Episode 194 – Pakistan in Crisis with Aqdas Afzal

Macro N Cheese – Episode 194
Pakistan in Crisis with Aqdas Afzal
October 15, 2022

 

[00:00:04.290] – Aqdas Afzal [intro/music]

Pakistan contributes less than 1% of global carbon emissions. Fully 92% of global carbon emissions of greenhouse gasses are put in the atmosphere by rich countries, countries in the Global North.

[00:00:22.160] – Aqdas Afzal [intro/music]

One institution that I have in mind is something like an International Climate Fund instead of the International Monetary Fund that can provide massive amounts of money and assistance to countries that are suffering from climate catastrophes. And they should be able to provide this assistance immediately without any conditionalities, unlike what the IMF does.

[00:01:35.140] – Geoff Ginter [intro/music]

Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:01:43.140] – Steve Grumbine

All right. And this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Another great episode. Today, I have brought my friend and prior guest, Dr. Aqdas Afzal, who attended the Ohio State University, where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Economics with a minor in Farsi. Dr. Afzal has done so many great things.

He wrote an article for the publication called Dawn, and it’s called Collapse of Civilizations. And this came out September 23, 2022, which is the subject of today’s conversation. What could be more important than discussing the devastation of climate crisis, especially the impacts on the Global South? So with that, let me bring on my guest, Aqdas. Welcome, sir.

[00:02:37.090] – Aqdas Afzal

Thanks, Steve. Very happy to be back on your podcast. I remember we did a really nice one a few months ago, and so I was excited when I found out that I was going to be on this podcast again. And so thank you once again.

[00:02:53.810] – Grumbine

Absolutely. Today, the day we’re recording this, it’s not only very late in Aqdas’ world right now, but it’s also your birthday. So happy birthday, sir.

[00:03:05.940] – Afzal

Yeah, that’s right. Thank you very much. I do appreciate your wishes. And yes, it’s late in Karachi, Pakistan. It’s after 11:00 p.m. I think that is 9 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time in the US.

[00:03:21.860] – Grumbine

Really appreciate you doing this. You know what I really love? When I asked you, you said this subject is so important, you’re willing to do whatever to make sure that we get this information out there.

[00:03:35.440] – Afzal

That’s right.

[00:03:37.010] – Grumbine

Why don’t we just start off with the article itself, the Collapse of Civilization.

[00:03:42.150] – Afzal

Okay

[00:03:42.550] – Grumbine

Let’s lay the case out for everybody so they understand what’s going on.

[00:03:46.860] – Afzal

Right. Well, before I get into the actual article that I’ve written, I just like to tell your audience that I’m sitting here in Karachi, Pakistan, against the backdrop of these floods of biblical proportions that have caused massive death and destruction in Pakistan over the last couple of months. And these floods of epic proportions are technically the biggest floods Pakistan has faced in modern recorded history.

Mind you, there are a lot of mention of floods. There is Noah’s flood in the Bible, we talk about these other great floods, but in modern recorded history these are the greatest floods that Pakistan has had to face. And just to give your audience an idea as to what kind of damage we are talking about, almost 33 million people have been impacted by these floods. That includes 11 million children.

Actual deaths from these floods are about 1700 now with over 13,000 people injured. And this is an evolving situation. And as the data comes in, the National Disaster Management Authority in Pakistan keeps updating figures. So it’s an evolving situation and these numbers are likely to go up by some percentage. So there has been death of almost 1700 people.

7 million acres worth of cropland has been inundated in these floods. Overall, about 500 bridges have been destroyed and over 13,000 kilometers, that’s almost 8,200 miles worth of roads that have been washed away in a poor developing country in the Global South. And these damages that I am talking about, these are probably 30, 40, 50 years of economic development in this part of the world.

So by all standards, these floods that Pakistan has recently witnessed have been of biblical proportions. They have caused massive damage in Pakistan. And the alarming thing is that the kind of weather events or climate events that are now happening in Pakistan, we have never seen anything like this, at least in my lifetime.

To give you an example, the total rainfall in Pakistan this year has been eight times the average of the last 40 years, seven to eight times the average of last 30 to 40 years. So we are increasingly seeing these climate events or climate catastrophes, both the frequency of which and the intensity is now increasing drastically.

And I think that is really the massive catastrophe we are facing as a poor developing country in the Global South. And this is all the more important because we are facing this because of climate change. Whereas Pakistan contributes less than 1% of global carbon emissions, fully 92% of global carbon emissions or greenhouse gasses are put in the atmosphere by rich countries, countries in the Global North.

