Letter From the Editors

Welcome to the July issue of The Diplomat Magazine.

In politics and diplomacy, some outcomes seem preordained: A 30-year president steps down, only to tightly stage manage the power transition. A strategically positioned country with long coastlines comes to dominate neighboring sea lanes. A global superpower imposes its will (or whim) on friend and foe alike when it hits an oil giant with sanctions. An erstwhile colonial power and modern-day empire combine forces to wrest control of a small island from its few thousand residents, with impunity.

But in all of these cases, there’s a wide gap between the intentions of the powerful and how events actually unfolded.

Sometimes those presumed “powerless” leave their mark, as in the case of Kazakhstan’s youth or the government of the island nation of Mauritius, which took the United Kingdom to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and won. In the case of geopolitics, competing forces and motivations can bog down power plays, whether India’s naval ambitions or the United States’ attempts to pressure Iran. Our lead stories for July examine each of these cases, exploring the tricky matter of wielding power in a changing world.

In our cover story this month, Marlene Laruelle, the director of George Washington University’s Central Asia Program, catalogues the ingredients of Kazakhstan’s eventual post-Nazarbayev future. Laruelle, editor of Nazarbayev Generation: Youth in Kazakhstan, a book scheduled for release later this year, writes that while the the “denazarbayefication” of Kazakhstan will be a long process, the country’s youth – 51 percent of the population is under 29 – will play a vital role as the country enters uncharted political territory.

India’s position at the geographic center of the Indian Ocean, Abhijnan Rej writes, has long led many to believe that Indian dominance over that maritime space is a foregone conclusion. At the same time, geography – India’s land-based conflicts with Pakistan and China most importantly – significantly constrain India’s ability to fulfill its dreams of maritime might. Rej, an independent New Delhi-based security analyst, explains that the case of the Indian Navy illustrates the great conundrum of Indian defense policy: a fundamental mismatch between aspirations and capabilities.

Next, Nicholas Trickett, editor-in-chief of BMB Russia and an associate scholar with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, lays out the concerns of major Asian oil importers – China, Japan, South Korea, and India – in light of spiraling tensions between the United States and Iran. Asia’s leading importers, Trickett writes, have largely complied with U.S. sanctions but face great uncertainty about the future of their supplies and the overall balance of the market. As tensions escalate in the Gulf, it’s clear that a conflict would have significant ramifications for economies across Asia.

Finally, David Vine looks at the fate of the U.S. military base at Diego Garcia in light of an ICJ ruling that Britain should return the Chagos Islands group to Mauritius’ control. Vine, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at American University, Washington, D.C., outlines how the ruling – and accompanying UN resolution pressuring Britain to comply – symbolizes changing geopolitical trends in the Indian Ocean. But he also shines a light on the high human stakes involved, as thousands of displaced Chagossians dream of a long-awaited homecoming.

We hope you enjoy these stories, and the many more in the following pages.