A World in Chaos: Perspectives into the Post Corona World Disorder

By Syed Tariq Mahmood-ul-Hassan

The world is divided by dangerous and shifting faultlines the global order is suffering a period of dislocation. Since the onset of the 21st century, the world is embroiled into a war with itself. The democracy is receding in the era of rising populism, and nonagenarian like Kissinger are hearing the drums of the Third World War. Donald Trump, in his four years presidency, shook the foundations of the United States of America and leaving the White House in tatters in January 2021. President Erdogan is pampering the ambition of restoration of the Ottoman empire while reigning in the Kemalist forces. Muhammad Bin Salman is riding his ruthless aspirations to lead Arabs against the Iranian regime. President Xi Jinping’s China struts the global stage with newfound confidence and economic prowess. Pakistan is finding itself again between a rock and a hard place with instability at its heart and a saphronised India on its doorsteps. Worst of all, the conflict-ridden world is threatened by a pandemic that has caused an economic bloodbath from Wall Street to Tokyo with millions of lives lost and billions at risk to fall prey to a virus that is changing faster than its cure. T H Hassan analyses a grandly messed up world and proposes solutions to resolve the undergoing crises and conflicts.

T M Hassan analyses the world at conflict while drawing upon the ancient enmities and imminent collisions that define the struggle for power and control in the twenty-first century. Region by region, it delayers the causes, contexts, actors and likely outcomes of globally significant violent struggle now underway. This book is an imperative read to make sense of the fractured and perilous world around us and find an exit from the ongoing chaos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Feb 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982261948

Syed Tariq Mahmood-ul-Hassan

Syed Tariq Mahmood-ul-Hassan (T M Hassan) is a Pakistani analyst, sociopreneur, and a celebrated writer. T M Hassan holds a Master in Laws along with a Business degree from Northampton University, UK. He is a member of the established global thinktanks including the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Royal Commonwealth Society, Chatham House, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has led many educational, training & consulting projects in collaboration with various national and international agencies. T M Hassan has appeared in various TV programmes as an expert on international relations and global affairs and politics. Over the past 20 years, he has spoken at many global institutions and universities in more than 22 countries. With extensive insights on the global state of affairs, his books and articles examine the key developments determining the world's future. His weekly columns are published in the Daily Jang, London. T M Hassan regularly interacts with prominent figures in politics, business and economics in Europe and Asia and analyses global issues from a spiritual standpoint.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-6193-1 (sc)

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Balboa Press rev. date: 02/04/2021

DEDICATED TO

ALI ZAMAM TRUST

All income from the book,

from all sources, will be donated to Ali Zamam Trust ®

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Syed Tariq Mahmood-ul-Hassan

Syed Tariq Mahmood-ul-Hassan, commonly known as T M Hassan is a Pakistani analyst, sociopreneur, and a celebrated writer. T M Hassan holds a Master in Laws along with a Business degree from Northampton University, U.K. He is a member of the established global thinktanks including the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Royal Commonwealth Society, Chatham House, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has led many educational, training & consulting projects in collaboration with various national and international agencies. T M Hassan has appeared in multiple TV programmes as an expert on international relations and global affairs and politics. Over the past 20 years, he has spoken at many global institutions and universities in more than 22 countries. With extensive insights on the global state of affairs, his books and articles examine the key developments determining the world’s future. His weekly columns are published in the Daily Jang, London. T M Hassan regularly interacts with prominent figures in politics, business and economics in Europe and Asia and analyses global issues from a spiritual standpoint.

PREFACE

Every book comes with its own story explaining the background of how it came into being. This one began on a tragic note. On June 18 2018, I lost my two sons Syed Zamam Imam (Born on February 20 2005) and Syed Muhammad Ali Imam, (Born on April 22 2009). My entire life collided and collapsed, pushing me into a never-ending black hole. Those were chaotic and painful days, stretching me to my limits. It was also a grand moment of truth that impacted my life in many ways, forever.

I happened to be a consistent and continuous learner with a penchant for global affairs. It intrigues me how nations behave, flourish or whither away. My last two decades were spent visiting several countries, exploring their past and present and reflecting about their future. These journeys were taken as much outside as inside. I attended meetings with a few of the most influential people in the world along with sessions in various parliaments of the world. I kept thinking what ails the world and what could be the elixir that could fix these constantly simmering faultlines.