But countries such as Pakistan today or some other developing country, poor country, in the future is going to be at the receiving end of this. So I just wanted to put this information in front of all of us so that people know what kind of situation Pakistan is facing. And as we progress in this podcast, I will actually tell you what are some of the medium to long term economic implications that this is going to bring about.

So just to give you an idea, according to very preliminary calculations, this damage is going to cost Pakistan about $30 billion. Pakistan does not have $30 billion. So one reason why I wanted to do this podcast with you Steve, and this is where I need your help…

[00:07:57.010] – Grumbine

You got it.

[00:07:57.660] – Afzal

…Is to get the message out, to let people know in the United States and wherever they are listening to you, that Pakistan needs your help right now. We cannot do this alone and this is something that we would really appreciate if the world could step forward and help us in sending us funds, in getting the word out, and generally working towards reducing all these different climate emissions that are bringing about such catastrophic changes in the Global South. So having said this, now let me, with your permission, turn towards the article that was recently published in Pakistan’s most widely circulated English newspaper, Dawn.

[00:08:41.910] – Grumbine

You got it.

[00:08:42.660] – Afzal

And the name of that piece is a play – the title of that piece is a play on a very famous work that was done by an American intellectual, political scientist whose name was Samuel Huntington who is famous for having written Political Order in Changing Societies, 1968. But then he really became famous in the 1990s for having written first an essay for the American Enterprise Institute called Clash of Civilizations and then he later turned that into a book in 1996, Clash of Civilizations.

And Huntington was really trying to provide a counterpoint to a work that one of his students, Francis Fukuyama, had come up with. Remember last time I was on your show I started out my podcast talking about Francis Fukuyama’s End of History. So just to give your listeners an idea as to what that work is all about – Francis Fukuyama, again, American intellectual, he basically came up with this idea right at the end of the Cold War arguing that the human race had reached the final point of evolution when it came to economic and political organization.

So namely capitalism and liberal democracy was the last point in the human race’s evolution. And so in a sense we had reached the end of history. And ideological battles were over. But Huntington doesn’t like this point and he then argues in Clash of Civilizations that the new conflicts were going to come from different cultures. He links cultures with civilizations and he points out towards two main civilizations: the Islamic civilization and the Chinese civilization.

So at the time, his work came under a lot of criticism and people accused him of unnecessarily trying to draw attention towards cultures or religions or civilizations. But some people have argued that the events of 9/11, as well as certain other events, and the rise of China, really, in the last 20 years, provide a grain of credence to the work or the predictions that Huntington was making.

But it’s been more than 20 years now since 9/11. Iraq has happened, Afghanistan has happened, and so we have come a very long way and I think the biggest problem that the human race, all of us, are facing today is this insatiable appetite for more production, more consumption, capitalism, and that is not stopping anywhere. And that is bringing about this massive consumption of fossil fuels.

They are throwing all these carbon emissions into the atmosphere. And then developing countries, poor countries in the Global South are facing the brunt of all that. So for this reason, I chose this title, calling it Collapse of Civilizations, as opposed to Clash of Civilizations, because I think that climate change and potential collapse of many civilizations is now problem number one facing the human race.

[00:11:58.910] – Grumbine

Yeah. So let me ask you this question: in the United States, when we have a mass shooting, we have about 15 minutes of focus and then we’re off to the next subject. It’s as if it didn’t even happen. We move right on. I remember when I heard initially about the massive floods and the destruction, this was a few weeks back, but that didn’t change. It’s still absolutely decimated by it.

And you are getting very little help right now. What is it that makes it so that Pakistan cannot conjure the resources to do this without foreign help? And what is it that you’re looking for in particular? Is there an organization to donate to or is this a matter of putting pressure on our government? What kind of assistance are you looking for?

[00:12:50.290] – Afzal

Right, I think that’s a great question, Steve. I think there are two things that are happening right now. I think the first thing has to do with the world’s attention. That has been focused on the events in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and people who generally donate – we have received generous donations from the United States in particular in the past – I think we are probably suffering from what is called donor fatigue.

People who wanted to donate have already done so and they have done it for particular causes. And so now when it comes to Pakistan, we are suffering from this idea of donor fatigue. But I really want to appeal to all these people listening to me right now. $30 to $40 billion is an amount that Pakistan cannot cover by itself. Just to give you an idea, the total foreign exchange reserves, both at the State Bank of Pakistan and with the commercial banks in the country, amount to $14 billion as we speak.

So you can get an idea as to what magnitude or the size of the amount, how big it is for an economy like Pakistan. So I will come to what people can do in a minute. But I just wanted to talk about the second reason why we haven’t seen the kind of assistance we have seen coming to Pakistan in the past. I think that the first reason has to do with donor fatigue and I think the second reason has to do with the general nature of geopolitical events.

