ISRAEL-PALESTINE

o Rabbi Meir Kahane, the departed guru of many of today’s fanatics, argued in a 1980 book with
the telling title, They Must Go, that the Palestinians are a “cancer” in the body of the “Jewish
State” that must be removed by whatever means necessary.

Economy

 Surprise inflation can materially erode the real value of local currency bonds; and governments
can dramatically reduce the quantity and quality of public services they provide to citizens. Both
are examples of ‘soft’ default, even though their effects may be far from soft.
 The difficulty, it is said, is with ‘contractual’ default, or ‘debt restructuring’, i.e., the government
telling its creditors it cannot pay per the terms of the original debt contract.
 Musharraf Era: The GDP growth of Pakistan was 3.9 per cent in 1999-2000, which rose to 6 per
cent per year from 2000-2007 under Musharraf’s rule. The revenue collections increased from
Rs308 billion in 1999 to Rs846 billion during 2007, whereas the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
increased from US$ 4.87 billion to US$ 13.195 billion. The foreign debt decreased from $38.5
billion to $34 billion.
 Singapore’s Case Study: Compare with Chinese involvement in Singapore which, like Pakistan, is a
former British colony. This island is 42 times smaller population-wise and 1,093 times smaller
area-wise. But last year, FDI in Singapore was $92bn compared to $2bn for Pakistan. Its
economy attracts American and Chinese giant companies for semiconductor design and
manufacture, communications, robotics, financial technologies, business and professional
services, etc.
 Reuters analysis explains that `Countries in debt distress turning to the [Fund] for financial help
are facing unprecedented delays to secure bailouts as China and Western economies clash over
how to provide debt relief`.

Pakistan Institutional reforms

 In his speech at the 2022 Asma Jahangir conference, Justice Qazi Faez Isa urged the public
to criticize individuals, not institutions, for the ills facing Pakistan. “Judge us as judges,
condemn me as a judge, do not condemn the Supreme Court,” Justice Isa said.
 For long, our polity has been `rule of the few, by the few, for the few`. Those `few` have
been called the `elite` by Ishrat Husain, and are now being called `one per cent` by Miftah
Ismail.

Pakistan Politics
 Coercion and consent: As the Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci has explained, no ruling
elite, including authoritarian regimes, can rule only on the basis of fear based on coercion,
and legitimacy based on patriotism.
  Thomas Hobbes, through his classical text Leviathan, responded with a simple theory of
governance only a strong state can save us from anarchy and violence. In other words,
before any democracy or constitutionalism or fundamental rights, there must be order
based on obedience to state authority derived from its monopoly over violence

Women

 According to the Demographic and Health Survey [DHS], 2017-18, only 3pc of surveyed women
between the age of 15 and 49 years in Pakistan own a house. On the other hand, the same
number for men is 72pc.
 According to DHS, 2017-18, a whopping 28pc of women in Pakistan between 15 and 49 years of
age have experienced physical violence. Twenty-six per cent of married women who have
experienced spousal physical or sexual violence, have sustained injuries.
 World Values Survey, 2017-2022, Starting with economic disparities, 72.1pc of individuals in the
WVS sample either `strongly agree` or `agree` with the statement that there is a problem if
women have more income than their husbands. A whopping 85.3pc either `strongly agree` or
`agree` that men have more right to a job than women do. Moving on to political disparities,
75.8pc either `strongly agree` or `agree` that men make better political leaders than women do.
 According to New World Bank Report, global pace of reforms toward equal treatment of
women under the law has fallen to a 20 year low, with only 34pc gender related legal reforms
across 18 countries since 2000.
 UNSG, gender equality will take 300 years to achieve.
 The global organisation, ActionAid International reports that `women, who do a vast majority
of both unpaid care work in households and low-paid care work in public services, bear the
brunt of austerity measures, especially public sector funding cuts. When public services are
underfunded there is a triple disadvantage for women, who disproportionately lose access to
services, lose opportunities for decent work and take on rising burdens of unpaid care work`.