Since I lost my children, the reflection on the ongoing chaos got more intense. Through a strange stroke of luck, my two children survived the accident, and my concern for all the children grew manifold. I could recount from the dawn of the millennium how most parts of the world srang into flames. Unfortunately, we did not seem to have learnt much from the two world wars and the ensuing destruction.

The world is divided by dangerous and shifting faultlines as the global order suffers a period of chaos and dislocation. Since the onset of the 21st century, the world is embroiled into a war with itself. The democracy is receding in the era of rising populism, and nonagenarians like Kissinger are hearing the Third World War drums. In his four years presidency, Donald Trump shook the United States of America’s foundations and left the White House in tatters in January 2021. President Erdogan is pampering the ambition of restoration of the Ottoman empire while reigning in the Kemalist forces. Muhammad Bin Salman is riding his ruthless aspirations to lead Arabs against the Iranian regime. President Xi Jinping’s China struts the global stage with newfound confidence and economic prowess. Pakistan is finding itself again between a rock and a hard place with instability at its heart and a saphronised India on its doorsteps. Worst of all, the conflict-ridden world is threatened by a pandemic that has caused an economic bloodbath from Wall Street to Tokyo with millions of lives lost and billions at risk to fall prey to a virus that is changing faster than its cure.

I have tried analyzing the world at conflict while drawing upon the ancient enmities and imminent collisions that define power and control struggle in the twenty-first century. Region by region, I have delayered the causes, contexts, actors and likely outcomes of globally significant violent struggle now underway.

In my view, COVID-19 is not just a medical challenge, but a spiritual challenge too. To defeat COVID humanity need to follow the path of self-purification, compassion, nonviolence, God and Nature. This pandemic raises serious questions about the way this world has been run in the last 5-7 decades, by using greed, power, lust and obnoxious use of the privilege. This pandemic has laid bare what was already obvious, but we buried our heads in the sand like ostriches.

We have a chance to do something extraordinary. As we head out of this pandemic, we can change the world. Create a world of compassion. A world where we are kind to each other. A world where we are kind no matter what class, race, gender, what creed or the job tag we have. A world we don’t judge those at the food bank because that maybe us if things were just slightly different. Let love and kindness be our roadmap. Suppose the world after coronavirus will not be a much more greener, much more environmentally friendly and much more vegetarian, much more just and equal. In that case, human beings will merit a much worse virus than coronavirus.

This book is for men and women of all ages. Many of us who attended college did not focus on these issues, or even if we did study them, we forgot much of what we were taught. A great deal of history has transpired in recent years. New technologies and issues, from the internet and artificial intelligence to climate change, have emerged. The time has come to stop thinking of an education as something we receive in our youth, finish by the time we are in our early to mid-twenties, and live off for the next fifty years. We need to regularly top off our intellectual tank as we drive down the proverbial highway of life.

My aim in this book is to provide the basics of what you need to know about the world, to make you more globally literate. Global literacy as used here is not about the number of people around the world able to read. ‘A World In Chaos’ is designed to help you build a foundation to navigate the headlines better and filter the flood of news coming at us all. One objective is that readers will become less vulnerable to being misled by politicians with partisan agendas and others claiming to be authorities when they are not. All of us make decisions and voice opinions—be it as voters, students, teachers, parents, friends, consumers, or investors—that affect the country’s (and hence our own) relationship with the world. With a better understanding of the world and the challenges that await, you will be a more informed citizen, one better able to hold your elected representatives to account and to arrive at sound independent judgments.

This book focuses on the ideas, issues, and institutions essential for a basic understanding of the world. I also shed light on each region of the world, the major powers, the challenges associated with globalization, and the most relevant history. This book has been written in the legacy of a world what Syed Zamam Imam and Syed Muhammad Ali Imam experienced and what their brother and sister will experience in the next many decades. I pray this world becomes a better, safer and a greener place for our upcoming generations.

