Letter From the Editors

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the August 2017 issue of The Diplomat Magazine.

This month we mark anniversaries, consider a global hotspot, and peek into an international exhibition. India and Pakistan are commemorating 70 years since partition while remaining locked in a 70-year-old conflict; ASEAN – which marks its 50th anniversary in August – has come a long way but needs to change to survive. The China-North Korea relationship has been in the spotlight of late but Beijing isn’t inclined to divorce itself from the status quo. Finally, Kazakhstan, in continued effort to punch above its weight, is hosting an EXPO focused on future energy, funded by billions soaked in oil. Across Asia, the future ambitions of nations are burdened by the shackles of the past.

In mid-August India and Pakistan will celebrate 70 years since the end of British colonial rule – 70 years of freedom. But, as Pippa Virdee, a senior lecturer in modern South Asian history at De Montfort University, writes in our cover story, “Neither will want to remember the hard history of this freedom, nor face the harsh realities of it today.” India and Pakistan remain in continued, and occasionally violent, conflict both internally and with each other, and that violence has roots in the very same partition that gave them independence.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations – ASEAN – marks its 50th anniversary in August as well. Earlier this year, in Issue 26, Termsak Chalermpalanupap recounted the political miracle that took place in Southeast Asia over the course of ASEAN’s first five decades. In this issue, Aries A. Arugay, an associate professor of political science at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, argues that while ASEAN has been successful in building a vital regional structure, its future is predicated on taking bold steps to overcome two traps: growing irrelevance and polarization. If ASEAN is to survive another 50 years, Arugay writes, it will need to remake itself.

Adam Cathcart, a lecturer in Chinese History at Leeds University and editor of SinoNK.com, explores a very important question in his piece: Just how much influence does China exercise over North Korea in 2017? U.S. President Donald Trump’s inflammatory Twitter feed is of less concern to Pyongyang than what exists in the mind of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Cathcart explains the unease that’s crept into the China-North Korea relationship and outlines how Beijing is, and is not, changing its approach to the Kim dynasty.

Finally, we have a dispatch from Paolo Sorbello, an Italian journalist and regular contributor to Crossroads Asia, who paid a visit to the Astana EXPO in July. Sorbello, who is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Glasgow studying state-business relations in Kazakhstan, writes that the EXPO, which cost between $3 billion and $5 billion, may be just an expensive billboard for Kazakhstan's slow transition to clean energy.

We hope you enjoy these stories and the many others awaiting you in the following pages.

Sincerely,
Shannon Tiezzi & Catherine Putz