2016

China’s revolutionary idea of “One Belt, One Road (OBOR)” has given a new dimension to the globalized world toward attaining “Greater Connectivity” through roads, railways and maritime routes. Due to China’s investment-friendly philosophy, CPEC is one branch of $51.5 billion (previously $46 billion) for Pakistan from the nearly one trillion dollar ‘investment tree’. Fortunately, this came as the privileged bounty …

Pak-Afghan relations have been marred by mutual mistrust, acrimony and recurrent blame game. Under the disruptive thumb of India, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has recently threatened to completely block Pakistan’s trade access to Central Asia, if Islamabad does not formally permit Kabul to import Indian goods via the Wagah border. Such threats will further deteriorate the already fragile relationship between …

The global influence of the West has redefined the very concept of development: the result is that economic development is assumed to trigger development in all other sectors of society. The veracity of this assumption is often tested when economic development does not produce the desired outcomes. In this context, the academia has tried to examine the relationship of law …

On September 28, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), during its meeting in Algiers, the Algerian capital, agreed to reduce oil output to a range of 32.5-33.0 million barrels per day from the current output of 33.24 million bpd. It is for the first time in eight years that the oil cartel has decided to lower output. Saudi Arabia, …

The intent behind Narendra Modi’s unprecedented ‘love’ for Afghanistan is no more a secret now. With an overt mission to destabilize Pakistan, Modi has poured in huge sums of money as ‘investments in Afghanistan’s future’ and has vowed that his country will extend cooperation to every part of war-torn Afghanistan despite facing barriers of politics, geography and terror attacks on …

Americans elect a president every four years and quite interestingly every time, the campaign-finance experts predict that it’s going to be the most expensive election in country’s history. This year’s election is also no exception as it has already been estimated that the 2016 election is going to be the most expensive in history. As per estimates, these will cost …

The 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly recently kicked off in New York, USA.  At the UNGA session many global and regional issues will be discussed. However, it is also an undeniable reality that a host of such issues could have been solved had the United Nations, with all its organs, played its due role. Although it has …

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) is now the law of the United States. After months of warnings from President Obama, legal and international affairs experts and foreign leaders, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed the bill on September 9. This act of the Congress began a game of legislative ping-pong between the President and the Congress …

After the great Western victory over the Soviet Union in 1991, many echoed Francis Fukuyama’s view that the future belonged to liberal democratic states. And, much like after the Western victories in two World Wars, there was a period of significant expansion of democratic regimes around the world after 1991. But, now, 25 years after the dissolution of the Soviet …

“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.” —Strobe Talbot, Former Deputy Secretary of State (As quoted in Time, July 20th, l992) When a Nato commander warns that the West is on course for an armed conflict with Russia, …