The damage control by the Pakistani army is pretty crazy right now. Pakistan is on the verge of devolving into mass riots as Imran Khan has a massive fanbase.
The Army and the military forces in general are the people who really control the country.
Pakistan makes a public show of having a parliamentary democracy with elected MPs and such but it's all a farce.
Doesn't particularly matter whether Bhutto, Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan or anyone else.
Of course it doesn't help that the elected MPs have almost exclusively belonged to the same class of robber barons, Imran Khan being one notable exception.
Pakistan actually has a pretty vibrant and critical media, in contrast to (other) military dictatorships. They have a lot of great political satire (that, again, stops short of criticizing the military).
Pretty damning.
• 2008-13 PPP-led coalition government, which transferred power to the
• 2013-18 PML(N) government, which transferred power to the
• 2018-22 PTI (Khan's party) government, which was ousted in its penultimate year by a vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly.
1. PPP-led coalition government ousted in scandal of zardari's corruption. "mister ten percent", etc
2. nawaz sharif government ousted in scandal of nawaz sharif corruption (maybe that choice of microsoft word fonts in the faked documents for luxury UK real estate was not the best idea ever).
3. people finally "elected" khan
4. khan loses power in parliamentary no confidence vote
none of those are exactly what an outsider would consider to be the normal and orderly transfer of power in an electoral system
My own opinion: democracy is hardly a boolean value -- these transfers, faulty and flawed as they may be, did legitimize civilian rule in the public eye.
For your first bullet, the prime minister was kicked out after just over 4 years.
For your second bullet, the prime minister was kicked out after just over 4 years.
For the third bullet, Imran Khan didn't even last 4 years.
Khan has a large populist support base but it's not exactly accurate to say he's wildly popular, a huge amount of people from Lahore and Punjab and the power base of elites supporting Nawaz Sharif and his friends are deeply opposed to him. They've spent lots of money on political opposition.
And then there's all the Sindhi Bhutto and PPP supporters who don't like him either. He has maybe 45-50% support.
Add to this religion, every few years there is some popular majoritarian religious trend, often loaded with settling scores with the minorities for some imagined victimhood, some battle some king who belonged to your religion lost 800 years back, these are 'pride' related emotional issues on which masses vote. No one cares about education, or improving general standard of living.
Add to this caste, regional and linguistic reasons.
Democracy is mostly a sham even without fixing, because masses don't vote for their own good. To think of democracy in the sub continent, people vote to hurt others than to help themselves. A vote is mostly a downvote in many ways.
But I do agree with you, having the pleasure to know some upper class Pakistanis, that the military is the basis of the government.
sounds like Turkia but like 40 years ago
Arresting IK right now would be national harakiri. Surely they’re not going to do that?
Any links to research that shows (a) this was the intent, and (b) shows that it works?
Aren’t there plenty of counterexamples to that thesis (null hypothesis), of more homogeneous nations or island nations where countries haven’t become “first world”. Even the USA is rooted in non-homogeneous immigration.
That’s the “they weren’t being actively malicious end” with the nation this thread is discussing having been the go to example of this being done. Pakistan only exists to be a thorn in Indias side
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. American borders were laid out without any consideration for indigenous peoples (the general policy of colonial and post-colonial states towards such peoples being "exterminate them"), and colonial and post-colonial states fought lots of wars over transferring land between them for reasons that boil down to simply "I want more land."
And the article surely isn’t corroborating your thesis of mix cultures to force a long-term fail.
Quite literally the western powers cut up borders in mid east, sitting in rooms in Paris, London and Moscow, people who did this didn't even speak arabic, had no idea about ethnic, cultural, religious, political and social make up's of the lands they were cutting up to divide among each other.
USA used to be mostly Northern European and christian (protestant), black slaves who were moved there by force or pre European colonization inhabitants were never considered part of the foundations of US. US foundations were anything but non-homogeneous.
Now after WWII, US attempted to replace the racial and religious identity at the heart of "americanship" with some idealistic identity based on american exceptionalism, the american dream and the cult of the american imagery (flag, eagle, colors...). No need to point out that this re-invention of "americanship" is slowly crumbling as we speak. Who knows what will remain of that cohesion in the next 50 years.
