Letter From the Editors

Welcome to the June issue of The Diplomat Magazine!

The COVID-19 pandemic is just half a year old, but already it has reshaped the world. Aside from the immensely tragic cost in human lives, the disease has impacted every imaginable sphere, from global finance to domestic politics, society to the environment. COVID-19 has sparked not only a global health crisis but a debt crunch in the developing world; political reshapings in Timor-Leste and Kazakhstan; and an environmental wake-up call in Pakistan. In this issue, we trace some of the less obvious implications rippling out from COVID-19’s wake.

The burgeoning financial crisis wrought by COVID-19 has brought new prominence to the issue of debt burdens on the developing world. Much of the criticism has been focused on China, which often stands accused of ensnaring poorer partners in “debt traps.” But Hannah Ryder, the CEO of Development Reimagined, an independent international development consultancy, argues that the pandemic has laid bare long-standing issues in the global finance system – of which China is just one part. Poor countries need to take on debt to develop, Ryder notes, and often China is either the only option or the most attractive one. Restructuring the global system will take far more than a debt write-off from China, but there are solutions to consider.

In Timor-Leste, meanwhile, the COVID-19 crisis has ironically helped solve a lengthy political standoff between two warring factions in the National Parliament. And as Bardia Rahmani explains, the swing vote belongs to KHUNTO, an upstart new party founded as the political arm of a banned martial arts group. Rahmani, a Ph.D. student in Political Science at Columbia University and a freelance journalist and photographer, traces the unlikely rise of KHUNTO, from the founding of the first martial arts groups under Indonesian rule to the new party’s role as kingmaker. The end result could be a permanent shit in Timorese politics, away from the old-guard independence fighters and toward a new generation with new priorities.

In March 2019, Kazakhstan’s first president resigned and in June of that year Acting President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev won election to his own first term with promises of both continuity and change. Kazakh journalist Aigerim Toleukhanova recounts the challenges of the past year and the promises of reform made but not quite achieved. Public dissent bubbled to the surface as Kazakhstan underwent a power transition. Then the coronavirus pandemic upended the country’s economy. It may, Toleukhanova writes, very well contribute to Kazakhstan’s “fall into the abyss.”

Finally, Pakistan-based correspondent Kunwar Khuldune Shahid notes one rare positive effect of COVID-19: the resulting economic slowdown, though itself deeply painful, has sharply cut air pollution. The resulting blue skies – a rare glimpse of what could be – give Pakistan a chance to rethink its approach to development. Currently, the country remains reliant on fossil fuels, and CPEC has seemingly locked in yet more heavy-polluting energy solutions for the future. Is it too late to change course?

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