So, previously, as long as the US was in Afghanistan the US State Department or the Defense Department or the US establishment needed Pakistan’s assistance for various things – to get safe passage from the port in Karachi to Afghanistan to provide supplies to its troops, because I would like to remind your audience that Afghanistan is a landlocked country – or for whatever other reason.

So there was some assistance that was required from Pakistan. So ever since the US has left Afghanistan, Pakistan, which used to draw geopolitical rents because of its very interesting crucial position as a bridge between the rest of the world and Central Asia, is now largely gone. So Pakistan cannot really rely on the kind of geopolitical rents it could rely on.

So what that really means is Pakistan as a geopolitical nation or country is no longer important for the US. And I think that’s also a reason why we haven’t seen the kind of assistance that usually used to come from the United States. But there have been exceptions. I forget the name of the Congressperson from the US House of Representatives, but I think her name is Sheila Jackson Lee and she is the head of the Pakistan Caucus in the House of Representatives.

She was one of the first people to arrive in Pakistan from abroad and then she was instrumental in creating awareness about the enormity of this calamity that Pakistan is facing. And I would like to remind your audience that this calamity is being faced by the poorest regions of Pakistan, which is already a very poor developing country in the Global South.

So I’m extremely thankful to Sheila Jackson Lee for highlighting what has happened in Pakistan in terms of the kind of assistance we need and in terms of the funding we need for fighting against this problem. It just hasn’t been forthcoming. So to come back to the question that you ask, the specific question. You asked what is it that people in the US can do or your listeners can do?

Is there an organization that they can donate to? Well, recently there has been a lot of talk of giving climate reparations to countries that have been at the receiving end of climate change. So people like Jason Hickel have been talking about giving climate reparations because remember, Pakistan’s contribution to carbon emissions is less than 1% because the size of Pakistan’s economy is so small compared to all these massive economies like China or the US or India even, for that matter.

So our contribution is less than 1%, but we are facing the front of this climate catastrophe. So a case can be made that all these very big economies that have done wonders for their own people, that have become rich by burning all these fossil fuels for 250 years or 300 years now, to provide some mechanism of re-channeling some of those funds that they have made by burning fossil fuels to these countries that are facing the front of climate change.

But it’s easier said than done. As far as I know, no reparations have ever been paid to descendants of slaves that were brought over from Africa in the United States.

[00:18:14.610] – Grumbine

Nope. Not a penny.

[00:18:16.410] – Afzal

Not a penny. The work of Sandy Darity Jr. is very relevant here. He’s a professor at Duke and he has recently written a book…

[00:18:27.630] – Grumbine

It’s called From Here to Equality.

[00:18:30.070] – Afzal

Thank you very much. So, Darity talks about the fact that when you compare the wealth of an average white family in the US with an average black family in the US, the difference in assets is a whopping $850,000. And not a penny has been paid [in reparations]. A similar situation is with reparations that have been demanded by countries that were colonized by, say, Britain.

There is the work of Professor [Utsa] Patnaik out of JNU [Jawaharlal Nehru University] in Delhi. She makes the case that Britain siphoned off almost $45 trillion worth of surplus out of India in about 200 years. Not a penny has ever been paid. So we already have these situations where people are demanding reparations for slavery, people are demanding reparations for colonialism, but not a penny has been paid.

So when we talk about climate reparations, I think the future does not look very bright. So instead of those coming on the scene, what I propose is that Pakistan and other countries facing problems because of climate change should be given some breathing space when it comes to servicing our external debt. And that is becoming a very, very dire situation.

Steve, to give you an example, about 40% of Pakistan’s federal budget – remember that figure – 40% is now spent on paying interest on external loans that Pakistan has taken over the last 75 years. This situation not only eats up all the fiscal space that this country has – we cannot spend on health, we cannot spend on education – we don’t have enough money to spend on climate mitigation, adaptation, on clean drinking water.

And the situation is becoming worse by the day. It’s a completely unsustainable situation. So my appeal is to people listening in the US primarily, or other places where they’re listening to you, please talk to your representatives. Talk to them about giving countries like Pakistan a breathing space, be it for five years, declare a moratorium on taking interest on external loans from countries like Pakistan.

We’ll be very thankful. And it wouldn’t be the first time that something like this has happened. So I’d like to talk about 1953 London debt agreement. When a number of different countries waived first the interest on loans that were taken by Germany and then completely wrote off these debts. And one of the countries that wrote off debt that was owed to it by Germany was Pakistan in 1953.

Here we are, so many years later, making an impassioned plea to people listening to this podcast: talk to your representatives, write to your senators, ask them what they are doing to help people in Pakistan who are fighting against this flood of biblical proportions.

