Welcome to the second issue of the inaugural year of the Journal of Rising Powers. In our first issue, we focused a great diversity of issues and articles around two anchoring pieces that dealt with the South China Sea conflict, which was front and center across most global media outlets at the time.
In this particular issue we engaged a different approach: literally traversing the globe regionally and selecting stellar exemplars of work being conducted on issues often outside of the media spotlight or unjustly underemphasized across the diplomatic and think tank communities. We particularly enjoyed this approach because not only did it put a spotlight on many countries that most in the West never get much information about, it also created opportunities to explore issues that give our readers an immense diversity and breadth of coverage.
Not only does this issue touch upon the regions of Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Persian Gulf and greater Middle East, Africa, and Central/South America, its thematic content acquaints us with such pressing topics as sanctions, counter-terrorism, diplomatic public relations, economic development, the military-industrial complexes of states NOT named the United States, inequality, clean energy, and global health epidemics. It is one of the unique things we love about the purpose of JRP: no limits and no constrictions in terms of content. We also take great pride in highlighting young and emerging scholars from the Global South. JRP is, after all, first and foremost, a Global South Policy Initiative. While the native language of many of our contributors is not English, and that can manifest itself within some of the phraseology and writing style, what it is more important to JRP is the quality of our content coverage and the effort to expose and elevate these new voices which have long deserved to be heard in Western corridors.
So, please enjoy the second issue of JRP. If one issue could be a fluke, then may two be considered a trend, an announcement that we are here to stay and eagerly looking forward to what the future holds, for our initiative and every single one of the contributors who is making this project something unique and impactful in the world of policy scholarship.
Read the new issue here: http://newsstand.moderndiplomacy.eu/
