Does the West keep getting China wrong? Princeton's Rory Truex on Xi Jinping, 
why authoritarian regimes outlast predictions of their collapse, and whether AI surveillance could make dictatorship permanent.

For decades, analysts have predicted the end of the Chinese Communist Party — and been wrong every time. Rory Truex explains why the CCP is not simply a repression machine but a system with a responsive side, why Xi Jinping's consolidation of power may have made the leader stronger while making the party weaker, and what his own public opinion research reveals about the gap between what Chinese citizens tell surveyors and what they actually believe. He also argues, in his view, that America is passing through an authoritarian chapter of its own — and that Washington habitually underestimates the resilience of the regimes it wants to change, a lesson he applies directly to the US-Iran war and Pakistan's mediation effort.

ABOUT THE GUEST
Rory Truex is Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, where his research focuses on Chinese politics and authoritarian systems. He is the author of Making Autocracy Work: Representation and Responsiveness in Modern China (Cambridge University Press) and hosts Civic Forum, a video podcast and speaker series on the challenges facing democracy in the United States and beyond. His work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics and Comparative Political Studies, and his 
commentary in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and the South China Morning Post.

Why do countries follow international law when there is no global police? And why do superpowers like the US, Russia and China break the rules and get away with it?

In this episode of The Global Dialogue, a podcast by the Pakistan Global Alumni Network, we sit down with Professor Kal Raustiala, international law expert at UCLA.

We discuss why no new nation states are being formed in the 21st century, whether the UN Security Council needs a complete restructure, the veto power of the permanent five, China's vision for a new world order, the nine dash line and the South China Sea, US tariffs on China, who should write the rules for AI and the piracy paradox: why the fashion industry actually benefits from being copied.

Kal Raustiala is a professor of international law at UCLA and director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations. He is the author of The Absolutely Indispensable Man, the acclaimed biography of Nobel Peace Prize-winning UN diplomat Ralph Bunche, and co-author of The Knockoff Economy.

00:00 Introduction
01:23 The Repercussions of Breaking International Law
02:54 Is There a System That Prevents Powerful Countries from Taking Over Smaller Ones?
04:27 Is There a Pattern of More Powerful Countries Enforcing Their Will?
07:35 The World Map Looks Finished: Why Is It Now So Difficult for New States to Form?
11:18 Diplomats of the 20th Century vs Diplomats Today
13:25 What Does the UN Do That Affects People’s Everyday Lives?
16:30 Do the Five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council Have Too Much Power?
19:48 Are Multilateral Organisations Doing Meaningful Work?
22:40 The “Piracy Paradox”: Why Is Copying a Dress Acceptable Until a Logo Is Added?
25:45 Can Piracy Lead to Better Creative Output in the Media Industry?
27:45 Could US Tariffs Affect China’s Large Knock-Off Market?
30:03 China Claims to Offer a Fairer Way of Running the World. Should Other Countries Trust It?
33:27 The South China Sea: Can a Country Own an Ocean?
36:03 AI Is Being Built by a Handful of Companies. Who Should Make the Rules?
38:24 With Everything Happening in the World, What Can Young People Look Forward To?
40:30 What Belief About How the World Is Run Have You Abandoned?

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Fourteen months after India placed the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, has water weaponisation actually held up? Prof. Filippo Menga, one of the world's leading scholars of hydro-politics, joins The Global Dialogue to unpack what changed India's water calculus, why the Harmon Doctrine still haunts upstream-downstream disputes and whether the threat of future water control now does more geopolitical work than actual diversion.

Prof. Filippo Menga is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Bergamo and Editor-in-Chief of Political Geography, the flagship journal in the field. One of the world's leading scholars of hydro-politics, he is the author of Thirst: The Global Quest to Solve the Water Crisis and Power and Water in Central Asia.

00:00 Intro
01:26 Fourteen Months On: Has Water Weaponisation Held Up?
06:14 What Changed India’s Water Calculus?
14:58 Harmon Doctrine
16:37 When Water Becomes a Lifeline, Not a Treaty
17:15 A Collapse of Pakistan Means a Collapse of India
20:32 Attacks on Desalination Plants
22:04 Is the IWT Really Exceptional?
26:51 How Information Becomes Power in Hydro-Politics
29:30 Upstream vs Downstream Countries
33:19 Are Dams Engineering or Power Projection?
40:00 Is The Threat of Future Water Control Now Doing More Geopolitical Work Than Actual Water Diversion?
43:05 The Limits of International Water Law
47:44 Is the Indus Case Part of a Global Treaty Breakdown?
51:13 Is the Indus a Warning for Other River Basins?
55:46 Indus, Hormuz and the Future of Water Law
1:00:40 In the Future Will Historians See This as The End or Reinvention of the IWT?

Subscribe for conversations with leading global scholars on the forces shaping Pakistan and the world.

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Prof. Steve Keen is one of the few economists who saw 2008 coming. In this episode of The Global Dialogue, he argues the next crisis will be deeper than the last, with a global famine genuinely on the cards as debt, climate damage and fragile food systems converge.