[00:21:59.810] – Grumbine

Is the debt that you have, the external debt, direct debt to the countries, or is it through the IMF?

[00:22:08.810] – Afzal

Well, it’s really all over the place. Some portion of that is bilateral debt, so that is owed to different countries – Japan, US, UK, what have you. Then there is multilateral debt and that’s debt that’s owed to World Bank, IMF and some other institutions like the Asian Development Bank. And then there is debt owed to the Paris Club, London Club, and some debt has also been raised from the commercial market.

So there is really a mix of debt that Pakistan owes to different lenders outside. And all of that is denominated in the US dollar, of course. And the size of that has become so large that 40% of the national budget, the federal budget, is now being used to just pay the interest on these loans and it’s just eating away any or all fiscal space that a country like Pakistan could have to invest in our people. So it’s a very big problem.

[00:23:10.840] – Grumbine

There’s a historical figure that I think most leftists would very much relate to and that was Thomas Sankara. And Thomas Sankara said, I have a choice; I can either have my country pay your debt or we can survive, but we can’t do both. And the revolutionary nature of Thomas Sankara and the bold statement that he made – he made this big speech at the UN General Assembly, I believe was October of 1984.

And we’ve known about these external debt traps going back to Lenin and his writings about the highest stage of capitalism, Engels, Marx, they’ve been talking about this for well over 100 years. And then people such as Michael Hudson and Steve Keen have proposed debt jubilees.

[00:24:10.780] – Afzal

That’s right.

[00:24:12.260] – Grumbine

But is there any energy towards granting Pakistan relief?

[00:24:17.960] – Afzal

Well. There have been a number of voices raised which have been demanding that countries in the Global South should be given a breathing space. If debt cannot be written off, at least some kind of a breathing space or a moratorium on interest payments for, say, five to seven years or even ten years can be declared so that these countries can develop some kind of fiscal or financial resilience in order to develop the capacity to pay back some of these loans.

I think it would be a very interesting paper that somebody could do if they would calculate the total amount that Pakistan has paid in interest to its debtors outside. Because I think I would put that figure as pretty close to the total amount of debt that is owed by Pakistan to its external creditors. So I think we have to think about a system in which countries like Pakistan are not just paralyzed or are put in a debtors prison by creditors outside, because this is just not healthy.

Because then countries like Pakistan or other developing countries are just not going to be able to make the requisite investments in human capital and in addressing so many of the other social gaps that exist in emerging economies. So I think this is something that I’m hoping that some people are going to take up this issue and talk about this. And you are very right in bringing up the work of Hudson.

I have looked at his work and yeah, the very fact that there was this concept of Jubilee that every 25 years or so all outstanding debts were written off and people were given a fresh start because otherwise it would have been impossible for people to just carry on. So I think the pressure is building up and I think there needs to be a serious discussion.

Either we devise a mechanism so that some reparations can be paid to countries that are at the receiving end of climate catastrophes and climate change, or some mechanism needs to be thought of that is going to provide countries in the Global South with some form of debt relief. Maybe a substantial portion of the debt should be written off or declare a moratorium on interest payments.

All of this is becoming extremely difficult for emerging economies and developing countries, especially against the backdrop of these massive or significant, rather, increases in interest rates in the US. Because when interest rates go up in the US, capital from all around the world heads in the direction of the US because now it can get a higher rate of return.

And that basically has a very negative effect on currencies in emerging markets. And we’ve seen a lot of currencies in the world, even pound sterling, Japanese yen, South Korean yuan, all of them losing ground against the US dollar. So I think the time has come for us to get serious about what kind of relief we are going to provide and how that is going to come about.

[00:27:37.240] – Grumbine

It doesn’t sound to me like there are market solutions possible here. This feels like a sovereign currency-issuing nation, like the United States or the UK making an active decision to not pursue that debt and wipe it out. I’ve spoken with several people in different nations around the world, from Iceland to Brazil. But in talking about the foreign reserves, the wealthy in their nation will buy exotic products that are imports and a lot of the nation’s reserves will go towards servicing their purchases.

But in this case, is this debt where the Pakistani government has reached out abroad to other countries and said we need help, let us take out debt for this and then the government takes out that debt in the name of Pakistan? Or is this more purchases from elites in Pakistan? What is the makeup of the need for those foreign reserves and where does that debt come from?

[00:28:42.190] – Afzal

This is the debt that the government of Pakistan takes for balance of payment support. This is basically the differential between the imports and exports plus remittances, whatever money that we don’t have at the end in order to cover our imports. This is that money that has been taken from the rest of the world and it’s a loan that’s taken by the government as balance of payments support.

