations expanded
dramatically from about $3
billion in 2009 to $9.5 billion
in 2019. Although they have
largely remained
unimplemented, India
extended lines of credit
(LOCs) worth $8 billion.
The past decade marked a new
phase in Bangladesh-India
relations. With the changing
geopolitical environment in
South Asia and the Bay of
Bengal, the contours of
Bangladesh-India relations
are quickly shifting. Sino-
Indian competition in
Bangladesh has been
significant in recent years.
Remaining unresolved
bilateral irritants – such as the
Teesta River water sharing
dispute; the killings of
Bangladeshis on the border;
Bangladesh’s trade deficit,
largely due to the imposition
of non-tariff barriers by India;
slow progress in the
implementation of LOCs; and
difficulty in transit
negotiations – have stoked
concerns for Bangladesh.
These challenges also
influence public opinion in
Bangladesh about India. In
addition, Bangladesh’s
procurement of submarines
from China, support of
China’s Belt and Road
Initiative (BRI), and growing
Chinese economic
engagement have further
driven a wedge between
Bangladesh and India.
India’s stance on the
Rohingya crisis is also a
source of public discontent in
Bangladesh. This has been
accentuated by the cross-
border repercussions of
communal politics and the so-
called illegal migration issue
in India. The implementation
of the National Register of
Citizens (NRC) in 2013 and
the passing of the Citizenship
Amendment Act (CAA) –
both seen by critics as
targeting Muslims – in 2019
are further eroding trust and
goodwill.
Still, there are compelling
economic and geostrategic
strategic reasons for
Bangladesh and India to
cooperate in the larger
interests of development and
prosperity in the region,
despite the existing
challenges. The evolving
geopolitical calculus,
changing regional dynamics,
and growing public discontent
demand more prudent
diplomatic efforts from both
India and Bangladesh.
What About Pakistan?
Bangladesh faced significant
diplomatic opposition from
Pakistan following its
independence. Dealing with a
hostile Pakistani state was
foremost on the agenda for the
Mujib government, which
rightly pursued recognition as
the central goal of his foreign
policy. Unsurprisingly, Mujib
was tough on Pakistan and
even refused to talk to
Pakistani President Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto (later prime
minister) until Islamabad
recognized Bangladesh.
In the early years, Pakistan
clung to its global campaign
of propaganda and
misinformation, denying the
reality of Bangladesh’s
independence. In Pakistan’s
view, it could not recognize
Bangladesh until all the
problems stemming from of
the 1971 war were resolved.
Mujib wanted to try 195
prisoners of war (POWs) for
committing genocide;
Pakistan, obviously, did not.
The two sides refused to
compromise on the issue, with
Mujib mentioning in an
interview that Pakistani
POWs held in India couldn’t
be released without the
recognition of Bangladesh.
From Negation to Recognition
A sudden change in Pakistan’s
attitude on the question of
recognizing Bangladesh came
shortly before the
Organization of Islamic
Conference (OIC) Summit in
Lahore in February 1974.
Bhutto, then prime minister,
extended an informal
invitation to Mujib to attend
the summit. At first, Mujib
refused, but he later accepted
the invitation. Following the
summit, a tripartite agreement
between India, Pakistan, and
Bangladesh was signed on
April 9, 1974 settling the
problems left over by the war
of 1971. Pakistan agreed to
accept all four categories of
non-Bengalis as specified in
the Indo-Pakistan agreement
of August 28, 1973. A
statement by Pakistan’s
minister of state for defense
and foreign affairs condemned
and regretted any crimes that
may have been committed by
Pakistani soldiers in
Bangladesh.
In June 1974, Bhutto paid a
visit to Dhaka. During talks
between the two leaders,
Bangladesh raised the
question of the division of
assets and the repatriation of
the remaining Pakistanis.
Progress was made.
