The world is embarking on a new decade, yet key challenging aspects remain, which certainly alert us that perhaps there is a need for a much better innovative resolution more ever than before. Foreign policy and diplomacy play an important integral part that has reshaped the world, that we are living in many ways. How can we make the world a more harmonized place to be?
The Diplomatic Briefing is a biannual collection of categorized opinion pieces and short articles from an extended network of the scholarly community and regional experts, covering a wide range of issues from international relations, to sub-regional affairs, to foreign policy, to economic and trade, and beyond.
Under the new initiative of the Konrad-Adeneur-Stiftung (KAS) Cambodia and the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace (CICP), the Diplomatic Briefing aspires to serve the diplomatic community, policymakers, and interested stakeholders on the latest trends and challenging aspects in the global arena that may hinder key developments of Cambodia and threaten regional peace and stability at large. The Diplomatic Briefing also attempts to serve as a platform for intellectual exchange of perspectives and insights as well as for emerging Cambodian scholars to have their research works published.
We are proud to present to you this inaugural issue under the theme: “New Decade, Old Challenges?” which underlines the essence of hindering issues that have dragged on. This first edition looks at Cambodia’s foreign policy frameworks and its position in various multilateral fora such as ASEAN and the EU, the critical moment of the EBA withdrawal, its bilateral relations with the US and with China, as well as a (re-)balancing position between the two amidst a critical moment of an increasing geopolitical tension and an unceasing major power competition. The last article serves as a wrap-up of Cambodia’s foreign policy key challenges by zooming in at the push and pull factors.
The confronting issues may not seem to be new but we attempt to explore a fresher perspective of looking at them. Our contributors help to shed new light toward the enduring crisis which hopefully would stir further debate and discussion among the academic community and the public at large.
We hope this new academic feature will serve to enhance deeper and more constructive dialogue on various challenging issues and key foreign policy struggles one way or another. We would welcome more debates, more thought-provoking insights, more diverse perspectives such that this Diplomatic Briefing would serve our purpose of fostering more concrete and pragmatic ideas.
Enjoy the reading!
Editorial Team
Note: All articles have been collected in the period from February to April. Due to the proofreading, editing and design process, some facts might be outdated.