So that’s what’s been happening. But there is this angle of the elites or the ultrarich who have the money to buy whatever it is that they want to buy, all these imported luxuries, and they’re buying these very expensive things here, jacking up the import bill. Whereas Pakistan’s economy is not that sophisticated that it can increase its exports substantially over a period of time.

So that also has been a very big problem in the case of Pakistan that we have not been able to increase our exports. And that points you towards a vicious cycle. The government does not have the money to invest in public education, in public health, in clean drinking water – and as a result the human capital overall in Pakistan is very low.

And because of that very low human capital, labor productivity is very low. And because of having that very low labor productivity, Pakistan is not able to produce high value-added exports. And so the gap remains, and then you take on more loan, and in order to service that loan you have to pay more interest. That doesn’t leave the government with enough fiscal space to invest in human capital.

And this cycle repeats again and again and again and you’re basically stuck in a vicious cycle. And so in order to come out of this vicious cycle, an exogenous shock is required. And I think a positive shock in the shape of either declaring a moratorium on interest payments or writing off a significant portion of Pakistan’s external debt would be extremely helpful.

A shot in the arm for Pakistan’s economy. And mind you, we need every single penny right now because we have to divert these funds towards relief and rescue and rehabitation procedures and operations that are going on in these flooded areas of Pakistan.

[00:31:31.910] – Intermission

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[00:32:22.760] – Grumbine

These monies have already been spent. Whatever it is, has already been given to Pakistan for its own purposes. At this point I wonder why wouldn’t the governments and the central banks write that debt down to begin with, take it off their balance sheets? And in the name of defending human rights and defense of extreme crisis, what value is there to having a poor country like Pakistan who has no value-added products coming out of it per se? What is the point of having Pakistan in insufferable poverty and left to maintain these debt relationships where interest keeps accruing.

[00:33:09.410] – Afzal

That’s a really fundamental question. What’s the point? And I think when victors of the Second World War were in Breton Woods and they were trying to decide what was going to be the architecture of the new global world order, there were two competing proposals. One proposal came from [John Maynard] Keynes, who was representing Britain, and the other proposal came from Harry Dexter White, who was representing the United States.

And the proposal that came from Keynes was very interesting. He basically talked about an international clearing union where countries that were going to – or who would eventually run – consistently excessive surpluses, they would be penalized and some of those surpluses would then be channeled towards countries that were running consistently massive deficits.

So there was going to be this act of balancing out the surpluses versus the deficits. But Keynes was voted down by Harry Dexter White and this new system that they came up with in which the greenback, the US dollar, became the international reserve currency. That has really been a system that has not really helped countries that have been unable to produce high value-added exports.

And they have taken initial loans. Those loans have probably disappeared in buying some luxury products and now they’re in a situation where they don’t have the fiscal space to invest in their own people. So I think, given the kind of problems we are facing as a human race, climate change, conflict, global pandemics like COVID-19, I think the time has come to, seriously, for all of us to sit down and reexamine the kind of international institutional architecture that we developed at the end of the Second War because ground realities have changed.

And I think the time has come to seriously think about developing new institutions. So one institution that I have in mind is something like an International Climate Fund instead of the International Monetary Fund, that can provide a massive amount of money and assistance to countries that are suffering from climate catastrophes.

And they should be able to provide this assistance immediately without any conditionalities, unlike what the IMF does. So I think these are the kind of things that intellectuals in all countries need to think about. And I think all of us, we as a people, as a global people, need to come together in order to fashion a new, more equal, less violent world in the years to come.

[00:36:07.090] – Grumbine

I love this. If you follow Bill Mitchell on Twitter and you read his blog, Bill Mitchell has been putting out a three part series where he’s talking about the marriage of MMT and degrowth. He’s actually fundamentally talking directly to Jason Hickel. I really, genuinely love the work of Jason Hickel and I love the work of Bill Mitchell. And I’ve been fighting for a long time about MMT.

But these guys… It’s nice to see these two schools coming together and people like Fadhel Kaboub and Ndongo Samba Sylla and yourself, who work in these developing countries, that have an MMT understanding and heterodox approach to economics. I do see some motion to begin making those kinds of changes happen, at least within the heterodox community.

Do you see any motion for standard orthodox economists and political figures to make a step towards helping Pakistan or any other Global South country that is in similar situations? This has been going on for a long time the predation on the Global South as a colonial state of the neoliberal US allies project. Do you see anyone within the mainstream that is thinking about humanity and the planet or do you see them still largely focused on how do we finance this and how do we win with this financial arrangement?

