karan.1970
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I agree.. Just like Pakistan uses non state actors for plausible deniability, China uses Pakistan to avoid direct impact on its own growth activities.
China BAD
- Thread starter muse
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I agree.. Just like Pakistan uses non state actors for plausible deniability, China uses Pakistan to avoid direct impact on its own growth activities.
shuttler
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this also point directly to usa hypocrisy at its height.
I am amazed you said how your government and some people are subscribing it. So the collateral damage mode is on. In one drone attack, dozens of innocent people get killed, more properties damaged just for hunting down a few taliban suspects. And some of your people are hailing on 4th of July!
In respect of burden or bearing with Pakistan on the part of China, please don't mention these things as I know your good intentions!
We thank you for your support throughout the years!
Leader
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this is not how geo-strategic relations work as you described, its a partnership between the two countries. just focus on the word geo-strategic partnership, you comprehend this, you would understand, the details shall reveal themselves in coming years/decades.
muse
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Reading responses by Pakistanis, I am compelled to add the piece below:
Flawed narratives
Dr Maleeha Lodhi
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The writer is special adviser to the Jang Group/Geo and a former envoy to the US and the UK.
The intellectual confusion prevailing in the country today receives little attention, even though this is distorting public perceptions on key issues and hobbling effective policy responses to ongoing challenges.
The only Pakistani author to have seriously examined this is Riaz Mohammed Khan, in his recent book ‘Afghanistan and Pakistan’. Though not the book’s central theme, Khan deals at length with our society’s conflicted attitudes towards modernity, attributing this to an “intellectual crisis”. This is evidenced by ‘unreasonableness, confusion and severity’ in the public discourse on national policies, priorities and politics.
The intellectual capacity to develop “a balanced perspective on challenges and problems, and thus a clear analysis and judgement has suffered a certain decline. “The Pakistani intellectual”, he argues, has largely “been reduced to a polemicist”, with “the electronic media accentuating this tendency”, making public discourse noisier but not necessarily wiser.
The former foreign secretary’s description of this unedifying reality has much resonance if we look even cursorily at the present intellectual landscape. Informed and fact-based arguments are hard to find in the public discourse. Instead contradiction and confusion clouds public thinking on many issues. Often a shallow conversation poses as debate. And with some exceptions ‘groupthink’ in the broadcast media obscures rather than illuminates complex reality. The lack of reasoned explanations produces distorted paradigms and damaging misconceptions, which in turn fosters a climate that hampers the evolution of sound policy.
There are at least four, mostly overlapping, aspects of the current public discourse that indicate this troubling phenomenon. The first is a tendency to look outside rather than within to find the means to solve the country’s problems. This stance reflects excessive preoccupation with the ‘external’. While not new, it has become more pronounced in recent years. What may once have been an elite narrative has now spread beyond and influenced public attitudes and the media debate.
This kind of thinking stems from a combination of what can be called a ‘dependent mindset’ and an ‘entitlement’ mentality, in which the overwhelming focus is on what others can do for us rather than on we should do for ourselves. It is one thing to see foreign help as a supplement to national efforts but when it is viewed as a substitute, harmful consequences follow. It leads to the misguided assumption that Pakistan cannot progress without external assistance. And by virtue of the country’s ‘importance’ the world ‘owes’ it to us to ensure we do not ‘fail’. Cast aside is the ineluctable reality that no nation changes its destiny except by its own efforts.
One illustration of this phenomenon is the way debate is sometimes conducted on television, where Pakistan’s foreign policy is evaluated almost exclusively in transactional terms – how much assistance a country is giving us – rather than in terms of principles or interests. Overseas visits by national leaders are gauged by this ‘test’. So are visits to the country by foreign dignitaries.
A paradigm that presumes that foreign assistance is the driver of national transformation reduces the country to a supplicant, to a powerless subject of other countries’ benevolence, which in reality is little more than an effort by them to buy influence in pursuit of their interests. Dependence predictably breeds popular resentment. The flip side of external dependence is thus antipathy towards foreign ‘domination’.
Over-reliance on outsiders also acts as a ‘negative multiplier’, draining the nation of self-esteem and serving as a symbol of the country’s weakness. But so confused is the public discourse that even those critical of this dependence have frequently argued that the country’s rulers were not ‘transactional enough’ and ‘sold themselves too cheaply’ in their foreign dealings. This discourse misses an obvious but vital point – national effort not the ‘amount’ of international assistance can change the country’s fortunes.
The second line of thinking that has long taken hold concerns expectations that the state should deliver, but without doing anything ourselves to resource the state. For example, those with the capacity to pay tax resist doing so and instead make strident demands on the state. But the state cannot be run on a sustainable basis without mobilising domestic resources. Nor can essential services be delivered without recovery of their cost.