What led to Pakistan’s change
of attitude? Several situational
factors played prominent
roles. First, the concurrent
events of the first nuclear test
by India and the Sino-Russian
border tensions influenced
Pakistan to some extent. As a
result, Pakistan might have
changed its position and
showed interest in improving
relations with Bangladesh in
May 1974. Due to the Sino-
Soviet border conflict,
Pakistan feared that the Soviet
Union, India, and Bangladesh
might further consolidate their
relations while China, a close
friend to Pakistan, was busy
dealing with the border
conflict. Beijing had softened
its tone toward Bangladesh at
the time. Finally, Bangladesh-
Middle East relations were
improving and Pakistan had
no excuse left to show
reluctance to Bangladesh.
From Recognition to
Bonhomie: Pakistan Support
for the Post-Coup Leaders
Mujib’s assassination in
August 1975 provided an
opportunity for Pakistan to
align with the new ruling
clique in Bangladesh. The
right-wing and reactionary
political forces and coup
leaders in Bangladesh found
in Pakistan a new ally for their
ambitions to transform
Bangladesh into an Islamic
state. Pakistan did not waste a
moment to seize the
opportunity. On August 16,
1975, the day after Mujib’s
killing, Bhutto announced
support for the new
government in Bangladesh.
He declared that Pakistan
would dispatch 50,000 tons of
rice, 10 million yards of long
cloth, and 5 million yards of
bleached mull as a gesture. On
October 5, 1975, Pakistan and
Bangladesh agreed to
establish diplomatic relations.
Two years later, in December
1977, Zia visited Pakistan. It
was the first official visit by a
Bangladeshi leader to
Pakistan. Relations between
Bangladesh and Pakistan grew
rapidly during the Zia period
while Bangladesh-India
relations were in a state of
flux.
Zia was assassinated on May
31, 1981 and for a while, the
country was ruled by a civilian
government. But on March
24, 1982, General Ershad
came into power. He
proclaimed a second period of
martial law in the country,
which lasted until November
1986.
Under the leadership of
Ershad, relations between
Pakistan and Bangladesh were
further strengthened. On July
26, 1986, Ershad paid an
official visit to Pakistan in
connection with his tour of the
South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation
(SAARC) countries. Within a
decade, the volume of trade
between Pakistan and
Bangladesh had tripled.
Bangladesh-Pakistan relations
enjoyed friendship and
partnership during the military
rules of both Zia and Ershad.
Later on, during the Khaleda
Zia regime in Bangladesh
(1991-1996) the two countries
continued to expanded ties.
Economic cooperation
reached such a level that the
two agreed to sign a free trade
agreement. While a draft deal
was finalized in 2004, it has
yet to be settled.
From Bonhomie Back to
Antagonism
Bilateral relations between
Bangladesh and Pakistan have
been frozen in recent years.
Pakistan’s opposition to the
trial of war criminals in
Bangladesh through the
International Crimes Tribunal
(ICT) substantially harmed
bilateral relations. Pakistan’s
National Assembly issued a
resolution condemning the
trial. Islamabad’s continued
support for those accused of
collaborating in Pakistani war
crimes in Bangladesh in 1971
angered people in
Bangladesh, where the trial of
war criminals is a sensitive
domestic issue.
Both countries were involved
in diplomatic rows in the
2015-2016 period as well.
Pakistan had to withdraw their
High Commission official
based in Dhaka after Pakistani
diplomatic officials in the
Bangladeshi capital were
alleged to have been running
an illegal currency business,
and accused of being involved
in terror financing and
maintaining links with
militants.
There was a debate in
Bangladesh about scrapping
diplomatic relations with
Pakistan altogether. Notably,
the war crimes trial enjoys
widespread public support
across the spectrum of
political forces in Bangladesh.
The government
Bangladesh resisted calls for
breaking off diplomatic ties
with Pakistan. However, the
level of engagement between
the two states was
downgraded. All aspects of
bilateral relations, particularly
economic cooperation, have
suffered enormously under
this chill. Bilateral
mechanisms like the foreign
secretaries’ dialogue have not
been held for nearly 13 years.