[00:37:42.710] – Afzal

Well, degrowth, MMT, these are all very interesting ideas. I’ve been reading more and more about degrowth. There is also the work of Professor [Giorgios] Kallis, I think he is based in Spain. I’ve also been reading his work about degrowth. So these are very interesting ideas because what MMT, and especially degrowth, they’re telling us that the usual way of doing things, the business as usual situation, is not going to assist us anymore.

So we have to think out of the box for a change. We really have to make use of innovative thinking. But when we talk about mainstream ideas, I think what I have seen in the past is that there is this abiding trust, faith really, in the power of technology. And here I’m referring to so-called techno-optimists who think that if you throw enough capital at something, eventually we are going to develop technological solution to these problems of running out of natural resources, or we are probably going to be able to develop an alternative fuel that is not going to be based on hydrocarbons, or what have you.

But I think this is not the right direction because when we look at capital and technology or capital and energy, instead of the two things being substitutes…. So this is the techno-optimist view that if you throw enough capital at something, eventually it is going to give you substitutes for fossil fuels and you’re going to be able to keep growing using that alternative fuel.

But instead of the two things, capital and energy, being substitutes, they appear to be complements, meaning that if you use more and more and more capital it is just going to end up using more and more and more energy. And this comes from the second law of thermodynamics, the Entropy Law, something that ecological economists have been talking about for a very long time.

Here I’m referring to the work of [Nicholas] Georgescu-Roegen and some of these other very interesting ecological economists who have always taken issue with the fact that capital and energy are not substitutes, rather they are complements. So I think the kind of problems that we are facing right now as a human race where business as usual or the usual way of dealing with those problems is not working anymore.

I think there is now a dire and urgent need for public intellectuals or thinkers to come together all across the globe and think about out of the box solutions. We have people like Jason Hickel, Kallis, talking about degrowth in the West. We have yet to hear voices come out of the west. They talk about freeing up developing countries, third world countries, poor countries, Global South countries from these debtors prison where these countries have remained as inmates or prisoners for decades and I think the world needs to move beyond this model of entrapping countries in external debt and then living off comfortably on those interest streams.

So really there is a need for innovative thinking. Ideas like degrowth are very important. Ideas like writing off debts are very important. Ideas like climate reparations, slavery reparations, colonial reparations – they are all extremely important in order to fashion a more equitable, more just and more peaceful world in the future.

[00:41:29.810] – Grumbine

It brings me to your article, what you just said. I’m going to read from your article because it’s very well written. I love your article by the way.

[00:41:37.150] – Afzal

Thank you.

[00:41:37.560] – Grumbine

And you say “It appears that Pakistan is entering what Adam Tooze calls a polycrisis with various overlapping crises – political, economic and climate-related – reinforcing each other while pulling Pakistan deeper into disorder. Despite political and economic volatility, it appears that Pakistan’s toughest, perhaps existential, challenge is going to come from the ongoing climate crisis, especially as there is now evidence that points towards spatial and temporal changes in the monsoons.”

For the next paragraph you say, “A dystopian future, once the stuff of post-apocalyptic films like Mad Max, is increasingly becoming a reality due to global warming and climate change primarily driven by an ever-increasing use of fossil fuels for economic production. Even though Pakistan contributes less than 1% of global greenhouse gases, it remains at the receiving end of extreme climate-related devastation.

Though the field of attribution science is new, incorporating warmer temperatures has led scientists to conclude that ‘climate change had probably made this year’s flooding worse’.” But the thing that jumps out at me is you talk about the devolution of society. Breakdowns across the board. Poverty does that and neoliberalism depends on poverty for its own existence and when you look at the changes like monsoons, there’s nothing you personally can do to change the monsoons.

Physics doesn’t negotiate with us like this and yet Pakistan is one of the countries that does have nuclear weapons and when you have a societal breakdown it’s in everyone’s best interest because wherever there’s poverty, there’s desperation. Wherever I’ve seen poverty, people do whatever they can to survive and it is a country on the receiving end of every negative thing the world has to offer.

How do we expect Pakistan to not respond poorly? We talked a little bit about this last time I believe with climate crisis creating wars, not only resource wars, but what happens when climate crisis starts pulling people of varying beliefs that don’t get along. What happens when those things bring people together under the worst of circumstances? That’s chaos.

So this is a global problem because we should know by now we have enough empirical evidence that neoliberalism creates fascists. We’ve seen it in the United States how neoliberalism has failed, and we had the rise of Donald Trump and then we went back to an even more neoliberal president. So how do we solve that crisis?

Are we telling the right stories? Are we focusing on technocratic solutions instead of the real things that the people themselves need to hear? I’m confused as to why the narratives of these things tend to be so muddled and not straightforward. It seems very straightforward to me.