Yet the public discourse addresses little attention to the responsibility of those who possess the capacity to contribute their fair share to the state’s revenue. The absence of a tax culture is both cause and a consequence of a narrative that only expects services from the state without accepting the responsibility to support policy actions that empower and fund the state. This narrative benefits and is encouraged by vested interests who refuse to pay tax and oppose tax reform. Its most deleterious consequence is to undermine the most fundamental notion that citizens have responsibilities too; and the well-to-do have greater responsibility.
Consider the manner in which the media usually reports on government measures to mobilise resources. They are invariably presented as “bombs” dropped on the people. No effort is made to explain why these measures are needed. Rarely do television debates place such policy decisions in the context of the state’s shrinking resources and why it is necessary to reverse that. The result is a discourse that muddles rather than clarifies our understanding of these realities. With frenzy usually whipped up over these steps, governments become fearful about the public backlash and play safe by eschewing reform. This offers a prime example of how an uninformed discourse complicates public policy.
A familiar third strand in the public discourse is that most of the country’s problems are of someone else’s making. This is fuelled by the proclivity of just about every group or institution to blame the other rather than look for causes and thus ways of fixing the problem. Conspiracy theories become the norm, vigorously spread and eagerly believed, serving as an expedient way of ‘explaining’ painful reality. Terrorist bombings for example cannot be the work of ‘one of us’ but someone else.
There is little questioning of the premise of conspiracy theories. Shifting the blame for a problem to someone else becomes a way of freeing oneself of responsibility. Conspiracy theories, in fact, become the means to pass the buck and serve as alibis for inaction. This is not to suggest that intrigue and conspiracy have been absent from Pakistan’s history. But to ascribe almost every problem to a conspiracy does nothing to address the challenge at hand. It fosters a disempowering victim narrative. The search for scapegoats rather than causes makes solutions impossible.
A fourth trend is the increasing disinclination to acknowledge even favourable developments for the country or take pride in anything. Public cynicism has become the enemy of objectivity. Such pessimism indicates public despair, which has been deepened by the cumulative impact of frustrations and reinforced by the present climate of economic, energy and security challenges that daily test the people’s patience.
But a culture of pessimism has also come to reflect an erosion of self-belief and confidence. This is dangerous because it denudes society of the ability to meet challenges and rebound from crises. Self-confidence is essential to navigate through tough times. But if negative attitudes settle into cultural traits they will allow no escape from despondency and the paralysis this entails.
Even young Malala Yousufzai could recognise the “importance of light when there is darkness” in her eloquent address to the United Nations. If hope creates confidence and the means for self-transformation, this should urge Pakistan’s political as well as its ‘thought’ leaders to build a positive narrative that can transcend the present scepticism and create an enabling psychological environment for a national turnaround.
Some will dismiss this prescription as unrealistic and impractical in the present fraught climate. But what is the alternative? A self-defeating victim narrative that induces more hopelessness? It is only when people start believing in their ability to change their circumstances that the country’s destiny will stand a chance of being transformed. For that, honesty and self-correction have to replace the present state of confusion and denial.
Flawed narratives
Dr Maleeha Lodhi
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The writer is special adviser to the Jang Group/Geo and a former envoy to the US and the UK.
The intellectual confusion prevailing in the country today receives little attention, even though this is distorting public perceptions on key issues and hobbling effective policy responses to ongoing challenges.
The only Pakistani author to have seriously examined this is Riaz Mohammed Khan, in his recent book ‘Afghanistan and Pakistan’. Though not the book’s central theme, Khan deals at length with our society’s conflicted attitudes towards modernity, attributing this to an “intellectual crisis”. This is evidenced by ‘unreasonableness, confusion and severity’ in the public discourse on national policies, priorities and politics.
The intellectual capacity to develop “a balanced perspective on challenges and problems, and thus a clear analysis and judgement has suffered a certain decline. “The Pakistani intellectual”, he argues, has largely “been reduced to a polemicist”, with “the electronic media accentuating this tendency”, making public discourse noisier but not necessarily wiser.
The former foreign secretary’s description of this unedifying reality has much resonance if we look even cursorily at the present intellectual landscape. Informed and fact-based arguments are hard to find in the public discourse. Instead contradiction and confusion clouds public thinking on many issues. Often a shallow conversation poses as debate. And with some exceptions ‘groupthink’ in the broadcast media obscures rather than illuminates complex reality. The lack of reasoned explanations produces distorted paradigms and damaging misconceptions, which in turn fosters a climate that hampers the evolution of sound policy.
There are at least four, mostly overlapping, aspects of the current public discourse that indicate this troubling phenomenon. The first is a tendency to look outside rather than within to find the means to solve the country’s problems. This stance reflects excessive preoccupation with the ‘external’. While not new, it has become more pronounced in recent years. What may once have been an elite narrative has now spread beyond and influenced public attitudes and the media debate.
