2017

In October 2016, lawmakers from the Senate of Pakistan – the upper house of the country’s parliament – expressed a growing fear that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) could turn into another East India Company if the country’s interests were not actively protected. East India Company was a British trading mission sent to India which served as the precursor to …

Pakistan saw massive influx of refugees from Afghanistan during the 1980s. They came through the border gateways and informal crossing points on the Durand Line. The registered figure of Afghan refugees in Pakistan at that time was 3.2 million. As time passed by, their population grew to reach the 5 million mark. Currently, there are about 1.5 million registered and …

Introduction Pakistan’s constitution is no stranger to amendments; extant written constitution of 1973 had as many as eighteen amendments till 2010. Much has been written about the amendments introduced to the constitution till that time; the purpose of this write-up is to consolidate and record the post-2010 (post-Eighteenth Amendment) constitutional amendments that have been made, and the draft amendments laid …

Since the contemporary international system is largely anarchic, it is not surprising to see two oppressive, ultra-right-wing governments, India and Israel, overtly embracing each other despite their gross human rights violations in Kashmir and Palestine. Narendra Modi has become the first Indian Prime Minister to pay a state visit to Israel – an oppressive state that has colonised and suppressed …

Donald Trump’s entry into the White House as the 45th President of the United States has prompted a major reassessment of the United States’ global role – the most fundamental rethinking since World War II. It is already clear that Trump will continue at least one trend that has been under way since the collapse of the Soviet Union. For …

After a nine-month-long battle that ravaged Mosul – Iraq’s second-largest city – and took a heavy toll on residents and security forces, Iraqi forces finally achieved victory over the Islamic State (IS). While announcing this historic achievement of triumph over one of the world’s most lethal terrorist groups, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, entered the remains of the historic …

The G20 Summit 2017 took place amid growing concerns about the negative effects of globalization on lower-income groups and developing countries, as well as other global uncertainties that couldn’t have come at a worse time such as climate change. Before touching down in Germany, US President Donald Trump delivered a speech in Warsaw outlining highly nationalistic policies. The G20 meeting …

It is increasingly clear that US President Donald Trump represents a departure when it comes to America’s global outlook and behaviour. As a result, the United States will no longer play the leading international role that has defined its foreign policy for three quarters of a century, under Democratic and Republican presidents alike. We have already seen many examples of …

On 26th May 2017, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the renowned thinker, writer and practitioner of geopolitics throughout the Cold War and National Security Adviser to former US president Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, passed away at the age of 89. Brzezinski was among one of the groups of European exiles who did so much to steer American foreign policy in the …

Since the end of the last major world war some seven decades ago, international peace has been preserved by the threat of the nuclear bomb. Because of its unique and unilateral ability to devastate the world, the bomb fundamentally changed the realities of international politics. However, its impact on global stability faded as more countries developed similar destructive capabilities. American …