[00:44:55.460] – Afzal

Well, I completely agree with you that a lot of these crises that we are now witnessing are a direct result of neoliberalism and now the failure of neoliberalism. And you rightly point out towards the fact that neoliberalism is protofascism. And we are already seeing a breakdown, a sort of a cultural or a civilizational breakdown, if you will, in a number of different countries around the world.

Let’s not call them fascism, for once, let’s call it populism just in order to not step on too many toes. But we are now increasingly seeing a resurgence of populism of the right and populism of the left all over the globe. Look at what’s going on in Latin America, South America, country after country, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, now potentially Brazil, and some people would argue even Argentina is populism of the left.

Because the center has given way. The old way of doing things – neoliberalism, globalization – it’s not working for a great majority of people around the world. So you have these populisms of the left emerging in South America. Look at what’s going on in Europe. You have populisms of the right emerging. I mean, look at the elections in Italy, look at what’s happening in Sweden, look at what’s happening in Hungary.

By some standards, France was very close to electing a populist from the right a couple of years ago. So the point that I’m trying to belabor here is that the centrist way, this idea that if you keep working hard, life was going to get better – that capitalism and neoliberalism was going to deliver the goods no matter what – that idea has now increasingly become defunct.

And all over the world, people not finding solutions in the way we have been doing things. This insatiable appetite for economic production, consumption, an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and energy as a result. This insatiable appetite to get everything from our environment. To resource everything from our environment. This insatiable appetite forcing us to live beyond our means.

To live beyond nature’s limits. That is really not delivering for a great majority of the people. So people are trying to find answers. Some societies, cultures, areas, groups of countries are turning to the left, others are turning to the right. And overall, I think we are probably going back to Huntington’s “clash of civilizations.”

I hate to bring Huntington back here, but I think he predicted that something was going to happen and some people criticized him. They said he was probably a racist or he was seeing conflict where there was none. But it now appears that he was probably making that prediction a bit too early. And now it increasingly appears, and this is the point that you were making earlier about this clash that is coming up in these societies and civilizations and cultures that are now under this extreme stress.

Now, what is going to come out of all this? What level of violence is going to come out of all this? How this is going to impact the lives of people all over the world? Now, somebody sitting in Europe or somebody sitting in the US thinking right now, why should I care about what’s happening in India or Pakistan or climate change?

Well, I think you should care about what’s happening for two major reasons. The first reason is somewhat altruistic. You should care about it in the interests of justice. You should care about it because caring about what’s happening in these places, the bad stuff that is happening in these places is the right thing to do.

And the second reason why you should care about it is purely selfish, self-interested reason. And I think this should ring a bell with a lot of people. And that has to do with… Look at the number of people who live in this part of the world. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan combined. We are talking about 2 billion people in the world. That’s a massive chunk of the global population.

Now, what is South of Pakistan or what is South of India? Has anybody looked at the map? It’s the Indian Ocean. So if something goes wrong here, these people are not going to go South, they are only going to go North. And if something like that happens – if there is a massive climate change, there is drought, famine, conflict, god forbid, nuclear war – this population, the hordes of these people are going to move North.

And then this is going to create a whole new map of the world. So I think people should care for both altruistic reasons and for purely selfish reasons, because it’s a very important issue. It’s a very urgent issue. And some countries, like Pakistan, are facing an existential threat. As I write in my column.

[00:50:21.720] – Grumbine

Yes. In the United States right now, there is a Netflix movie on Dahmer. And Dahmer was a serial killer.

[00:50:32.560] – Afzal

Right. I’m familiar because I finished my undergraduate and my masters at the Ohio State University.

[00:50:40.540] – Grumbine

Oh, wow. Yes.

[00:50:42.420] – Afzal

And Dahmer, if I’m not mistaken, I believe he lived in the same dorm where I lived for one semester.

[00:50:50.400] – Grumbine

Wow.

[00:50:51.560] – Afzal

I think it was either Lincoln or Morill. I forget which dorm it was, but these are the two towers at Ohio State University. People who are Buckeyes would immediately recognize the two towers I’m referring to. And he did live there for a semester if I’m not mistaken.

[00:51:08.670] – Grumbine

Well, that’s part of his story. But the reason why he even brought this into a climate discussion about Pakistan is because when Dahmer decided where he was going to predate, he went to an area that was predominantly poor black and brown people because his goal was to not get detected. Because he knew the police wouldn’t care if black people were missing.

And if you extrapolate that kind of mindset beyond the US borders, for example, and you take that to consider places like Pakistan, the right wing in the United States has basically painted all people of Muslim faith out to be the bad people. And so that thinking is very similar to the way it was with Dahmer. So as we think of the compassion required, it is a grotesque reality that many in the United States simply do not think of black and brown people as worthy.

