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Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. and Britain, has edited a collection of essays in a new book titled- Pakistan: Beyond the "Crisis State." It tries to form a new construct to move the debate on Pakistan into a future in which Pakistan can exist as a "normal country" free of a paranoia about India that affects its outlook, and free from the military connections that have shifted the focus from development that a friendly neighborly coexistence with India would provide. Intriguing essays include one by Saadat Hasa Manto who goes back to 1951, when the Cold War was at its peak and the U.S. formed a relationship with Pakistan based on military assistance, with only small fraction of aid going into development programs. Syed Rifaat Hussain, professor of strategic studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad puts it directly: Pakistan needs to become a normal state and the only way to to do this is for the rivalry and obsession with India to be resolved and put behind it. As it now stands the U.S., India and Pakistan all stand to gain tremendously in such an outcome- the U.S. disengagement from Afghanistan and the Taliban because at its core the Taliban issue goes back to the Pakistan rivalry with India, Pakistan and India because it puts the focus on development, infrastructure building, and economic gains....

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It makes for good political rhetoric, but in reality the flow of money goes both ways. A lot of investments are made by American companies overseas. This time the flow of oil money because of high oil prices, from the USA and Europe to the Middle East is being recycled back to the USA in the form of investments in the US through small equity stakes in companies and more so through purchases of capital equipment and services to build Saudi infrastructure projects. The $500 billion investment plan over several years in Saudi Arabia is to build everything from new cities, aluminium plants, electricity generation plants and chemicals and plastics plants. The fears and rhetoric are overblown, as the USA also invests overseas with holdings according to the Treasury department of $6 trillion of foreign stock and debt. The acceleration of foreign investment in the US is to be seen in the numbers, as the dollar gets weaker, and its more advantageous for Canadians and Euuropeans to invest here. Last year $414 billion of foreign investors money went into buying stakes in American companies and building factories and purchasing stock, according to Thomson Financial. Thats up 90% from 2006 and represented one fourth of all announced deals. This year in just 2 weeks foreign investors poured $22.6 billion in just the first 2 weeks of January, and that represents one half of all deals. Shows how quickly the picture is changing. One way of looking at it is that Americans buy a lot of foreign goods and the money Americans use to pay for a lot of imports is now being returned to the USA in the form of foreign investments. Note that foreign investment is desirable because it brings new ideas and technology and new management methods to the host country from other countries. These foreign investors in many cases are able to make these investments overseas because they are good at what they do, having them in the host country benefits the host country and shakes up competition in the particular industry in the host country that is receiving the investment. This is why economies once relatively unfavorable to foreign investors like Japan and S. Korea are now passionately seeking foreign investment to make their economies thrive through the exchange and inflow of new ideas and ways of doing things. The same can be and is true for the USA. The other aspect is that most of the investment is still from countries like Canada, Germany, Japan, S. Korea which are big free trade partners of the USA. Manufacturing investment is heavily skewed to European and Japanese companies. Foreign multinational investment (Sony, Toyota etc) grew to $43.3 billion in 2007 from $39.2 billion in 2006 according to OCO Monitor, and will accelerate significantly as companies like VW and other German companies find it cheaper to build in the USA and shift more manufacturing here. To get an idea why the rhetoric is overblown Canada spent the most in buying American companies, $65 billion in 2007, according to Thomson Financial. Russia spent $572 million and India $3.3 billion. How will this improve the chances of the USA making it out of this recession? Five million American work for foreign companies in the USA. Of these one third are manufacturing jobs. These jobs pay about 30% more than jobs in American owned companies. Figures from Treasury Department. There will be more of these jobs as companies like VW build plants here. Roubini Economics estimates that an infusion of about $300-400 billion is needed for the USA to overcome the effects of the current mortgage and credit crisis. $414 billion was invested in the USA by foreign investors according to Thomson Financial in 2007, going up from something like $200 billion in 2006. If this pace continues becasue of some of the same underlying reasons as the weaker dollar, stronger economies overseas, then $200 billion additional investments this year would add that much to a stimulus package of $150 billion by one estimate, to provide a boost of somewhere around $350 billion. In the range of the needed boost. Companies like IBM and GE which have significant investments in India and China and investments in software or infrastructure industries that are growing rapidly or Caterpillar with growth in construction overseas, may keep growing through this downturn. This recession may hit selectively and differently, not be a complete hit to the USA economy, and could prevent it from going beyond 2009 with recovery in 2010. ...

