The victory of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate, Lai Ching-te (William Lai), in the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election is remarkable, given that no party has previously secured a third consecutive term in office.
In this day and age of social media, diplomacy is facing new challenges. At times, the cacophony of social media drowns out the really important issues that need engagement, but sometimes it manages to bring to the fore the underlying trends that otherwise would take time to shape up. The India-Maldives spat is one such case where the simmering tensions have boiled over with some needless comments from Male highlighting how the once-close neighbours seem to be drifting away. The rhetorical exuberance of some members of the new government in the Maldives have exposed the substantive differences between New Delhi and Male as well as with the Maldives.
Initiated in 1970, the FMR experienced a resurgence in 2016, finding a place within the broader Act East Policy of New Delhi.
Hasina’s victory will likely put Delhi-Dhaka relations under more scrutiny -with the West expecting India to be vocal about the state of democracy in Bangladesh.
Foreign policy is a murky business. All nations across the world, given a choice, would want to be strategically autonomous. That is, they would want to make their choices from as wide a menu as possible.
As we bid adieu to the year 2023, we are witnessing a global order that has been fundamentally reconfigured - politically, economically and diplomatically. Trends that were simmering below the surface for the last few years have burst into the open, revealing in the all their complexities the challenges that are becoming difficult to manage by extant frameworks and institutions.