Letter from the Editors

The Asia-Pacific region is home to its fair share of “wicked problems”: issues so complex, with so many interrelated factors, that efforts to solve them more often than not end up having the opposite effect. Nuclear proliferation, political corruption or stagnation, extremism and terrorism, and even foreign policy balancing – all of these issues have sparked no end of hand-wringing through the decades, but evade simple or quick solutions.

In this issue, we focus on four of these deeply entrenched issues, where attempted solutions thus far have proven unproductive at best, and counterproductive at worst.

In our cover story, long-time nuclear researcher Cheryl Rofer explores the nuclear proliferation landscape in the Asia-Pacific. A portion of the region belongs to declared nuclear-free zones, including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. Yet the Asia-Pacific is also home to five nuclear powers: China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, with the latter three operating outside the bounds of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Iran has a controversial nuclear program of its own, and South Korea and Japan are both debating the possibility. Given the security instability in the region and the technological capabilities of the states involved, “if there is a next nuclear power, it’s to be found in Asia,” Rofer writes.

One year ago, Sri Lankans took to the street in a historic mobilization effort that ousted not only the government but the president – something unthinkable in the past. As Bhavani Fonseki, a senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, notes, the protesters recognized that the economic crisis driving them into the streets had deep political roots: “a governance model that has entrenched authoritarian rule, corruption, and cronyism.” Yet even under new leadership, a year later, little has been done to implement reforms that would solve the underlying causes of Sri Lanka’s woes. And, Fonseki warns, that won’t satisfy newly mobilized Sri Lankans, who “demand a better future and are unlikely to stay silent.”

Then we turn to India, where 30 years ago the demolition of the Babri Masjid set New Delhi on a dangerous, and dark, new path. As Ajai Sahni, the executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, writes, it’s not the one you think. The March 1993 bombings in Mumbai marked an Islamist backlash to the mosque’s destruction and the following communal riots, but it also marked a turning point for the BJP. Such attacks “were grist for the Hindutva mill, helping demonize the entire Muslim community.” In the ensuing years, even as threats of insurgency and terrorism eventually declined, new threats were invented. “Sporadic targeted violence merged powerfully with a politics of polarization,” Sahni argues, and in the end took India down a dark road, where the country remains today.

Finally, we take a look at how the Philippines is approaching a vexing problem shared by all its Indo-Pacific neighbors: where a country should position itself in the increasingly severe China-U.S. competition. As Renato Cruz De Castro, a professor in the international studies department at De La Salle University, Manila, outlines, current President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., came to office pledging to pursue a middle ground: embracing the longstanding security alliance with the United States, while also seeking to expand economic cooperation with China. But, Cruz notes, the success of that balancing strategy will depend on support from domestic actors – and “on whether or not the United States and China determine that it is in their interests to go along with Marcos’ gambit.”

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