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Richard Haas and Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations suggest a path of negotiations for a peaceful settlement of the Iran crisis. Haas points to the difficulties in solving the impasse in the crisis through solutions based entirely either on military options or on expanded sanctions. The merit of this approach, says Haas, would also be to demonstrate that the U.S. and the E.U nations have done their best to come up with a negotiated outcome.

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Critics of the Obama administration's so-called "light footprint strategy" for the Middle East say it is more about keeping distance from problems in that region. This is a reaction to the extensive involvement of the U.S. in two wars in that region and intuitively makes sense, as well as being in line with American public opinion to focus on problems at home. The shift or pivot to Asia of president Obama also comes in that context. The problem with this approach is that this ignores the fact that most of the momentum and effort for the freedom struggles throughout the Middle East from Tunisia first, then Libya, Egypt, and now Syria, comes from within. The lead role is now being taken by France and Britain, with German public opinion also lined up in support. The U.S. in forfeiting its role as a facilitator with strategies such as "no-fly-zones" is losing the opportunity to gain the goodwill in the Middle East with cost that is negligible in comparison to the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, and comes after the huge U.S. effort to remove one dictator in Iraq. A minor followup effort is all that is required from an administration that pushed for the "surge" in Afghanistan. When history is written the investment of the Obama administration in Afghanistan may show little results, if what is considered by the media and experts as an unpopular and undemocratic government of Karzai falls in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal. There is little doubt in public opinion in the U.S. and worldwide that the movement for freedom and democracy in the Middle East and democratically elected governments will become a lasting facet of the new Middle East. It also provides huge opportunties for trade and investment as is shown by the gains made by Turkey in just 2 years. This is why the Obama adminstration policies in the Middle East show a lack of grasp of the facts showing the Middle East as opportunity more than threat for the next decade, especially in its overreaction to the Bush era policies. This happens as there is a demographic explosion of young people in the Middle East. An administration that was keen to sense the demographic changes in North America, has failed to grasp this fact and why the struggle in the Middle East flashes daily on television screens young people carrying on the struggle. A pivot to Asia means a pivot to the Far East more than Asia because India is part of the South Asian-Middle Eastern region, which presents another paradox because as China is slowing the entire South Asian-Middle Eastern region of Asia is where future growth is expected to accelerate in the next decade. ...

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Van Dam says its not that great being a worker in the U.S. because it is hard for the unemployed resulting from competing with workers in other countries with lower wages, and for those who are unemployed harder because worker collective bargaining is weakened over 3 decades. He cites a 296 page OECD report showing very little government support for unemployed and at risk American workers. It says this has contributed to higher income inequality and larger share of lower income people than almost any other advanced a nation. Only Spain and Greece are shown as having more households earning less than half the median income- showing large numbers of people are poor or close to being poor. In the U.S. an average of 1 in 5 lose their jobs each year, and 23% of workers 15 to 64 are in their job less than a year in 2016. The job churn hurts workers because of firing and layoffs being frequent, more than is healthy for a economy. The U.S. and Mexico are the only two countries not requiring advance notice before firings. And fewer than half of workers find a job within a year in the U.S. Two in three families with a displaced worker fall in poverty for some time. Unemployed workers with typically 26 weeks support get less support than any other country in the study. Only 12% of workers in U.S. are covered by collective bargaining. ...