 According to the United Nations Development Programme, women in Pakistan spend an

average of 4.4 hours per day on unpaid care work, including activities such as cooking, cleaning,
childcare, and caring for the elderly. Imagine spending 4.4 hours above your typical nine-tofive
day! In Pakistan, the responsibility of caring for children is traditionally seen as solely a
woman`s role. Even when women engage in paid work, they still bear the responsibility of
sustaining the household. In other words, their work is never-ending! The relentless nature of
care work can exhaust women, leaving them with little time for themselves; this has adverse

effects on their health.

 The UN`s 2023 Gender Social Norms Index makes for depressing reading. According to the
report, there has been no improvement since a decade in biases against women, with almost
nine out of 10 men and women across the world still embracing such misogynistic notions. In
 the eyes of 50pc of people globally, men make better political leaders than women, and over
40pc consider men to be better business executives than women. Shockingly, 25pc of people
believe it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife, behaviour that further reinforces women`s
low status and leads to generational trauma.

 As per the UN report, the share of women as heads of state or government has, on average,
hovered around 10pc since 1995. And although women are more educated and skilled than ever
before, gender bias continues to be a hurdle in the way of their economic empowerment.
Consider that even in the 59 countries where women have more years of education under their

belt than men, the average gender income gap is a whopping 39pc in favour of men.

 UN agencies estimate that globally a woman dies every two minutes due to complications
during pregnancy or childbirth.

 According to the WHO, about 287,000 women died in 2022 during and following pregnancy and
childbirth.

 Pakistan has an MMR of 186 deaths per 100,000 live births along with the current neonatal
mortality rate of 40 per 1,000 live births. As part of the UN`s Sustainable Development Goals,
the goal is to reduce MMR to less than 70 per 100,000 live births and neonatal deaths to 12 per

1,000 live births by 2030.

 Report by a research and advocacy firm :It documents 771 cases of violence against women in
only the first four months of this year in Sindh alone. These include 529 abductions and 171

cases of domestic violence.

 `This is the garbage left behind which has to be cleaned,` Khawaja Asif said.
As if that were not derogatory enough, he later added: `Depraved women
should not lecture on chastity.` In a patriarchal culture, casting aspersions on
women`s `character` is low-hanging fruit.
Employment

THE findings of a new global ILO study that 29pc of key workers in essential services, covering health,
cleaning and sanitation, education, food systems, security, transportation and manual technical and
clerical occupations, are low paid shows how the world treats its real heroes who are expected to carry
on with their jobs and serve the rest. Such workers, according to the report, earn 26pc less than other
employees.

Population
Pakistan has the fastest-growing population in South Asia with a fertility rate that is almost twice as
high as that of India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

In contrast to Pakistan`s fertility rate at 3.6, Bangladesh`s fertility is two births for every woman.

China

 In 1985, the defense policy of the People`s Republic of China under Deng Xiaoping changed
dramatically. From a strategy to `hit early, strike hard and to fight a nuclear war`, China has
`focused on increasing mechanization and informatization to be able to fight a high-intensity
war`. Aiming at `quality rather than on quantity`, it has reduced its armed forces by over 1m
and cut its bloated leadership by 50 per cent.
 Few nations have benefited more than China from the U.S.- backed international order,
which has provided markets for Chinese goods, as well as the financing and the information
that have allowed the Chinese to recover from the weakness and poverty of the last
century. Modern China has enjoyed remarkable security during the past few decades, which
was why, until a couple of decades ago, China spent little on defense.

Domestic politics:

 Polarization and political turmoil are taking their toll on the country`s institutions and
exposing them to the risk of breakdown.
 EVER the past decades, militancy in Pakistan has evolved into a hydra-headed monster.
 The Bangladesh parliament, chastened by the experience of a prolonged
caretaker set-up, and encouraged by the ruling of the country`s supreme
court declaring the caretaker system to be unconstitutional, finally wound
up the caretaker system in 2011 through the 15th constitutional amendment
passed by the 345-member legislature with an overwhelming majority of
291 to one, in a vote boycotted by BNP, the main opposition party. Prime
Minister Hasina Wajid told parliament after the vote: `This is a historic
moment for democracy. We can`t allow unelected people to oversee
national elections.