I have set up Ali Zamam Trust in the United Kingdom and Pakistan in memory of my beloved sons to provide quality education for underprivileged children; by providing scholarships and sponsorships of children in need and helping organizations promoting quality education for underprivileged children. The Trust is working towards eradicating poverty by the prevention or relief of poverty by empowering the vulnerable through education, training, and mentoring. The Trust also advocates for rights of vulnerable children and women with the view to empower them through the facilitation of education and justice, campaigning to end domestic violence against women and children. The Trust also provides access to food for vulnerable people, including the homeless and hungry, who face food crises for various reasons. The Trust’s main objective is to facilitate shelter and food to the orphan children by creating associated structures and support for living, food, and education. A huge complex is being built in Kamalia to facilitate this purpose with an expense of 150 million PKRS.

I must acknowledge my family, particularly my wife Ayesha Rao, my son Syed Zuhran Tariq and my daughter Syeda Hareem Tariq who stood like rocks around me in these testing times. They also provided me with the much-needed love, care and support while spending around the two years writing this book.

I should not forget my friends, who were the biggest support in these turbulent times. I will specially mention Dr Shahid Mahmood, Neurologist UK, Dr Talha Farooq Cardiologist USA, Prof Dr Tauseef Azid, UET, Dr. Abdul Rehman PhD, Tokyo, Ahmad Aziz Tarar PAS, Waqas Alam PAS, Lutfullah Bhalli, Rao Furqan Ahmad, Mouhammad Umar Mushtaq, Chaudhry Muhammad Zafar, Syed Saqlain Haider, Syed Ali Raza and Syed Yasir Abbas. I am also grateful to my friends who joined me in support of Ali Zamam Trust, particularly Imtiaz Ahmed, Rashad Bokhari, Dr Amjad Saqib, Qasim Ali Shah, Qaiser Abbas and many others.

I cannot forget Dr Stephen Cohen, who has been a great friend and one of this book’s inspirations, and it was tragic losing him in October 2019.

It will be fair to recognize the thinktanks and institutes I attended and interacted in pursuit of writing this book including the Adam Smith Institute, Centre for European Reform, Chatham House, Civitas, Foreign Policy Centre, Institute of Economic Affairs, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), The Royal Society of Arts, Royal United Services Institute, Policy Exchange and Brookings Institution, Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies and Institute of Peace and Diplomatic Studies, Islamabad.

I must acknowledge the Conservative Friends of Pakistan’s Chairman Lord Zameer Choudrey, Vice Chairman Syed Qamar Raza, World Congress of Overseas Pakistanis and its founder & Executive Director Arif Anis, the current Chairman Dr Suhail Chughtai, Vice-Chairwoman Suniya Qureshi, the members of the board of governors including Saima Khan, Aliya Afzal Khan, Shabana Khan, Maryam Wohab, Barrister Gulnawaz Khan, Awais Malik, Shfaat Hussain, Muzaffar Ahmad, Sajid Atta Khan, Faiza Rizvi, Tariq Suleman, Rana Youab Khan and Esther Das.

I hope this book makes people think, reflect and debate some of the burning questions that may shape up the world of tomorrow.

Syed T M Hassan

Lahore – Huddersfield

February 2021

[e-mail]

www.alizamamtrust.com

BRIEF CONTENTS

PART 1

The Chinese Century

PART 2

The Divided States of America

PART 3

The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Inc.

PART 4

The Erdogan Caliphate

PART 5

The Rise of ‘New Pakistan’

PART 6

The Saffron Tide & Fall of the Indian Democracy

PART 7

The Pandemic Strikes

PART 1

THE CHINESE CENTURY

Part%201.jpg

Introduction

In 1978, China emerged from its cultural revolution as one of the world’s poorest nations. Mao’s ideology had pretty much isolated China and left the country’s social, political, and economic infrastructure devastated. In those days, China’s economy was only 5% when compared with the US economy at that time, and a whopping 88% of the population was living below the poverty line and putting things into perspective, the per capita income of 1978 China was equivalent to the per capita income of a poor African country Zambia. However, over the next 40 years, China transformed into an unrecognizable country. Today it is the world’s 2nd largest economy, behind the USA. The per capita GDP has increased as much as 50 times in a very short span of 40 years, as many as more than 700 million human beings have been lifted out of poverty. In the year 1978, China contributed 1.8% to the global economy, and fast forward to 2017; it contributes 18.2% to the global economy; this leads to a million-dollar question, how did this all happen?