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Shipping and freight statistics show an increase of shipments from Mexico. Trains and truck shipments from Mexico to the U.S. increased by 8.7% by weight in the first 11 months of 2011 compared to the prior year. By comparison shipping containers entering the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach went down by 0.2% in 2011. Mexico stands to benefit from the shift in dynamics as manufacturing costs in China increase with labor constraints, higher wages, higher commercial land prices and recent Asian supply chain issues making firms wary of unanticipated problems. This is expected to benefit the U.S. with the return of some manufacturig jobs and a serious rethink of outsourcing. Because of highly automated factories and advanced technologies the manufacturing process requires fewer and more skilled operators, reducing the labor component of costs. Carlisle Companies CEO, David Roberts says he is expanding tire manufacturing plants in Tennessee. He says he can make tires as cheaply or cheaper in the U.S than in China. This has serious implications as the U.S. gets down to rebuilding and renewal of its manufacturing industry....

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Experts in the U.S. say the U.S. made a mistake in not supporting the idea of a new financial institution to meet the urgent needs of development and infrastructure financing of Asia's developing countries. India, Australia, S. Korea, Britain, Germany, France and Italy are joining as founding members in 2015. China has offered leadership in providing resources for the new bank. Jane Perlez says China is looking for the best talent worldwide to help write the charter for the bank and to run it. It is a project pushed forward by China's president Jinping, and was discussed at the 2013 G-20 meeeting in Moscow as a critical part of the agenda. Laurence Brahm, who supported Chinese premier Zhu Rongji in 2001 for entry into the WTO, says it is natural for China to look for ways to use its extra capacity in steel, concrete and pipes to build projects in other parts of Asia, which would mutually benefit China and the region. Paul Haenle of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing, says the U.S. lack of support is shortsighted, as the existing U.S. sponsored institutions World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are sorely lacking the resources to deal with the huge infrastructure challenges in Asia. China's Finance Ministry is looking for the best talent worldwide to write the charter and run the bank. Natalie Lichtenstein, a lawyer with 30 years experience working at the World Bank will write the bank's founding charter. ...

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Iraq is Iran's most promising market for gas exports. Iraq needs the gas for its power stations now that Islamic State has been decisively cleared from Iraq. Yet Iraq is having difficulty making payments to Iran for gas supplies because banks are not ready to handle the payments with the reimposed tighter U.S. sanctions and restrictions. The deputy head of media at the Electricity ministry in Iraq, Sadoun Shehan, told WSJ that transfer of money by Iraqi banks is prevented because of U.S. sanctions. U.S. sanctions were reimposed by the Trump administration after they were lifted in January 2016. The new sanctions prohibit gas exports from Iran. Iran had hoped to make the sales and also export to the European Union when sanctions were lifted. Iranian exports of gas that started in 2017 were itself delayed for 4 years by the war from Islamic State.  Iran has the second largest reserves of natural gas in the world. The Trump administration's sanctions have led to a drop of Iranian crude shipments by 29% in 3 months and added to upward pressure on oil prices to take prices to $80 a barrel. This issue has implications for India and China, particularly India as it faces both higher prices for oil and the tight restrictions in purchase of Iranian oil. ...

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Ali Sethi, a novelist, questions the simple minded theory that all that matters in South Asia is the Hindu-Muslim divide and with it the idea of a separate Muslim state. He points to this as far from the daily reality of caste, landholding classes, education and the lack of it, sectarianism within the religion, and other differences. And in many ways these outweigh the overly simplified idea of two religions and different states.

