The Imperial Presidency
WASHINGTON WATCH
News broke this week that President Donald Trump was conditioning approval of an infrastructure spending bill on renaming New York City’s Penn Station...
Beyond domestic discontent
For weeks, Iran has been convulsed by some of the most intense anti-government protests in its modern history. What began in late December 2025...
Markets without referees
In 2012, a book came out that reframed international thinking on development, Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, challenged decades of...
Security, sovereignty and the information battlefield
In Pakistan’s former tribal districts, particularly Tirah Valley, security operations are increasingly misrepresented through emotionally charged and strategically curated narratives. These portrayals, amplified by...
Wealth and power must walk with the people
Power has long announced itself through spectacle. From crowns and palaces to motorcades and guarded compounds, authority has sought visibility. Yet history’s deeper memory...
From festival to fasting
The state, in its ideal moral conception, resembles a mother—protective yet firm, generous yet disciplined. It provides security, creates opportunities, sets boundaries, and, when...
Interior Ministry versus the Mombay Bookies
What is it about the PCB and the BCCI, and the respective countries’ Interior Ministry? Pakistan is ahead, for the PCB President and the...
Neoliberalism and industrial policy
‘The term “neoliberalism” suggests a system of principles that is both new and based on classical liberal ideas… The doctrinal system is also known...
The digital library
I was sitting at my desk at 3 AM last night, looking at my digital tablet's bright screen scrolling through an archive for a...
Green energy opportunities for Pakistan
Several methods exist for capturing the gas from garbage dumps and converting it into line-grade gas (also termed as pipeline quality purified gas), offering...
How Trump opened the Polar Door to China
The Arctic, once a frozen frontier of quiet diplomacy and carefully balanced power, is rapidly becoming a theatre of geopolitical drama. What makes this...
Unseen Scars
By LAIBA AMIN
When talk turns to public health in Pakistan, the focus too often stays on hospitals, doctors, and statistics. What rarely gets attention...
Radical Shift or Trade-Based Growth
During the previous weeks India finalized two trade deals with entities which matter in its trade map. A deal was finalized with India which...
Vehicles, Policy, and the quest for cleaner air
The quality of air a society tolerates says much about the value it places on human life. Breathing has become an act of endurance...
The Myth of Control
“Power that rests only on fear is already decaying,” Hannah Arendt, the American historian and philosopher once warned, arguing that coercion can enforce silence...