When two largest economies confront, it’s difficult for Pakistan to take sides on binary choices ‘are you with us or against us’: Hina Rabbani Khar

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of Pakistan was speaking at a session on the geopolitical outlook at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022

As the global leaders debated the Ukraine crisis and condemned Russian aggression, Pakistan Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on May 24 said the world has reached an inflexion point where every country was being asked to chose sides or getting branded as being on the opposite side.

Ms. Khar, Pakistan's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, was speaking at a session on the geopolitical outlook at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022.

"If the future generation asks what did the global leadership do when there was a pandemic, a hunger crisis and a crisis in the form of climate change and the answer is given that the world went to war, I do not think that would be a good answer," she said.

“It is a difficult time for all of us to be. If the answer is it was confrontation and not collaboration, that won’t be a good answer. I think the future generation has every right to judge us,” Ms. Khar said. The Minister further said that if every time we have to ask whom do you chose, it shows how far we have fallen as a global community.

"This is due to the choices we have made for last 20 years. If two largest economies of the world are at a confrontation and countries such as Pakistan are given very simplistic binary choices — are you with us or are you against us and if you are with them then you are against us, that is very difficult and impossible to answer. It is even more difficult for Pakistan," she added. Ms. Khar said she genuinely believes that it is an inflexion point for the world.

"Either we can allow confrontations to guide the leadership's decision for the future, or we allow liberal values. The world was a much better place to live 20 years back." Ms. Khar said everyone wants a rule-based order, but somehow we have begun cherry picking those rules.

"We start weaponising the economic tools. We know the impact of intervention but we do not know the impact of sanctions on general people around the world. We are living in an extremely dangerous world." On Afghanistan, she said Pakistan wants the world to ensure that an ordinary Afghan is not made to suffer due to moral compulsions of others. We cannot allow millions of Afghans go hungry.