Climate change:

 Estimates based on historical data and climate models suggest that the world will reach the
1.5°C limit by 2030-2035. It means that for a 50-50 chance the world can only afford to emit
around 460 billion tons more of CO2, the equivalent of 11.5 years of annual emissions in
2020.
 The IPCC Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report has sounded the alarm bell of doom. It states
unequivocally that without strengthening policies the range of global warming projected by
2100 will be between 2.2 degrees Celsius to 3.5°C.

 The world`s glaciers melted at dramatic speed last year and saving them is effectively a lost
cause, a UN agency said in a report on Friday, noting that record levels of greenhouse gases
have caused `planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere`.

 The `State of the Global Climate 2022` report said that sea levels are also at a record high,
having risen by an average of 4.62 millimeters per year between 2013 and 2022 double the
rate it was between 1993 and 2002.

 In 2021, air pollution in South Asia was responsible for healthcare costs equivalent to 10.3pc
of its GDP compared to 6.1pc of healthcare costs to global GDP, according to the World
Bank.

 Nearly 90pc of the Asia-Pacific region`s4.3bn people regularly inhale air considered unsafe
by the WHO. Two-thirds of the 7m premature deaths attributed to air pollution occur in this
region.

 Globally, polluted air is responsible for 7m premature deaths, with 90 per cent of them
occurring in lowand middle-income countries according to the WHO.

New World Order:

 Analogies lil(e `a new Cold War` are misleading. The Soviet Union was America`s adversary;
China is a rival. The USSR was economically weak with limited international engagement;
China is an economic powerhouse and fully engaged globally.

Countries were aligned or nonaligned during the Cold War; now they have overlapping and
shifting alliances.

Yet a new world order has not quite emerged. We are in a transitional order that affects and
is being affected not only by the US-China rivalry, but also by Russian assertiveness,
Europe`s struggle for autonomy, and the ambitions of middle powers.
 New Cold War
 Cold Peace: Avoiding a New Cold War by Michael Doyle, a Columbia University professor,
offers a comprehensive review of the many issues that lie behind East-West tensions. The
author sets out to examine whether a new cold war is likely and how different it might be
from the Cold War of the past. He points to the dangers of a looming cold war but argues
that this is not inevitable. Instead, a `cold peace` can be established if certain key
compromises are made by competing powers, which can yield cooperation in critical areas.
 He writes that like the original Cold War, the emerging cold war is a deeply structured
conflict, both internationally and transnationally. There are similarities. Both are `non-armed
conflicts` involving rivalries that go beyond contests for influence, power and prosperity. But
he suggests that while Cold War I was fought primarily through proxy wars, arms races and
espionage, the current confrontation entails a combination of cyber espionage,
technological and industrial competition, political interference and arms contests. He shows
convincingly that the emerging Cold War H is not as extensive, extreme and polarising as its
predecessor. Its reach is not yet global and `the sides are less clear-cut`, with alliances not so
firmly formed or ideologically defined. But the weaponisation of cyber technologies is
making the confrontation a deadly one.
 Doyle offers three reasons why the burgeoning cold war, dangerous as it is, will not be a
replay of the original one. One, the likely costs of an escalating cold war between the US and
China. Two, the large global common interest in interdependent prosperity and saving the
planet from environmental degradation. And three, he sees China and Russia as
authoritarian but not totalitarian.
 One of the most influential books on this subject, published in 2017, was Destined for War:
Can America and China Escape Thucydides`s Trap? by Harvard scholar Graham Allison. In
this, he invokedtheancientGreekhistorianThucydides`s depiction of the deadly trap that
emerges when one great power challenges or is poised to displace another. Thucydides had
emphasised the inevitability of war when fear of the rise of a new power determined the
established power`s actions. Allison`s advice to avoid Thucydides`s Trap resonates in Doyle`s
book and in Henry Kissinger`s warning that any drift into conflict would have catastrophic
consequences.