No meeting of the joint
economic commission
between Bangladesh and
Pakistan has been held since
2005. Bangladesh also opted
out of joining the 19th
SAARC Summit, which was
scheduled to be held in
Islamabad in 2016.
Re-normalizing Relations?
Media reports suggest that
current Pakistani Prime
Minister Imran Khan has
made credible overtures to
repair bilateral relations with
Bangladesh. Since he came to
power in 2018, Khan has
signaled a change in the
atmosphere of animosity and
mistrust. First, he
acknowledged and praised the
economic development and
social progress of Bangladesh.
He even said Pakistan can
learn from Bangladesh’s
development. Bilateral
relations seemed to take a
fortuitous turn in mid-2020,
largely due to Islamabad’s
proactive efforts to defrost the
chilly Bangladesh-Pakistan
relationship.
In a stunning move, Pakistan
lifted all restrictions on visas
for Bangladeshi applicants in
January 2021. Another
significant development was a
phone call between Khan and
Sheikh Hasina earlier this year
in which Khan congratulated
Bangladesh for its 50th
independence anniversary.
of
Khan invited Hasina to
Pakistan for a visit during the
call. In a letter to her Pakistani
counterpart on the occasion of
Pakistan Day, Hasina stated
the commitment of Dhaka
toward peaceful and
cooperative relations with
Islamabad and other
neighbors.
Apart from bilateral
approaches, China, Malaysia,
and Turkey are reportedly
behind an effort to re-
normalize Bangladesh-
Pakistan relations. The OIC
and the D-8 Organization for
Economic Cooperation (the
Developing-8 or D-8 club) are
some of the multilateral
platforms that emerged as
diplomatic spaces that can
contribute to the re-
normalizing of Bangladesh-
Pakistan relations.
Conclusion
Bangladesh’s relations with
India and Pakistan have
evolved paradoxically over
the last 50 years. The pattern
of Bangladesh’s relations with
India shifted from honeymoon
highs to outright hostility and
then onward to a strategic
partnership now under strain.
On the other hand, the pattern
of relations with Pakistan has
taken on a cycle of hostility,
friendship, renewed hostility,
and the possibility of
friendship again.
Bangladesh’s relations with
India and Pakistan have
inverse cycles of friendship
and hostility. When
Bangladesh is friendly with
India, it is just the opposite
with Pakistan and vice versa.
A critical issue is that the
current stage of strategic
partnership between
Bangladesh and India is under
stress largely due to the
emergence of new irritants in
their bilateral relations.
International politics is
dynamic and so too are the
patterns of inter-state
relations. The Sino-Indian
rivalry in the region has a
profound impact on different
combinations of bilateral
relations in South Asia and
beyond. There is no denying
the fact that there is a
divergence of perception
among South Asian countries
regarding China’s growing
engagement in the region.
Bangladesh and India have
different views about China,
the Rohingya crisis, and the
Teesta water-sharing issue.
Bangladesh’s prime minister
has stressed that geopolitical
rivalries in the region must be
overcome through regional
cooperation and focus on
connectivity and poverty
alleviation.
Bangladesh-Pakistan tensions
and hostility have been
tempered by a few proactive
moves from both states in
recent years. Particularly,
Pakistan seems eager to repair
a relationship that enjoyed
friendship and cooperation for
more than three decades under
military and right-wing
political forces. The
continuing economic
cooperation and attempts at
reviving old bilateral
mechanisms may improve
relations, but Pakistan has to
ways to go to normalize its
relations with Bangladesh.
March 25 is observed in
Bangladesh as a National Day
of Genocide, remembering the
crackdown in the name of the
so-called “Operation Search
Light” by the Pakistan
military regime in 1971. For
better ties, the Khan
government in Pakistan will
have to offer a genuine
apology on the issue of
genocide and the 1971 war.
The government also needs to
demonstrate sincerity about
resolving the issues of the
stranded Pakistanis in
Bangladesh and asset sharing.