We press him on what this means for a developing economy with agency rather than one waiting to be rescued. Steve lays out why real estate should never have become a financial asset, where ordinary people can actually protect their money in a downturn, whether gold and crypto survive a real crisis and how a country like Pakistan can chart a credible path out of debt and beyond the IMF.

Hala Rharrit is the first and only US State Department diplomat to publicly resign over Gaza, stepping down in April 2024 after 18 years in the Foreign Service. A career political and human rights officer with postings in Yemen, Qatar, Hong Kong, and South Africa, she served as the State Department's Arabic-language spokesperson before leaving in protest over US policy on Israel's war in Gaza.

In this episode of The Global Dialogue, Hala Rharrit joins us for a wide-ranging conversation on the fragility of the ceasefire, the mounting pressure on the Trump administration, and the erosion of Western trust and media dominance across the region.

The discussion centers on Pakistan's emergence as a credible mediator: what made it the right country to host this diplomacy, how it can carry that weight forward, and whether a regional bloc anchored by Muslim-majority states is a realistic prospect. Rharrit also weighs in on China's role in the mediation, the trajectory from Gaza to Iran and beyond, and makes the striking case that Netanyahu's government deliberately enabled the financing of Ham*s for years as a strategy to divide Palestinian leadership.

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Did the United States and Israel miscalculate when they took the war to Iran? And as the region searches for an exit, is Pakistan the actor best placed to broker a conclusive end to the conflict?

In this episode of The Global Dialogue, Dr. Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute and one of the foremost voices on Iran and US foreign policy, joins us to unpack what the war revealed, what de-escalation realistically looks like now and why Pakistan's mediating role may prove decisive.

We discuss whether the conflict was ever truly about the nuclear programme, the real sentiment inside Iran and the prospects for regime change, the confusion driving conflicting signals out of Washington, the future of the Abraham Accords and whether a regional security architecture is beginning to take shape. Throughout, we keep the focus where it belongs: on Pakistan as a strategic actor with the standing, the relationships, and the maturity to help close this conflict rather than watch it from the sidelines.

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One of China's most influential globalization thinkers on what Pakistan keeps getting wrong about Beijing — and what it could get right.

Dr. Wang Huiyao, founder of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), joins PGAN Global Dialogue for a candid conversation on China–Pakistan relations beyond the slogans: how Beijing actually views Pakistan, where the next phase of CPEC has to go, and the development lessons Pakistan has been slow to absorb. We also dig into whether Pakistanis read China through a Western lens, what China is doing to compete with the soft-power machinery of Hollywood, and the three strategic mistakes Pakistan can't afford to make.

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In this episode of the PGAN Podcast, we are joined by Dr Michael O'Hanlon — Senior Fellow and Director of Research in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, holder of the Phil Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy, and one of America's most respected voices on US defence policy, military strategy, and international security.

The conversation centres on his latest book, To Dare Mighty Things: American Power in the 21st Century — a sweeping reassessment of how the United States should think about its military, its alliances, and its role in a rapidly shifting global order.

Dr O'Hanlon walks us through the strategic logic behind America's evolving way of war, the hard-earned lessons of Iraq, and whether Washington still has a coherent grand strategy in an increasingly multipolar world. The discussion then shifts to South Asia through a Pakistani lens — the evolving US-Pakistan relationship, Pakistan's call for an independent international investigation, the dangerous trajectory of India's rising defence spending, and Islamabad's clear position that there is no space for nuclear war in the region. We close on Pakistan's recent diplomatic wins and what they reveal about the growing role of middle powers in shaping 21st-century global diplomacy.

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Is Pakistan quietly becoming a global peacemaker? And can a country rewrite its image through stories, not statements?

In this episode of Global Dialogue, we sit down with Dr. Etienne Auge — propaganda scholar, soft power expert, and author of foundational work on how nations shape narratives — for a wide-ranging conversation on the new architecture of global influence.

We unpack why Hollywood still dominates, how TikTok has rewritten the rules of narrative warfare, who's actually winning the Iran–US information war, and why Pakistan's recent mediation diplomacy may be one of the most underreported soft power moves of the decade.

Dr. Auge also explains why science fiction is a strategic asset for any serious nation, what separates allies from friends in international relations, and the tell-tale signs you're being propagandised — even by people you trust.

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The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since 28 February 2026, following Operation Epic Fury and Iran's retaliatory blockade. Most coverage focuses on global oil prices and the US naval response — this conversation asks what almost no one is asking: what is the closure doing to Iran itself?

In this episode of the Pakistan Global Alumni Network (PGAN) Podcast, we sit down with Zaur Hasanov, a Eurasia connectivity and security expert and former adviser at the Baku International Sea Trade Port, to unpack Iran's structural dependence on Hormuz, from Bandar Abbas and the failure of Chabahar as an alternative, to how Pakistan, Gwadar, and Azerbaijan's Middle Corridor are reshaping Eurasian trade as the regional order is rewritten.

A practical, infrastructure-grounded conversation on logistics, deterrence, and the real constraints behind the geopolitical headlines.

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