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World Affairs
Letter from the Editor
By Harish Kapur
This issue opens with an interview with Abdul Sattar, Pakistan’s foreign minister. It is part of an ongoing programme that we had established to focus on the foreign policy of actors in the international system. In this connection, the last two issues contained interviews with the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers respectively. An interview with Pakistan’s foreign minister seemed to us to be the next most logical choice, given its linkages with China and its problems with India. The broad framework of the interlocution with Pakistan’s foreign minister is not limited to Indo-Pakistan relations; it comprises wide-ranging ruminations on the country’s perceptions of the world, its views on most major issues, its goals, its security concerns, etc. By taking this political journey around the world with the foreign minister, we have moved away from the traditional Indian penchant of invariably concentrating on Pakistan’s relations with China and India only.
The second focus in this issue is on Indo-Pakistan relations – not so much on the run-of-the-mill analysis of such politically intractable issues as Kashmir or the nuclearisation of South Asia, as on the more positive aspects of bilateral relations – how they could be improved through confidence-building measures, through people-to-people interactions, through visits, etc. It has often been suggested in international relations that the most appropriate methodology for improving relations is to begin with small things, rather than to attempt to resolve what is gigantic and seemingly intractable. This is what has been done by our three South Asian contributors. Since it has often worked in the past, there is no reason to think that it would not work in the present in the case of India and Pakistan.
The four main articles selected for this issue are diverse. The one on the United States highlights how Washington, confronted with myriad international issues in the post-Cold War and unipolar eras, should manage them. The imaginary dialogue with the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, brings to bear the wisdom of the past to understand the present. It is like Neale Donald Walsch’s three volume publication on "Conversations with God" in which he discusses the problems of the planet with the Almighty – a newly developing methodology to present issues. The two other articles that we have published in this issue deal with two major problems of this century – the dearth of water and continuous demographic multiplication – both of which need close addressing by the planet – already a victim of such egregious issues as climatic warming, environmental degradation, depletion of traditional sources of energy, etc.
The review essay is a tour de force that highlights the new phenomenon of the increasing emergence of critiques of globalisation. The documents that we have included in this issue pertain to the Cartagena (Columbia) conference of the non-aligned, the joint declaration by the Presidents of the United States and the Russian Federation regarding "Strategic Stability Cooperation Initiative," and the Millennium Declaration made by the leaders of the world from the forum of the United Nations.
Harish Kapur
Geneva
December 2000