Daily Times

Our economic world is encountering radical rearmament of Protectionism as the national proclivities of financial reclusiveness and transactional traction of paranoid policymaking bear pragmatic testimony to its substantiated veracity. Reclining relics of Rome and recanting regimes of the yore endow credence to the plausibility of renunciation in the face of actualizing the imperatives of “National interest”. Reciprocally, the commercial world is rending asunder in economic estimations for the pursuit of preserving the fabric of individual international agents.

The phenomenon concerning the elopement of hitherto integrationist enlightenment with brigades of autarkical statism can be referred to as Economic Secularism. The prerogative of autonomous abnegations on the part of the states notwithstanding, the architectural inegalitarianism of the global world insinuates the exploitative conclusions engendered by the systematic relinquishment of prevalent financial dispensations. The episodic torpedoing of the tranquilizing trichotomy, germinated from the wombs of Washington Consensus, “Stabilize, Privatize and Liberalize” lends innuendoes of impending adumbration of financial globalization.

To substantiate the pronounced shattering of utopian Commercial Cosmocracy into discernible shards and cadavers of eulogised economic globalisation is worth forwarding to the fore. The blistering penchant for “Containment” prevalent within the occidental states can be envisaged through the statistical spectacle of CNBC which claims the consequential deceleration of trade quantum between America and China up to a whopping 14.5 percent this year alone.

This deteriorating oscillation of engagement among astronomically puissant economic scaffoldings of global trade compellingly elicits contentions. The impact of approaching the inferno of Corporate Fractionalization augurs deleterious for the peripheral states whose economic satiation is diametrically contingent upon the operational harmoniousness of orchestrated global trade relations.

To saddle the cart of culpability upon solitary shoulders may be synonymous with exculpating its antagonist counterpart.

Relationally, reclining in their strategically palatial citadels and enshrined within the insouciant castles, economically vibrant states are engaging in destructive de-coupling endeavours by erecting concretized embankments within the mercurial realm of globalization. The American Section 301 of Trade Act 1974 and its inordinate implementation has categorically asphyxiated its commercial arteries with the Middle Kingdom-China.

The cause for concern is the elemental ramifications of such commercial elusiveness for states in the throes of financial decrepitude. Under the equivocal aegis of national interests and amidst the atomical stakes of nuclear enshrinement countries have decided to tread the path of clandestine denunciations and placid pugnaciousness. The economic enchantment generated by the pursuance of commercial atomisation is the yield of materializing nationally bankable objectives. Nevertheless, to saddle the cart of culpability upon solitary shoulders may be synonymous with exculpating its antagonist counterpart thus diversification of incrimination appears to be an appealing recourse for progression.

Internationally, from the spectacles of Realism, the propensity for “Exceptionalism” factors is the cardinal tenet of state policies. Commercial Peace Theory postulates the abortive culmination of hostilities among financially embroiled states owing to their existential conditionalities of sustainable subsistence conditional to the solvency of their counterpart. Yet, the vaporization of this economic camaraderie by the warming ultraviolets of “national interest” offers the pernicious paradigm of expeditious autarky. The deceleration of trade engagement may yield dividends for the powerful states as their mutually antagonistic ventilation actualizes yet the fumes of this incandescent bifurcation would virtually adumbrate the velocity of trade requisite for the survival of starving stomachs within the impoverished alcoves of the world.

Pecuniarily, the germinal enchantment of De-Dollarization may be appealing for the states entombed in the rubble of their alienation and ensnared in the manacles of dependency i.e., BRICS, yet this espoused disassociation reduces to conceptual untenability against the backdrop of pragmatism. For instance, 58 percent of globally disclosed financial reserves are in dollars while the nautical strength of America- from the Strait of Hormuz to the Panama Canal- lends credence to the inalienability of interdependence. Although the forces of economic nationalism are gaining currency- Make in India-, this commercial irredentism would not bode fructuous for the inveterate embroilment of the world within the ensnares of mutual reliance.

The world has episodically aligned the conduits of its appetite among its states, thus institutionally inured itself to reliance upon the pastures of each other. This tapestry of pacification cannot afford to diverge from its mutually dependent conditionalities. To substantiate, the strangulation of the Pak-Afghan (Torkham) border for one week amounted to the stratospheric loss of $3 million for the trade (PAJCCI). This is a glaring reminder of the credo of globalization which has woven the world in the fabric of collectivism.

Regionally, the southern hemisphere of the Brandt Line remains mutually inhospitable to its dwellers. The presence of economically cannibalistic intermediaries for trade between India and Pakistan voraciously drains the streams of revenue from the impecunious coffers of the latter while the former too, despite its burgeoning economic clout, bears the brunt of avoidable loss. This financial fragmentation incriminates its insalubrious culprits with the charges of malevolent confluence of economy and politics. The corporeal extension of Geo-strategic considerations has straitjacketed the trade bilateralisms across the world and the diametrical impact is the unfettered pauperization of people enshrined within the graves of oblivious benignancy.

The ignominious instance of Pakistan halting its trade with India after the latter’s illegitimate constitutional adulteration about the issue of Kashmir and the consequential Indian imposition of 200 percent trade tariffs on its products owes its conspicuous credit to the imprudent association of political contentions with economic considerations. It is axiomatically anecdotal to contrast the smouldering flames of starvation against the relationally insignificant priorities of politics. Thus, the recuperation compellingly warrants imperturbable prudence in catering for the concerns of the masses and reconfiguration of Global totem poles.

To encapsulate, statutory containment of its antagonist is neither yielding for unipolar states like the United States of America under the aegis of Reshoring policies nor is it pragmatic for elemental economies like Pakistan. Ergo, in the realm of prudence, financial capacitation is an inalienable prelude to the garnering of political capital within the contested arena of International Relations. Drained coffers, disenfranchised demography and penurious exchequers have never empowered any state to confront its perceived adversary, especially in a world where the silence of technological attainments germinates more cacophony than barrels of redundant guns. Nevertheless, the purgation of contention wields traction within the lubricated arena of global order and political priorities too demand their adequate redressal. Parenthetically, any attempt to de-couple or de-risk may not attenuate the power of paramount economies as they remain enclosed in their impenetrable castles of commercialism yet the pecuniarily pestiferous fumes of their assaults, from their strategic battlements, are bound to envelop the susceptible financial foundlings of embryonic economies.

Germanely, the world should keep its economy secularized by dissuading the iconoclasts of “strategic considerations” until the gestational age of rudimentary economies and the actualization of their developmental thresholds is led to fruition.

The writer is a student.