Letter From the Editors

Welcome to the July issue of The Diplomat Magazine!

As the saying goes, the one constant in life is change. Change can be sudden and glaring; this time last year, few would have predicted the monumental changes in store for Jammu and Kashmir, or the shocking postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. But change can also be frustratingly slow despite best efforts, or soldier on largely unremarked. In this issue we look at some of the many ways, from the obvious to the often-overlooked, that Asia in 2020 is different from Asia in 2019.

In our cover story, Um Roommana, a freelance journalist based in Jammu and Kashmir, looks back at the year since the erstwhile state was split into two union territories and saw its autonomy stripped by fiat from New Delhi. The security, political, and economic ramifications of the bombshell decision were far from settled when the coronavirus arrived to turn things from bad to worse. Nearly a year after the August 2019 decision, “the Kashmir Valley is still grappling with this momentous change even as it stares down further uncertainty stemming from the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Roommana writes.

Next, Anne-Marie Brady explores New Zealand’s new strategy for China policy: “diving into the water without making a splash.” The Coalition government in New Zealand is trying to respond to growing aggressiveness from Beijing, but without attracting attention – and retaliation – from a notoriously prickly partner. Brady, a professor in political science and international relations at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, posits that New Zealand, despite being largely viewed in its defense alliances as the “weak link” on China, has actually gone further than many other states in confronting the China challenge.

While it sometimes seemed this spring that the world stopped entirely for the COVID-19 pandemic, as Zam Yusa explores, the Sulu Sea has remained an active theater for everything from kidnappings to terrorism to wild sovereignty claims. Yusa, a Malaysian journalist and regional security analyst, explains that despite the pandemic, the threats of kidnapping and cross-border militant movement in the Sulu Sea region are likely to continue and even increase with future developments such as the relocation of the Indonesian capital.

Finally, our longtime economics and business writer Anthony Fensom explains the good and the bad news about Japan’s post-COVID economy. The pandemic dashed hopes that 2020 – with the fanfare of the Olympics and the tourists the games would draw in – would be a windfall for the Japanese economy. But even as the bite of a recession sets in, Fensom looks to the future past the pandemic and finds that all is not completely lost.

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