When all seems well, be afraid. Be very afraid.

As Pakistan embraces the new year, such concerns are swirling around for all the right and wrong reasons. The news cycle is still recovering from the hangover of the last sunsets, first fireworks and the innocent exuberance that comes with looking ahead. It's an annual ritual, all this, and yet it allows us a short reprieve from what was, and what could be.

The doomsayers are already at it. New year, new problems, new crises, new conflicts. It's almost like Billy Joel is updating his song about who started the fire: Saudis and Emiratis at each other's throats, Trump attacking Venezuela, Israel threatening Iran, and India — well, what can one say about India without shaking one's head in disappointment — yes, India expelling Bangladeshi cricketers. The newness of the new year has its limits.

Donald Trump's waging of peace also has its limits, as evidenced by the aerial onslaught on Caracas. This is the year that Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize that he should have, as per him, got last year. Hard to say what impact the visuals of his latest firebombing will have on the members of the Nobel committee. But as the present years have proved, unsettlingly so, that the world as we knew it is not the world that we are being forced to adjust to. It is a world........

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