Looking to the Future of Pakistan

With each passing day, Pakistan becomes an even more crucial player in world affairs. Home of the world’s second largest Muslim population, epicenter of the global jihad, location of perhaps the planet’s most dangerous borderlands, and armed with nuclear weapons, this South Asian nation will go a long way toward determining what the world looks like ten years from now.

On December 5, Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted the launch of The Future of Pakistan (Brookings Institution Press, 2011), which evaluates several scenarios for how the country will develop and evolve in the near future. A team of 17 experts from Pakistan, the United States, Europe and India, led by Brookings Senior Fellow Stephen P. Cohen, contributed chapters to the book, looking at pieces of the Pakistan puzzle. Several of the authors joined other Pakistan experts on two panels to examine the issues, relevant actors and their motivations, different outcomes they might produce, and what it all means for Pakistanis, Indians, the United States, and the entire world.

After each panel, participants took audience questions.