Pakistan is running out of other people’s money while the Pakistani military keeps sucking the country dry.
Decades-old political economic problems in Pakistan are coming to a head. The South Asian nation needs billions of dollars in financial assistance to avoid a default at a time when its usual patrons are disinclined to bail it out.
America tolerated Pakistan's double-dealing while we had to.
But America finally got tired of subsidizing Pakistan’s support for the Taliban. And losing the Afghanistan War completely ended our interest in spending money on that lost cause.
Good luck to Pakistan with their new Chinese friends. Are they willing to subsidize Pakistan's unsustainable clusterfuck?
To be more accurate, the problem is Pakistan’s military that has impoverished Pakistan while maintaining control with corruption, violence, and the exaggerated threat from India—which hardly wanted to control that mess and has even less interest as China’s power rises.
Only real reform that dethrones the Pakistani military's parasitic relationship with the state can help.
Or will Pakistan be the first country to threaten to use nukes if it doesn't get IMF loans?
UPDATE: Gloom hangs over Pakistan:
Every major institution and influential group of people has failed the country: the government; the army and intelligence apparatus; the judiciary; parliament; political leaders and parties; the media; the educational and health systems; the civil services; the landed, business and religious elites; etc. Together they have ensured a failed state. The primary culprits are known. They couldn’t care less.
The Quaid, the Pakistan Movement and the people of Pakistan are incessantly mocked. In his last days, the Quaid told the Raja of Mehmudabad “I am surrounded by traitors”. Today, the country is besieged by them. No enemy of Pakistan matches the enmity of its own rulers. They laugh all the way to their foreign banks and talk of national security and economic stability while the ruled sink below the poverty line to wither and die.
Can those who resist the problems gain the power to fix Pakistan? Not if addressing "climate catastrophe" is part of their solution. Seriously, the problems are a little more local, don't you think?
Jihadis are more likely to exploit the problems with promises to fix the problem while causing even worse problems. Including owning the nukes.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