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The Europeans led by France and Germany demand stricter regulation and a financial regulatory system that oversees the entire financial system, and oversees all the larger countries. The US in contrast wants to see a lighter regulatory system, and lighter regulation of parts of the financial system like hedge funds. For the USA where the crisis originated, the emphasis is on larger stimulus spending. For the Europeans which have a larger safety net that they would like to see considered as part of their stimulus- and their social arrangement such as reduced hours in Germany to avoid layoffs, and the presence of a large public sector in France that is about 52% of GDP- the situation as they see it does not require breaking the EU's committment to control large deficits. The cultural and historical roots are also different. Germany was hit by hyperinflation in the period between the two wars, and there is thought there that this helped the rise of demagogic leaders and the collapse of democracy there. At that time the issue was war reparations that Germany found difficult to absorb in an economy devastated by the first war, which strained German finances. France and Germany also have no foreclosure crisis, and car sales and consumer spending are not in the deep decline that is seen in the USA. In fact car sales have increased in the two countries with the refunds for scrapping old vehicles, with no such plan in place in the USA. Making there is a credible position on the European side. Germany does see itself hit by the collapse in international trade. Germany and France face the prospect of helping their banking systems deal with the large bad loan situation facing them in Eastern Europe. At the same time Germany and France want to save some firepower for coming to the aid of key parts of the European community like Spain, Greece, and Ireland, which are facing a worsening crisis. In short both sides have credible positions, and some form of accomodation as events unfold may be a better desired outcome than some unified outcome. And little has been said of the position of the other countries in the G20, the emerging countries like Brazil, India, China, Russia, Indonesia, Argentina and others, and the position of the World Bank speaking for the poorest countries. These countries may favor stronger stimulus, and would favor the stricter regulation and supervision of global financial systems favored by the Europeans. This is because they may rightly feel that the messups in the global financial system have stolen their chance, at just the point where they were turning the corner in their efforts at bringing better standards of living to their peoples....

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The views of Anne-Marie Slaughter and other high ranking current and former officials in the Defense Department and State Department on the idea of a military strike by Israel or the U.S. on Iran and the unforeseen consequences.

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As the USA and Europe move into a deep and prolonged recession China loses some of its biggest export markets and faces a significant slowing down of its economy. China's leaders are pondering how to respond to the crisis which will affect China, and meet the challenges of lower living standards of a neglected rural countryside and farmers compared to the urban coastal areas. This is still where some 800 million of the Chinese people live by official count, so something needs to be done to improve prospects and help generate higher incomes and opportunities for people in the farming countryside. Making land use rights of farmers able to be bought or sold for the first time would generate additional income for farmers, and help consolidate farmland into larger plots, which can use technology and improvements for better yields to keep China self sufficient in agricultural production. Keeping the situation the way it has remained for the last two decades, where local party officials and local leaders controlled the land and where farmers rights were ignored leading to suppression of farmer's protests for illegal land seizures and corruption, may have made it easier for plants to be setup across China and attracted foreign investors. But it has not been good for China's farmers. Chinese party officials at the local level who realized the advantages to them by controlling land and making it easier to set up manufacturing plants with foreign investors may have steered state policy in this direction from the early days after Deng's opening to capitalism and trade. Now with a success in the urban coastal areas and in building infrastructure Chinese leaders in the central government must be faced with a difficult issue of how to move on from here with the loss of China's export markets for its heavily export dependent economy. The need to generate a domestic consumer driven economy must not be lost on the Chinese leadership in Beijing. Something that will keep China's economy moving in the new situation. This is the context in which land use rights may be extended from 30 to 70 years and able to be bought and sold to improve farm incomes and generate internal momentum in the rural areas where most of China's people live. It also offers a contrast to the situation India faces where even the Nano plant of Tata Motors had to be moved from W. Bengal state to Gujarat state over farmers rights to land which in that case was also used as an issue for political agitation. The move by China accelerated industrialization and setting up manufacturing plants as land was taken over by local officials for use with foreign investors but also ended up neglecting the countryside, and created too big a dependence on exports....

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The author Li Congjun, is head of the Xinhua News agency, official press agency of the People's Republic of China. He calls for rebalancing the global economy with China depending more on domestic consumption, efforts to restrain the excesses of property and asset price bubbles, and renewed focus on technology and investment.