This kind of thinking stems from a combination of what can be called a ‘dependent mindset’ and an ‘entitlement’ mentality, in which the overwhelming focus is on what others can do for us rather than on we should do for ourselves. It is one thing to see foreign help as a supplement to national efforts but when it is viewed as a substitute, harmful consequences follow. It leads to the misguided assumption that Pakistan cannot progress without external assistance. And by virtue of the country’s ‘importance’ the world ‘owes’ it to us to ensure we do not ‘fail’. Cast aside is the ineluctable reality that no nation changes its destiny except by its own efforts.
One illustration of this phenomenon is the way debate is sometimes conducted on television, where Pakistan’s foreign policy is evaluated almost exclusively in transactional terms – how much assistance a country is giving us – rather than in terms of principles or interests. Overseas visits by national leaders are gauged by this ‘test’. So are visits to the country by foreign dignitaries.
A paradigm that presumes that foreign assistance is the driver of national transformation reduces the country to a supplicant, to a powerless subject of other countries’ benevolence, which in reality is little more than an effort by them to buy influence in pursuit of their interests. Dependence predictably breeds popular resentment. The flip side of external dependence is thus antipathy towards foreign ‘domination’.
Over-reliance on outsiders also acts as a ‘negative multiplier’, draining the nation of self-esteem and serving as a symbol of the country’s weakness. But so confused is the public discourse that even those critical of this dependence have frequently argued that the country’s rulers were not ‘transactional enough’ and ‘sold themselves too cheaply’ in their foreign dealings. This discourse misses an obvious but vital point – national effort not the ‘amount’ of international assistance can change the country’s fortunes.
The second line of thinking that has long taken hold concerns expectations that the state should deliver, but without doing anything ourselves to resource the state. For example, those with the capacity to pay tax resist doing so and instead make strident demands on the state. But the state cannot be run on a sustainable basis without mobilising domestic resources. Nor can essential services be delivered without recovery of their cost.
Yet the public discourse addresses little attention to the responsibility of those who possess the capacity to contribute their fair share to the state’s revenue. The absence of a tax culture is both cause and a consequence of a narrative that only expects services from the state without accepting the responsibility to support policy actions that empower and fund the state. This narrative benefits and is encouraged by vested interests who refuse to pay tax and oppose tax reform. Its most deleterious consequence is to undermine the most fundamental notion that citizens have responsibilities too; and the well-to-do have greater responsibility.
Consider the manner in which the media usually reports on government measures to mobilise resources. They are invariably presented as “bombs” dropped on the people. No effort is made to explain why these measures are needed. Rarely do television debates place such policy decisions in the context of the state’s shrinking resources and why it is necessary to reverse that. The result is a discourse that muddles rather than clarifies our understanding of these realities. With frenzy usually whipped up over these steps, governments become fearful about the public backlash and play safe by eschewing reform. This offers a prime example of how an uninformed discourse complicates public policy.
A familiar third strand in the public discourse is that most of the country’s problems are of someone else’s making. This is fuelled by the proclivity of just about every group or institution to blame the other rather than look for causes and thus ways of fixing the problem. Conspiracy theories become the norm, vigorously spread and eagerly believed, serving as an expedient way of ‘explaining’ painful reality. Terrorist bombings for example cannot be the work of ‘one of us’ but someone else.
There is little questioning of the premise of conspiracy theories. Shifting the blame for a problem to someone else becomes a way of freeing oneself of responsibility. Conspiracy theories, in fact, become the means to pass the buck and serve as alibis for inaction. This is not to suggest that intrigue and conspiracy have been absent from Pakistan’s history. But to ascribe almost every problem to a conspiracy does nothing to address the challenge at hand. It fosters a disempowering victim narrative. The search for scapegoats rather than causes makes solutions impossible.
A fourth trend is the increasing disinclination to acknowledge even favourable developments for the country or take pride in anything. Public cynicism has become the enemy of objectivity. Such pessimism indicates public despair, which has been deepened by the cumulative impact of frustrations and reinforced by the present climate of economic, energy and security challenges that daily test the people’s patience.
But a culture of pessimism has also come to reflect an erosion of self-belief and confidence. This is dangerous because it denudes society of the ability to meet challenges and rebound from crises. Self-confidence is essential to navigate through tough times. But if negative attitudes settle into cultural traits they will allow no escape from despondency and the paralysis this entails.
Even young Malala Yousufzai could recognise the “importance of light when there is darkness” in her eloquent address to the United Nations. If hope creates confidence and the means for self-transformation, this should urge Pakistan’s political as well as its ‘thought’ leaders to build a positive narrative that can transcend the present scepticism and create an enabling psychological environment for a national turnaround.
Some will dismiss this prescription as unrealistic and impractical in the present fraught climate. But what is the alternative? A self-defeating victim narrative that induces more hopelessness? It is only when people start believing in their ability to change their circumstances that the country’s destiny will stand a chance of being transformed. For that, honesty and self-correction have to replace the present state of confusion and denial.
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