The fact that people of Anglo-Saxon descent and people of Scots-Irish descent had an equal hand in the early US government was remarkable in and of itself, let alone the fact that the Catholic population in Maryland had equal rights under the law from day one.
because we're discussing 20th/21st century geopolitics at first place? Of course I am. Pakistan or India didn't exist in the 18th century, in fact these are British constructs.
> The fact that people of Anglo-Saxon descent and people of Scots-Irish descent had an equal hand in the early US government was remarkable in and of itself, let alone the fact that the Catholic population in Maryland had equal rights under the law from day one.
Yes, fighting against the British empire certainly was an efficient motivator. But still black people and indigenous populations were still left out of what you consider a feat.
If we concede no feats have been achieved in human history for not being unblemishingly perfect, sure. Fine. We'll leave the term with religion (and madness). Whatever the next rung of achievement is, the highest one in realm of the possible, America's founding matches it.
You are completely ignoring here the huge role that anti-Catholic prejudice had in US history (and the rest of the Anglosphere as well). Indeed, the vast majority of historic anti-Irish sentiment was really anti-Catholic – "Irish" came to mean "Irish Catholic", and Irish Protestants in the US rebranded themselves as "Scots-Irish" (not only those Irish Protestants who had recent Scottish heritage through the Plantation of Ulster – Irish Protestants who lacked any recent Scottish heritage called themselves that too.)
It's what took place after WW2 and was the battle ground for the cold war.
That's a little bit Pakistan can into existence in the first place.
Singapore, Jamaica, heck, even Canada made it's own constitution. Most of Africa (both sub saharan and north saharan), much of the Middle East. Huge portion of the world map.
2) This 'Colonials set everything pit one group against the other' is also wrong. Obviously, there were favourites and artifacts of that, but for the most part, left to their own devices, it would still be tribal chaos in most places.
The presupposition in that anti-colonial statment is that somehow, before foreign intervention, things worked in some meaningful way. In most places, it did not, and, there were previous colonial/external interventions. i.e. Ottoman Empire ruled over much of the Middle East ruthlessly, previous Islamic Caliphates were all over NE Africa with the slave trade for many centuries etc. etc..
Relatively few places are like 'Thailand' with a fairly coherent history.
Democracies are going to collapse in a lot of places because the people in these places never really wanted democracy or even cared much for it. They were just handed it down because the people the colonizers left in charge were born and bred within the colonizer’s own political systems.
Although I think it's not quite about "democracy." Many people don't want liberal democracy. They might be fine with non-liberal democracy: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/08/shadi-hamid-on-i...
But globalization, that has been enabled by the American military, may be coming to an end. The US armed forces are retooling in a way less geared to policing global merchant shipping. This signals a likely return to more local trade, controlled by regional powers.
We have been lucky to live in the richest, most prosperous era of human history. But the party seems to be winding down, and most of us and our heirs, will be living more modest lives, with reduced travel, diversity of goods, diet, and wealth.
That already happened. 1/2 after WW1, the other 1/2 after WW2.
That was the story of the 20th century.
We're in a new era now.
The Congo is a good example. One year after achieving independence in 1960, its sovereign leader was assassinated and replaced with neocolonial puppets. In the last 60 years, that "independent" country has been brutally exploited by foreign profiteers. A microcosm of the global south during the 20th century.
It's laughable to suggest they could be exploited by 'Colonial Powers' when they can't even get electricity where they need it.
'Outside Force' for exploitation, sure, but it's always been thus.
'Western Influence' - sure, but mostly in the name of 'stability'.
The 'West' can really only benefit from these places when they are stable enough to start to form contracts for export, which most of these places are not. Those that are, and ruled by dictators, fine, as long as it's 'stable' and as a state they play well.
Otherwise, the 'big prize' is when these places are stable enough that they have 'consumers' who can 'consume' iPhones and KFC.
How many iPhones exported to DNC?
How many iPhones can they buy when it's total rampant murder and chaos?
How many can they buy when the are stable, have an industrial base, have banking, laws etc?
Which situation do you think Apple, Google, Amazon, Disney prefer?
the post-Washington Consensus
The end result is that the Russian economy is afloat while the transatlantic power structure is collapsing.
Except when you behave like this, you end up like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi -- lynched while their country is destroyed. "Brownie points" with the unipolar superpower is absolutely meaningful as long as they maintain that position. Which they don't anymore, circa 2020 or so.