New elements layered over
existing patterns of conflict,
cooperation, and divergence
in South Asia continue to
affect Bangladesh’s
geopolitical relations,
including: China’s BRI; the
Quad, bringing the United
States, India, Japan, and
Australia together; the advent
of Indo-Pacific strategies by
several states; the AUKUS
nuclear submarine deal
between the U.S., the U.K.
and Australia; the U.S.
withdrawal from Afghanistan;
the ongoing Rohingya crisis;
and the military coup in
Myanmar. Nuclear
proliferation, the Kashmir
crisis, and terrorism have long
been major challenges for
South Asia, and they are
further complicated by the
range of newer developments.
In the changed strategic
scenarios and economic
power matrix, Bangladesh
seems to enjoy wider
autonomy to conduct its
foreign policy. Bangladesh’s
Sheikh Hasina, riding on a
fast-growing and resilient
economy, can assert a new
role for Bangladesh amid the
puzzling patterns of inter-state
relations.
 A Democracy Summit Might Not Be Popular in the Indo-Pacific
Shihoko Goto, The Diplomat
A
commitment to
democracy has been a
guiding force of the
United States’ foreign policy
since the country’s inception,
and few would question the
sincerity of President Joe
Biden’s personal belief in
democratic principles. But as
the administration prepares
for a virtual Summit for
Democracy that will bring
together leaders from across
the globe, the White House
has remained hesitant about
releasing the list of
participating nations, let alone
the actual individuals who
will be attending. The
administration’s reluctance to
tout who exactly will be
attending the Summit for
Democracy (scheduled for
December 9-10) speaks
volumes about the inherently
divisive nature of how
democracy is viewed today,
even among like-minded
countries that share interests
but not necessarily values
with the United States.
Across the Indo-Pacific, many
governments are hesitant to
have values drive foreign
policy decisions. In fact,
focusing on values all too
often ends up driving a wedge
between countries, rather than
bringing them together. What
unites the world’s most
populous and diverse region is
not values, but rather shared
interests, ranging from how to
position themselves in the
face of persisting tensions
between China and the United
States, to ensuring continued
economic growth.
That said, there are growing
concerns about governance as
well, which have become
particularly acute over the
past two years since the
pandemic’s outbreak. Border
closures, disruptions to supply
chains, forced shutdowns
curtailing economic activity,
and massive public spending
to offset those shocks have led
to a reassessment about the
role of government, and the
expectation of citizens from
their government.
During the early months of the
spread of COVID-19, Asian
nations kept the pandemic at
bay far more effectively than
the United States or European
countries. The cost of
containment was imposing
more stringent or even
draconian measures to prevent
the spread of the virus, and the
U.S. media in particular
concluded that such steps
reflected a broader, systemic
difference in governance
between authoritarian rule and
democracies.
In Northeast Asia, however,
the debate about how to tackle
COVID-19’s spread focused
on the differences between
collective interests and
protecting society at large,
versus putting the interests of
individuals first and
promoting self-interest over
that of the community. The
Asian debate was less about
democracy versus
authoritarianism, and more
about individualism against
collectivism. More often than
not, support to promote the
collective interest prevailed,
which was reflected in public
policy decisions.
Now that COVID-19 appears
to be more under control,
especially with the wider
availability of vaccines, at
least among wealthier nations,
the immediate focus in
advanced economies is
recovering from the fallout of
the pandemic, from reopening
borders to enhancing
economic resiliency to
restoring fiscal sustainability
to make up for the massive
spending incurred to fight
COVID-19. Looking ahead in
the longer term, though, one
of the biggest questions will
be how to restore confidence
in government and what
effective governance looks
like.
The past two years have
demonstrated that even the
world’s wealthiest as well as
the most technologically
advanced country has been
hard pressed to make full use
of its assets to protect its
citizens. Assuming that
another global health crisis or
other unexpected disruption
occurs in the future, there is
greater urgency for countries
to learn from the COVID-19
experience by being prepared
for crises, in order to ensure
that such disruptions will not
lead to an even deeper income
or social divide.
