Letter From the Editors

Welcome to the October issue of The Diplomat Magazine.

As Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s first chancellor, once put it: “Politics is the art of the possible.” From Afghanistan to China, Kyrgyzstan to Sri Lanka, politics influence the course of a war, the changing of a rising power’s foreign policy, the jailing of a former president and a disastrous flirtation with unconstitutionality. If politics is the art of the possible, the possibilities themselves are circumscribed by interests, personalities, and conditions. Politics, as this issue demonstrates, is a wild game across Asia.

On the cover, Afghan freelance journalist Ezzatullah Mehrdad takes stock of the 18-year U.S. war in Afghanistan. What began as a targeted unseating of the Taliban and attack on al-Qaeda in October 2001 – in retribution for the latter’s perpetration of the 9/11 attacks and the former’s hosting of the international terrorist group – has evolved over the course of nearly two decades. But the 18-year war and strident efforts to build a secure, democratic government in Afghanistan have resulted in an unstable state.

Next, Xie Tao, professor and dean of the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University, marks the 70th’s anniversary of the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China with an exploration of the rising power’s path vis-a-vis its relations with the United States and the impact of a “born-again” China on the outside world. China, Xie argues, is a global power, but one with limited influence.

In August, the simmering cauldron that is the Kyrgyz political scene bubbled over. Former President Almazbek Atambayev and his supporters defiantly fought back a small team dispatched to arrest him; the next day, the state’s forces returned with better numbers and Atambayev now sits in a Bishkek jail. As Ryskeldi Satke, an independent Kyrgzy researcher writes, in one sense the current political turmoil is rooted in the 2017 election of Sooronbay Jeenbekov and his fallout with Atambayev, but the true roots are far deeper in the very foundations of Kyrgyz democracy.

Last October, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replaced him with Mahinda Rajapaksa, a member of parliament and the former president. The firing was unconstitutional and short-lived, writes Sudha Ramachandran, a journalist based in Bangalore, but it kicked off a political crisis. With elections now looming, Sri Lanka’s turbulent political landscape offers more questions than answers about the country’s near-term trajectory.