Coronavirus (COVID-19) Politics and International Relations

[The outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic] is the most perilous moment since World War II. This is the most acute public-health crisis that the world has faced in a century. It's hitting every major country simultaneously. The ability of world powers to collaborate is severely diminished; multilateral institutions like the World Health Organization, the U.N., the G-7, the G-20 just aren't functional. The U.S.-China relationship is in free fall and there doesn't appear to be any effort in Beijing and Washington to preserve its capacity to collaborate in arresting the spread of the virus or destruction that it is causing. [Instead, the US and China] are trying to place the other in the worst possible light on the international stage. The only way to make the United States safe is to stamp out the virus in every corner of the world. The only way to stamp out the virus in every corner of the world is to align international efforts to do so, and there's no pathway to doing that without China on board. And so it's time to tone down the rhetoric, take a break from the finger pointing, and roll up our sleeves and figure out how to get our arms around the problem. The American people deserve it.

The Pakistani state does not have the ability to be authoritarian in terms of religion. It is the Islamic republic, but it is not a theocracy. It's a democracy with a very [...] complicated relationship with religion.