The world is now looking for
the United States to use its
convening power to reflect
upon those challenges ahead.
A starting point would be to
reflect on the lessons learned,
and to identify weaknesses as
much as strengths in dealing
with the unexpected, starting
with the U.S. itself. The fact
that China has been unwilling
to investigate the origins of
the coronavirus, for instance,
is alarming to countries
around the world, whatever
their political structure may
be. The solution to enticing
China to share information
and be more transparent about
the outbreak of the
coronavirus in Wuhan will not
be to espouse the virtues of
democracy to Beijing. Rather,
it is to highlight that building
trust with China’s own
citizens and the world at large
will lead to greater stability.
Bear in mind that when it
comes to U.S. relations in the
Indo-Pacific, what binds the
two sides are shared economic
and security interests rather
than democratic values. In the
case of Vietnam, for instance,
its commitment to the TPP
.
T
and subsequent CPTPP trade
deal has been seen as a huge
win for proponents of the
international liberal order. In
fact, there is a deep irony that
Hanoi has signed off on both
the CPTPP and RCEP, and as
a result the communist state is
far more integrated into the
open regional trade
architecture than the United
States.
Washington’s push to
promote democracy seems
premature too without
reflecting on the causes and
consequences of the January 6
assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Such lack of introspection can
be off-putting at best and
deeply offensive at worst in
many parts of the Indo-
Pacific, from Thailand to
Indonesia and the Philippines
and beyond.
If the end goal of the
democracy summit is to
reaffirm the strength and
allure of democracies,
Washington must be more
upfront about its fragilities
and acknowledge its own
mistakes, especially within
the United States. But if the
objective is to promote values
as a means to enhance its
outreach to the Indo-Pacific
and Southeast Asia in
particular, focusing on good
governance rather than
democracy as an end in itself
would be far more effective as
a unifying force
 Sialkot Incident: Ramifications & Recommendations
Atif Shafique, Daily Times
M
uch has been
written, reported,
said and talked
about the horrendous incident
in which a Sri Lankan national
working in a factory in Sialkot
was brutally killed and his
body was burnt in the middle
of Wazirabad road. Police
arrested a number of accused
offenders and authorities
made solemn pledges to
dispense justice. All said and
done, people have serious
doubts about any positive
results and the furor will peter
out with time as has happened
in the past in many gruesome
incidents. Only hollow
statements, some rubble
rousing rallies, perfunctory
resolutions in the National and
provincial assemblies, some
more soft worded
condemnations by religious
scholars and routine babbling
by inter-faith harmony
committees, will stir a storm
in the teacup and that is all.
Then there would be a
criminal silence till another
such incident awakes us,
though temporarily, from our
deep slumber.
The incident needs deep soul-
searching because the malady
of radicalisation and
extremism is deep-seated in
society. This propensity has
been pampered by influential
quarters for the last many
decades. Resultantly, the
myopic mindset has become
acceptable to a large segment
of the public. Axiomatically,
these monsters have grown
bigger and bolder with each
passing day. The example of
the incident of 14th August at
Minar-e-Pakistan and many
more such acts on the night of
13th / 14th August are
indicators of how low the
morality of the society has
gone down.
It is no rocket science to find
out the root causes of this
widespread frustration,
intolerance and inhumane
behaviour. One major factor
which stands out is that the
public is starved and deprived
of all kinds of positive
opportunities to vent out their
energies nor there is any
quality entertainment. In the
late 70’s the increased role of
religious pandits and then in
the ’80s during Zia’s regime
this present-day extremist,
intolerant and fanatic religious
cult was created and over time
it kept growing and now it has
almost become a Frankenstein
monster. Lynching is nothing
new in the name of religion in
Pakistan, it is only that we
have short-lived memories.
Between 2012 to date over 10
to 12 different incidents of this
brutal kind occurred and
nothing happened to those
involved after initial arrest etc.
They were let off
subsequently as the legal
procedure allowed them an
easy exit.