Mao Zedong’s demise led to large scale paradigm shift in the communist party, which meant changes to Chinese society and people. This environment presented an opportunity to Deng Xiaoping, who became a key member of China’s leadership. Deng greatly influenced China’s foreign policy by setting China on the path of opening up to the outside world and ending the era of China’s social, political, and economic isolation. In 1979, he established formal diplomatic ties with the USA. Chinese started intermingling with foreigners and even started attracting them. For comparison, from 1949 to 1978 (almost 30 years), only 200,000 Chinese traveled outside of China. If we take the data for only 01 years, in 2017, more than 130 million Chinese traveled overseas, and almost 140 million foreign nationals visited China. But the most significant contribution made by Deng Xiaoping was that he utterly transformed the Chinese economy. The almost miraculous economic turnaround seen by china has been built upon embracing Capitalism with open arms and massively encouraging private businesses and investments, which was a new world order altogether compared with the existing poorly managed, inefficient state-run enterprises Mao’s administration left in legacy.

Seeing the Chinese market’s unlimited untapped potential, multinational companies rushed to China to have a competitive advantage. Before anyone noticed, China became the world’s manufacturing capital. This sudden impetus to the Chinese economy led to significant growth and progress became the number one priority of China’s Communist Party, which is still the same even today. It is safe to say that Deng Xiaoping changed the face and fate of China. In ensuing years, his successors followed in his footsteps of pushing further for economic growth and have maintained Socialism’s political order but with a distinct added flavor of Chinese nationalism.

China’s current all-powerful ruler Xi Jinping, while building on his predecessors’ platform has moved forward on his own carefully laid ambitious plans. His trademark project One Belt One Road initiative, now changed to the Belt and Road Initiative, has the ambitions to lay down the largest trade network in human history. The project is estimated to cost more than 900 billion dollars. With the ever-growing financial muscle, Xi Jinping has taken an aggressive stance in foreign policy and diplomatic positioning and looks all set to considerably decrease the USA’s influence in the Asia Pacific region.

The Defining Incidents of People Republic of China

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong laid out the People’s Republic of China’s foundation in Tiananmen Square Beijing. It was the first instance in more than a century that China had been brought together under the revolutionary communist party’s banners. Today, every school kid in China is aware that China has no existence without the Communist Party. The Communist Party immediately made social and financial changes simultaneously along with cleansing adversaries. The Great Leap Forward in 1958 was an arrangement of collective horticulture. It was a debacle that prompted starvation and murder spree of countless individuals.

After the Great Leap Forward, Mao’s position was significantly debilitated. The Cultural Revolution was the way he attempted to recover it. Mao Zedong prompted individuals, particularly the youth, to condemn common and colonialist components despite everything present in Chinese society. It was a move that led to a civil war-like situation which may have slaughtered around a million to 2,000,000 individuals.

Mao’s passing initiated a factional fight for power until Deng Xiaoping held the reins in his hands. Deng recreated the Chinese model. He surrendered the extreme communist model, grasped numerous parts of Capitalism, and called it Communism with Chinese qualities. Landowners were permitted to develop their plots of land and permitted to stock their assets. The economy turned out to be all the freer, so too did the political air and novel thoughts spread across China. A significant deviation was allowing protests, but things came to a boiling point in 1989 when protests in favor of democracy were taking place all over China, including the Tiananmen Square, a spot where Mao had announced the inception of the People’s Republic of China.

After allowing demonstrations for many days, on June 4, tanks and troops moved in, butchering hundreds of dissidents. It strengthened the Communist Party’s grip on power regardless of the expense. Tiananmen Massacre led to the isolation of China on the global stage. Yet, not for long. China was reintegrated, coming full circle in its promotion in 2001 to the World Trade Organization that prompted an enormous boom in the economy. The Beijing Olympics in 2008 became a defining point, where China came out stronger as a global leader in innovation and enterprise. China also stood tall during the Global financial meltdown of 2008, which left numerous experts pondering over the accepted predominance of the Western free enterprise. The West was in transit downward while China was in transit upward.