Food security

https://epaper.dawn.com/DetailNews.php?StoryText=30_05_2023_001_009
 The Ministry of Planning Development and Special Initiatives has launched
the `NationalMultisectoralNutrition to Reduce Stunting and other forms of
Malnutrition` worth Rs8.5 billion under the Pakistan Nutrition Initiatives
(PANI).
 Water security

 According to the WHO, about two billion people lack access to safe
drinking water, while 4.2bn do not have adequate sanitation.

Russia_Ukraine:

 Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine was meant to be his crowning
achievement, a demonstration of how far Russia had come since the collapse of the Soviet
empire in 1991. Annexing Ukraine was supposed to be a first step in reconstructing a
Russian empire. Putin intended to expose the United States as a paper tiger outside
Western Europe and to demonstrate that Russia, along with China, was destined for a
leadership role in a new, multipolar international order. It hasn’t turned out that way. Kyiv
held strong, and the Ukrainian military has been transformed into a juggernaut, thanks in
part to a close partnership with the United States and Western allies. The Russian military,
in contrast, has demonstrated poor strategic thinking and organization.
 That said, a Russian government—under Putin or a successor— could try to retain Crimea
and sue for peace elsewhere. To save face domestically, the Kremlin could claim it is
preparing for the long game in Ukraine, leaving open the possibility of additional military
incursions. It could blame its underperformance on NATO, arguing that the alliance’s
weapon deliveries, not Ukraine’s strength, impeded a Russian victory.
 A second scenario for Russian defeat would involve failure amid escalation. The Kremlin
would nihilistically seek to prolong the war in Ukraine while launching a campaign of
unacknowledged acts of sabotage in countries that support Kyiv and in Ukraine itself. In the
worst case, Russia could opt for a nuclear attack on Ukraine
 The final scenario for the war’s end would be defeat through regime collapse, with the
decisive battles taking place not in Ukraine but rather in the halls of the Kremlin or in the
streets of Moscow. Putin has concentrated power rigidly in his own hands, and his obstinacy
in pursuing a losing war has placed his regime on shaky ground.

 Though Russia’s defeat would have many benefits, the United States and Europe should
prepare for the regional and global disorder it would produce. Since 2008, Russia has been a
revisionist power. It has redrawn borders, annexed territory, meddled in elections, inserted
itself into various African conflicts, and altered the geopolitical dynamic of the Middle East
by propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
 In a speech on September 30, Putin brought up Hiroshima and Nagasaki, offering jumbled
interpretations of World War II’s end phase. The analogy is imperfect, to put it mildly. If
 Russia were to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, Kyiv would not surrender. For one
thing, Ukrainians know that Russian occupation would equal the extinction of their country,
which was not the case for Japan in 1945. In addition, Japan was losing the war at the time.
As of late 2022, it was Russia, the nuclear power, that was losing.
 Chinese President Xi Jinping made this publicly explicit in November: after he met with
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he issued a statement declaring that the leaders “jointly
oppose the use or threat of the use of nuclear weapons.” If Putin did defy this warning, he
would be an isolated pariah, punished economically and perhaps militarily by a global
coalition.
 Even if this scenario could be avoided, a Russian defeat after nuclear use would still have
dangerous repercussions. It would create a world without the imperfect nuclear equilibrium
of the Cold War and the 30-year post–Cold War era. It would encourage leaders around the
globe to go nuclear because it would appear that their safety could only be assured by
acquiring nuclear weapons and showing a willingness to use them. A helter-skelter age of
proliferation would ensue, to the immense detriment of global security.

How to Avoid a New Cold War in a Multipolar Era:

 The world is facing a Zeitenwende: an epochal tectonic shift. Russia’s war of aggression
against Ukraine has put an end to an era. New powers have emerged or reemerged,
including an economically strong and politically assertive China. In this new multipolar
world, different countries and models of government are competing for power and
influence.