Lynching is nothing new in
the name of religion in
Pakistan. It is only that we
have short-lived memories.
Follow up of the recent
incident also shows a similar
trend where the victim is
considered to be a defaulter
and the aggressors are being
treated as heroes at the local
level. The statements given by
our various politico-religion
leaders also indicate this same
mindset.
The youth is rudderless and
uncontrolled due to lack of
opportunities, may it be
vocational, entertainment,
educational or cultural
development. Our political, as
well as religious leaders, is
hell-bent to increase violence
and agitation in the country to
suit their goals and desires, At
the same time, media houses
have also joined this stream.
The issue instead of being
mellowed down is being
highlighted to an extent where
even if one wants to put off the
anger and retaliation on hold
is rather being incited by
repeated discussions on
various media modes.
PEMRA is not taking notice
of this toxic trend.
No religious leader or scholar
has come upon air to talk
about the need to be patient
and tolerant the stance is quite
perturbing. The reports of the
accused being treated as
heroes by the local
community is also a point to
ponder. The unsolved earlier
cases of lynching may be the
reason which encourages
people to repeat such
unethical acts.
The state in my opinion has
failed to create the desired
awareness amongst the
masses. The so-called change
in the name of the creation of
Riasat-e-Madina appears to be
no more than a slogan as no
practical action/step can be
seen on the ground. Even if
there is no visible change on
the political front due to the
claimed negative role of the
oppositions, where are the
steps to create balance,
tolerance, equality and
provision of Justice??? Why
do we only blame the previous
governments? Three and half
years or so have elapsed, why
no step has been taken to
improve upon the above-cited
issues.
To blame only
government is also not
correct, we all are included in
this. It is very easy to sit down,
criticize the system and point
out the mistakes but in actual
fact how many of us actually
get out of our cosy homes and
drawing rooms and initiate
practical steps, may be only a
few odd, but that doesn’t
work. I feel that we all as
individuals must seriously see
and act in the fields where we
can influence regardless of
our political liking and
disliking, we must try to bring
awareness to people around us
in our immediate circles. The
need of the time to develop a
sincere understanding / public level to create
creating a sense of tolerance
towards all and try to follow
the law. Our educational
institutions of all kinds must
launch an immediate program
the
to soften up the mindset of our
future generation and clarify
that to punish the criminal is
the responsibility of the state.
The punishing of the accused
by public and mob is
forbidden legally,m, socially
religiously as well as
ethically. We must not resort
to taking the law in own hands
(of course this has to be
augmented by judicial reforms
at the earliest). We must
ensure that the religion is not
made a tool to gain
personal/collective/political
aims. The true sprite of Islam
must be highlighted.
The need of the hour is to
launch a massive drive at
awareness, opportunities, and
provide options for all the
public to get out of the tense
environment and get busy in
healthy and constructive
activities or else we will
continue to see the incidents
where in matter of minutes
already socially, culturally
and economically deprived
masses turn into a mob on just
one slogan and within minutes
the situation gets out of
control, where anything can
happen. We all must act now
if we want to see change or
else incidents like Minar-e-
Pakistan and Sialkot will keep
happening in days to come
unfortunately.
