Letter from the Editors

Welcome to the May 2023 issue of The Diplomat Magazine.

A famous axiom holds that “all politics is local,” a nod to the fact that concerns at home generally rank first on the priority list for both governments and the governed. But the opposite is true, too: All politics is global, particularly in an era of renewed geopolitical competition between superpowers. In this issue, we examine the nexus of politics and geopolitics, from the Sino-Indian border clash in 2020 and great power competition in the Pacific and to electoral politics in South Korea and Cambodia. Local political battles can drive foreign policy choices – and sometimes vice versa.

In June 2020, Chinese and Indian soldiers engaged in the deadliest clash along their disputed border in over 50 years. A melee in the Galwan River Valley left 20 Indian troops dead, along with at least four Chinese soldiers. But the Sino-Indian border crisis is much bigger than the single battle on the night of June 15, as Ajai Shukla writes in our cover story. As Shukla, a former Indian Army colonel who now writes on strategic affairs, explains, the clash was just one facet of a decided push on Beijing’s part to advance its territorial claims in the Himalayas. That encroachment, both rhetorical and physical, was enabled by holes in India’s own border strategy – gaps that New Delhi still has not completely filled.

When Yoon Suk-yeol was elected South Korean president last year, voters knew he was a political neophyte, and it showed in his first year in office. But after lurching from gaffe to scandal to unforced error, Karl Friedhoff writes, Yoon ultimately steadied the ship of state by embracing the very polarization he’d promised to assuage. Friedhoff, the Marshall M. Bouton Fellow for Asia Studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, explains that Yoon’s promise to heal the country’s deep political polarization rung hollow the moment it was made. Jettisoning it has allowed Yoon to focus on his base – but it won’t help him expand it, meaning South Korea’s political turbulence is nowhere near ended.

In July, Cambodia will hold national elections. The results seem preordained, with Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party poised to remain unquestionably in power after systemically dismantling its political opposition. But elections perform functions beyond designating a winner, explains Astrid Norén-Nilsson, a senior lecturer at Lund University. In the case of Cambodia, the upcoming elections matter, if only for very specific reasons. With a new generation of leadership expected to be phased in, Cambodia’s election remains important to watch – even if we already know who will win.

Speaking of elections, Fiji’s December 2022 polls – and the resulting transfer of power – reshaped the landscape for geopolitical competition in the Pacific Islands. As Patricia O’Brien, a a faculty member in Asian Studies at Georgetown University and in the Department of Pacific Affairs at Australian National University, explains, long-time ruler Frank Bainimarama had tilted Fiji toward China since seizing power in a coup back in 2006. But new Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has moved to shut down Bainimarama’s power network – and overhaul his foreign policy. That makes Fiji a test case for China’s growing campaign for influence in the Pacific Islands, and particularly a test for how much Beijing is willing to meddle in another country’s politics to ensure a friendly face comes out on top. In that sense, the case of Solomon Islands is not an encouraging precedent, O’Brien warns.

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