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Some of the ideas of Richard Holbrooke that have never been disclosed before on the conflicts in Pakistan and Afghanistan are disclosed by Kristof of the Times. Holbrooke believed the Obama administration's military approach to the conflict would not work. He worked hard to build a diplomatic solution similiar to the Dayton accords that he helped negotiate for the ethnically divided Yugoslavia. He earned the respect of Pakistanis in working for a long term solution to problems in the region.

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With only 63 million metric tons of food storage facilities and 75 metric tons of foodgrains stocks after the 2012 harvest season, India faces an acute shortage of storage capacity. About 3-4 million tons of additional capacity are planned by May or June 2012, and 11 million tons in 2013, according to India's Food Ministry, but more capacity will be needed this year. If not corrected this could mean that about 8 million tons of foodgrains could rot out in the open or in makeshift conditions. This is a major problem as about 200 million people in India are considered to be food-insecure, and an estimated 42% of children suffer form malnutrition.

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This WSJ editorial says president Obama's inaction, including the smaller step of not putting in place a safe zone in Syria, comes at a price for Liberals. The recent action by Governors in Michigan and other states turning down Syrian refugees, it says is one of the moral consequences of Obama's policies. For Liberals it says a policy of inaction and turning America's back to the needs of ordinary Syrians during the Arab Spring is not neutral, it also has consequences. The consequences for Liberals is the steady stream of refugees to Europe, and the greater intolerance in western societies as the safe havens created by these policies in the Middle East lead to terrorist actions in Europe or the U.S. In short doing little or nothing carries risks for the kind of society liberals want to see. Through developing policy in response to the Bush Administration's policies the Obama administration makes a series of errors of its own that compromise liberal values, including the collapse of the Arab Spring without American and western support, and the creation of a huge refugee crisis in Syria, Iraq, with a spillover to Jordan and Turkey, and further spillover to Europe. Liberals in Europe also face a similiar situation, including Liberals in France....

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Mohamed Hanif of the BBC's Urdu Service points to the manner in which the CIA and the ISI collaborated in the two time destruction of Kabul. And he points to a Pakistani view outside of the military which is not obsessed with India and would like to get down to the basics- electricity and infrastructure, better lives, and a safer neighborhood. In this perspective the Pakistani military and the Americans both do not understand the basic needs of the large majority of Pakistanis yearning for a better life. Contrast this with the Thomas Friedman piece which complains on the other side, with a note of innocence, of becoming a sucker in this game of a two-faced Pakistani military and intelligence services using the Americans for their own game, supporting the Americans and the insurgents at the same time. Hanif almost has the last word in this, pointing to the ordinary Pakistanis who are just poor and looking in.

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The President of the American Chamber of Commerce, Harley Seyedin, says that the days when migrant workers did not know their rights, labor laws were not enforced, and factory owners could keep wages low, are gone. With 787 million mobile phone users and 384 million Internet users- which includes migrant workers who can now get the news about the latest developments, send messages, video, and access the internet. For its part the government made serious effort to create awareness about new labor laws of 2008 through the state run media outlets. And workers have greater awareness and understanding of their rights for safe working conditions and double overtime pay, as well as other rights guaranteed in China's new labor laws. And something else is happening that connects the universities with workers. The expansion of the number of students at Chinese universities has brought more people from rural areas into the universities. This has created sympathy and support for migrant workers at the universities. Nine sociologists at Peking and Tsinghua universities signed an open letter calling national and local governments to implement actions that let migrant workers integrate into the city environment and share in the country's progress that they are creating. The government's security system has prevented the creation of a worker's movement in the past. But this time the government may be thinking of the need to develop China's domestic market, as the reliability of markets in the USA and European countries is uncertain as economic conditions change. For this to happen China's workers need higher wages to buy the goods China produces. ...