In 2012 Xi Jinping became the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. He later became President of the People’s Republic of China. From that point forward, Xi demonstrated himself as the most significant Chinese leader since Mao. He had a considerably more self-assured international strategy, rooted out the internal dispute while embracing the Socialist philosophy. In 2018 he canceled presidential term limits, meaning he could be China’s leader for quite some time now.

When, at the turn of the millennium, the scholars of international relations predicted that the 2000s would be a Chinese century, they were not being premature. Although America remains the lone superpower, China has already replaced it as the driver of global change.

There is one economic metric on which China already ranks first. Measured at market exchange rates, China’s GDP is still 40% smaller than America’s. However, on a purchasing-power-parity (PPP) basis, which adjusts currencies so that a basket of goods and services is worth the same amount in different countries, the Chinese economy became the world’s largest in 2013. Although China is often grouped with other emerging markets, its performance is unique: its GDP per person at PPP has risen tenfold since 1990. In general, poorer economies grow faster than rich ones, because it is easier to catch up when starting from a low base. Yet in other countries that were as poor as China was in 1990, purchasing power has merely doubled.

A nation’s power is not limited to its economic size. It is also about its productivity, sophistication, technology and management skills. It is about its military and diplomatic strength, and what is often termed soft power – developments in the fields of science, education, culture and the arts. On most of these measures China still lags far behind most of the developed, free democracies of the West.

China India Conflict

On June 15, China and India’s soldiers fought a bloody hand-to-hand battle along a contested outskirt in the Himalayan mountains, resulting in a significant life loss. This was the deadliest showdown between India and China along that outskirt in 45 years, denoting a hazardous acceleration between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. During the 1950s, a term was utilized to portray India and China’s connection: Hindi Chini Bhai, which signified as India and China are siblings. However, that was the special case instead of the standard state to state relations. A profound mutual doubt hovered about each other’s intention and a feeling of distrust persists to date.

Two years after India got independence from the British in 1947, the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949. Notwithstanding endeavors to set up a genial relationship, for example, the India-China Friendship Association, splits were at that point showing up in their reciprocal relations.

For one, China never acknowledged the British’s borderline in 1914, defining the wasteland between Tibet and British India, otherwise called the McMahon line. The uncertainty of the 550-mile line, which India perceived as its authority, lawful outskirt before long turned into a wellspring of pressure between the two Asian neighbors. It resulted in the Sino-Indian war in 1962. The fight endured a month, and China made advances past the McMahon line while India endured substantial territorial losses.

Throughout the following years, India contemplated how to recuperate lost ground amid periodic conflicts between the two nations. A noteworthy clash occurred in 1975. Both nations had 45 years of uneasy peace. Despite endeavors for détente in the next years between the two nations’ political authority, the issue stayed uncertain. At one point, India and China agreed on settling border disputes, including a 1996 understanding restricting the utilization of guns in the region.

The McMahon Line frames a piece of the long outskirt among China and India, which reaches out more than 3,400 km in one of the world’s largest mountainous regions of the Himalayas. This wilderness is alluded to as the Line of Actual Control, or the LAC, which incorporates milestones, such as the Pangong Lake and the Galway Valley. No official records or authentic markings outline the real LAC bring dark zones between the Chinese and Indian watches. The LAC borders mountains, valleys, and levels making the progression of merchandise and exercise difficult. Subsequently, India has been updating its road network and infrastructure for longer than ten years. Upon completion, this will ensure fast mobility of the Indian military in these regions. Galway’s river, where the most recent lethal showdown took place in 2020, has great strategic importance to India, especially when the road infrastructure is completed, making it a key and critical area. China has also built its foundation and military stations along the LAC, including a thruway associating China’s sensitive areas of Xinjiang and Tibet. China has more infrastructure and roads extending to the West of the LAC, which associate China to Pakistan as a major aspect of its Belt and Road project, adding to India’s worries.

The dispute between China and India has many broader aspects to it than considering it merely a border dispute. Given their financial muscle, this will have more extensive ramifications for the area and the world. The two nations make up about 36% of the total world populace. China has the second-biggest economy globally, while India has more than $2.9 trillion GDP taking the fifth spot. As their economies develop, the two nations have been spending extensively on their military stockpiles. In 2020, China allocated more than $178 billion for the defense budget. Numerous experts believe that the actual figure is a lot higher. India’s spendings on defense and