“Have you ever paused to examine the process through which you came to believe the things you believe?”

Let us recall what Pat Robertson wrote in his book The New World Order, published shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Robertson’s outline of the New World Order has, in many respects, stood the test of time: “It must eliminate national sovereignty. There must be a world government, a world police force, world courts, a world banking system and currency, and a world elite in charge of it all.” What many celebrated as the Global Village at the turn of the twenty-first century, with the widespread arrival of the internet, was in fact a manifestation of this order, a world increasingly interconnected and interdependent, and therefore more open to surveillance, where every individual, every bank transaction, and every movement could be monitored.

This world order has systematically eroded individuality, privacy, and independence.

Before the First World War, the world was structured around empires: French, British, Ottoman, Prussian, Austro-Hungarian, and Tsarist Russian. The interwar period was one of dissolution, eventually consolidating into two opposing blocs, the Soviet and the American, composed of newly founded nation-states after the Second World War, including India and Pakistan. Competition between these two powers revolved around spheres of influence, territory, military strength, and resources.

The Middle East, with its newly discovered oil wealth, drew the attention of both superpowers, each exerting influence through a mixture of persuasion and coercion. If we attempt to connect the dots between key events, assassinations, alliances, and wars in the Middle East and South Asia during the Cold War period (1945–1988), it becomes increasingly persuasive that these events did not........

© The Friday Times