Hussain A Samad

Lord Acton's warning, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” has been quoted so often that it has lost its edge.

If you have watched the ongoing FIFA World Cup for more than 10 minutes, you will have noticed the pattern.

Football demands little. But it offers considerably more.

Not long ago, if a curious student in Dhaka wanted to read about the philosophy of Ibn Rushd, an Andalusian polymath and jurist, or if a farmer in Rajshahi wanted to understand soil pH levels, or if a young woman in Sylhet dreamt of learning French, they were largely on their own.

This is the cobra effect: a well-meaning solution that backfires due to a poorly planned incentive, making the original problem worse.

For Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, a chilling realisation dawned: their decades-old security guarantees from the US were conditional.

For the foreseeable future, the world remains largely at China's mercy.

At the heart of this strategy is the manipulation of US law.