So a lot of the bills in the United States never get through because they think it might help black and brown people. The prejudice, the bigotry, is extreme. And the antihumanity, this very selfish Ayn Rand focus of makers and takers makes anyone that’s struggling out to be the bad guy. And so the massive flooding that occurred in Pakistan and all the future disasters that will come – people that are ill-equipped to survive these things are going to bear the brunt of it.

But they don’t look a certain way and they might have a different religion. And so the sensibilities within this libertarian neoliberal hellscape that we’ve created… I worry for the world, I worry deeply for the Pakistani people that this mindset would prevent the kind of help that we need to give you. But your larger point of reparations for the Global South and creating those institutions for climate related emergencies, I don’t believe they think people are deserving, which is grotesque. How would you address that kind of perverse selfrighteousness?

[00:53:25.240] – Afzal

Well, as I was listening to you talk about this situation that you so aptly described, I lived in the United States for almost twelve years. I finished most of my higher education in the United States, in different states. And so I witnessed some of the stuff that you are talking about first hand. And it’s extremely unfortunate to see poverty.

And poverty in the United States has both a geographic dimension given that you find concentrations of poverty at least in the inner city areas, but it also has a racial dimension. And I have seen these things in the United States. I’ve lived in Columbus, Ohio, in Kansas City. I’ve lived for a brief time in Washington DC, Chicago.

So as I was listening to you, I started imagining what is happening in Pakistan and I realized that the same narrative that you are talking about – this Ayn Rand social Darwinism. You swim or you sink. This Hayek/Friedman/University of Chicago school type of talk is now extremely prevalent among the neoliberal elites that have been trained by neoliberal elites in the US.

And who are carrying forward the mission of neoliberalism in developing countries like Pakistan. So even in Pakistan, you get intellectuals who stay in the US for education, who work there for a while, who come back having imbibed all these ideas, and then they put these ideas into action, these very prejudicial ideas – prejudicial towards poor people, prejudicial towards minorities, racial minorities, ethnic minorities, women, disabled people – and you see this happening even in Pakistan.

So, like I said, I think people who care about humanity, people who want to see a better planet in the years to come, I think we have to join forces and I think we have to come together. Because if we are not going to be able to do that, I don’t know, given these massive crises that our planet is now going through.

And here I’m talking about this model that Adam Tooze has developed of a polycrisis – and I mentioned that in my column – one crisis after another. I don’t know how much time we have left. So I think through your podcast, I would like to issue a very urgent call for action for all those who care about making this planet, this world, a better place for all of us.

[00:56:13.910] – Grumbine

Very well stated. Aqdas, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate this. This has been very enlightening and it’s always nice to talk to someone who you feel is a kindred spirit and I really like your view.

[00:56:29.890] – Afzal

Steve, I just want to say in the beginning of this podcast you asked me, is there a place where people can send assistance? I would just like to tell the audience that it’s the Prime Minister’s Flood Relief Fund and I would appreciate if you could attach a link for the audience so they can click on it. And then if they can, please send some assistance to Pakistan so that we can really use some of those funds for relief, rescue, and rehabilitation. That is so urgently required in Pakistan right now.

[00:57:02.320] – Grumbine

You got it. We will definitely include that. So with that, Aqdas, I want to ask you, do you have any final thoughts to close us out?

[00:57:12.410] – Afzal

Well, I think I would just like to say that there are a number of various crises that now seem to be making life extremely difficult for people. In the developed world, we have concentrations of poverty, we have racism, we have prejudice. And in the developing world, where we have poverty, and you have these constant vicious cycles that we are unable to come out of.

So once again, and this might make me sound like a broken record, but I really believe this idea. And I’ve recently been reading Thomas Picketty’s most recent book, which is A Brief History of Equality, or something like that, in which he makes a very interesting point that if you have to fashion a more just society it can no longer be done at the level of a single country anymore.

We now have to think about going beyond national borders because the kind of problems that we’re facing right now – climate change, pandemics, terrorism, what have you – these problems, they don’t stop where your or my national borders begin. These are trans-boundary transnational problems. And so in order to address these problems, we really have to think of solutions without borders.

We really need to get like-minded people together and we really need to sit down and think about solutions that are going to benefit all of us.

[00:58:48.490] – Grumbine

That’s very well stated, Aqdas. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time. Happy birthday once again.

[00:58:57.490] – Afzal

Thank you very much. Very kind of you.

[00:58:59.880] – Grumbine

You got it. I want to say we’re in unprecedented times. I really hope you take this seriously. And with that, I’m Steve Grumbine with my guest Aqdas Afzal. We’re out of here.

[00:59:18.560] – End credits

Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Andy Kennedy. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.