 G77, development and global equality
Atle Hetland, The Nation
P
akistan has just been
elected to chair the
Group of 77+China, or
G77, for 2022. It has also
chaired the organisation three
times before, and it was a
founding member in 1964
when 77 developing countries
met in Geneva, in liaison with
the United Nations,
establishing the largest
organisation of developing
countries working for more
equality in the international
economic community. That
same year, UNCTAD, the
United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development, was
also established and it became
quite prominent working with
the poor developing countries
in seeking ways of creating a
New International Economic
Order, NIEO. Alas, it came to
nothing because the rich West
did not want to give up
privileges, although it would
in the long run also have
benefitted them, today often
called the Global North. It
would indeed have made
peaceful development in the
Global South entirely
different from what it has
been. Little has changed in the
global structural relations
since then; rather inequality
has grown between and within
countries. In my article last
week, I was quite critical of
the World Bank and IMF,
stressing that their policies
were, and still are, rather
politically oriented than
development oriented, and in
reality they are often not on
the side of the recipients of
loans, credits and aid. They
push capitalist ideologies and
relations on the poor
countries, emphasising
policies of privatisation,
giving limited support to
public education and health,
and no real safety nets for the
poor. The development aid
that the former colonies and
other poor countries have
received, have often not been
more than token, and again,
political. The bilateral donors
too have mostly followed the
leadership of the development
banks and financial
institutions. Sometimes, the
transfers from donors may
seem high in figures, yet, they
are still just ‘crumbles from
the rich man’s table’, as we
used to say when I was young
in the 1970s. The transfers
were not meant to lead to
structural change in
international relations, or
sustainable development, as
we say today. G77 was
designed to be a common,
non-aligned organisation for
developing countries, which
should promote its members
economic interests and create
and enhance negation capacity
in the UN and beyond. It
played a major role in the
abolition of apartheid in South
Africa, and it supported
socialist-oriented
development, which was in
the early decades in the
interest of the Nonaligned
Movement, as its members
were encouraged by the
Soviet Union and China to
follow such development
paths. Some did, too, for some
time. But it seems the World
Bank and IMF won that
struggle and few developing
countries can today be said to
be socialist oriented. In
Europe, though, especially in
the Nordic countries,
Germany and elsewhere,
social democratic policies, a
form of ‘socialism light’, find
support.
When Pakistan’s Foreign
Minister, Shah Mahmood
Qureshi addressed digitally
the 134 countries of today’s
G77, upon having been
elected as chair for 2002, he
focused on some key aspects
of the agenda. He said there
are three main crises to
handle: the Covid-19
pandemic; challenges to
achieve the UN SDG goals by
2030; and the existential
threat of a climate catastrophe.
In all these areas developing
countries need assistance from
the rich countries to top up
their own efforts. There must
be results in debt
restructuring, larger
concessional financing,
mobilisation of climate
financing, reduction of elicit
transfer of funds from
countries in the South to the
North, including assets taken
without compensation earlier,
and the creation of an
equitable and open trading
system and a fair taxation
regime. As for climate
change, G77 has in the past
not given that high enough
priority, and greater focus is
needed, as Qureshi said. In our
time, multinationals and the
private sector companies have
become richer than before,
sometimes even richer than
states. This calls for tougher
talks and negotiations
between the Global South and
the Global North. The latter
group of countries have also
realised that the very rich
multinationals must be pulled
in and controlled; their power
has gone out of hand, and new
tax regimes and ways of
paying back to society must be
found. Here are possibilities
of finding funds in order to
increase development aid and
other transfers to poor
countries, and poor people in
all countries. I have criticised
the World Bank, IMF and the
bilateral donors; aid is not
increasing, but decreasing,
and refugee and migration
tragedies develop as part of
the existing inequality and the
lack of hope and opportunities
for poor people worldwide.
G77 has spoken well in the
past about alternative
development, solidarity,
equality, and more. But G77’s
voice is today not a loud voice
so that we can understand,
first, what superstructure the
world needs, and, second,
ascertain direct, practical
change. In order for the
tangible changes to happen,
the intangible must be clear. It
is my hope that G77 can
become a major voice in
future, in addition to also
helping in the concrete steps,
or rather in leaps towards
greater global equality. The
UN, too, and its many
agencies, indeed UNCTAD,
which still exists, but in some
obscurity, it seems, and many
other organisations, must join
hands and make tangible
results be realised—urgently.
G77 must be on the ball during
Pakistan’s year as chair of the
organisation in 2022, and we
must all do what we can, to
support and propagate G77’s
work, in the coming year and
beyond. Let this be part of our
New Year’s resolution this
year. Each of us must
contribute, in small or big
ways, to keep and create peace
on earth, enhance prosperity
and development, and
equality for all.