Letter from the Editors

Welcome to the March 2021 issue of The Diplomat Magazine!

As military planners like to say, with only a little bit of bitter irony: “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” The adage applies as readily to war and politics as it does to magazine planning; time is the ultimate enemy, after all. In this month’s issue we mark the plans that went awry and those that may still work out, from Bangladesh to Myanmar, Uzbekistan to the United States and China in Africa.

In Bangladesh, marking its 50th anniversary comes with the painful realization that despite great progress in some spheres, the secular democracy promised decades ago has never fully taken root. Dr. Ali Riaz, a distinguished professor of political science at Illinois State University, and Dr. Saimum Parvez, a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Bangladesh’s North South University, take stock of Bangladesh at 50, a golden jubilee celebrated at a crossroads of growing geopolitical significance, socioeconomic progress, and increasing distance from its founding ideals.

Meanwhile, in Uzbekistan more recent promises and solid steps forward with regard to human rights progress are indisputably fragile gains; the plan for reform may yet still fail. Steve Swerdlow, an associate professor of the practice of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California, observes that Tashkent’s continued reliance of authoritarian habits (despite promising high-level rhetoric) threatens to undermine positive steps taken under the presidency of Shavkat Mirziyoyev. 

Then, we turn to Africa, where we see Washington and Beijing dancing around an interwoven and multidimensional set of interests. As the Biden administration starts a rumored review of U.S. Africa policy, the China factor will feature prominently – but framing the United States’ approach to the continent around a third party has not worked out well thus far. Bob Wekesa of the African Centre for the Study of the United States at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa outlines the broad pillars that form the structure of both U.S. and Chinese strategies toward the continent. 

And finally, we turn to Myanmar for what was supposed to be an article about the National League of Democracy’s new term at the helm. Following the coup in early February, however, the article turned into a critical piece looking at the junta’s aim to get back to business, and the barriers to sweeping the whole fiasco under the rug. Thompson Chau, a journalist based in Yangon and currently editor-at-large at Frontier Myanmar, recounts the current state of affairs with a focus on international businesses and investors, which the junta desperately want to reassure but who are holding back, for now, to wait and see what happens next.