Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 

However vicious, however Frankenstein-ian the Taliban, it doesn’t explain the origins of Pakistan's precarious condition. With Pakistan’s divided and distracted military, the corruption, the poverty, the radical Islamists, the maybe-loose nukes (despite the denials), anybody could be forgiven for thinking this weak country is on the verge of falling apart. The Taliban looks like an opportunistic virus ready to prey on the systemic weakness of its host. For all the shuttle diplomacy, prodding, and nagging by the United States, the only way really to settle Pakistan’s external problems is to deal with its internal problems. To survive, the country must find the political will to strengthen itself as a unified country. To do that, it has to look past its favorite and most populous province of Punjab, with its comfortable business, educational, and military elite, and its rich and corrupt cronies and special interests. Pakistan must deal with Punjab the way it treats its angry and marginalized provinces of Sindh, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and the restive and resource-rich Baluchistan. The grievances of Baluchistan, Sindh and the NWFP are longstanding. Both the Baluch people and the Pashtun (of the NWFP) resisted becoming part of Pakistan from the start. These provinces have a much lower per capita income and literacy rate than Punjab, and unequal distribution of tax revenues leaves them stuck in poverty.

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh urged Hillary Clinton to back off on climate change mandates when the two met in New Delhi last month. "There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have amongst the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions," Ramesh brazenly told the secretary of state. Not quite the Bollywood ending Mrs. Clinton was expecting. Certainly not the ending desired by scientists and policymakers as they look ahead to December's Climate Conference in Copenhagen as a last-chance-dance for a meaningful international accord. But Bret Stephens, the former editor of the Jerusalem Post, sees the Clinton-Ramesh exchange as a perfect outcome for an unsuspecting group: the billions of humans living on less than $2 a day. “The poor told the warming alarmists to get lost," he writes in his August 4 Wall Street Journal column, describing Ramesh's shut down of Clinton, whose climate policy, Stephens believes, will threaten India’s access to the free market.

Turkish President Recep

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