Liberals love a good war. There’s nothing like a bombing run or a missile attack to preempt the perennial criticism of liberals as weak on defense and national security. Take Truman and Korea, Kennedy and Cuba, Johnson and Vietnam, or Clinton and Kosovo. Wars demonstrate “spine” and “leadership” and all the qualities that tell the… Continue reading Suffocating Consensus
The U.S. public wants out of Iraq. The Iraqis themselves want the occupation to be over. What’s a poor U.S. soldier to do? As the Iraq War drags into its fifth year, the U.S. army finds itself in an untenable situation. Whatever welcome the Iraqis extended to the troops has worn exceedingly thin. Roadside bombs… Continue reading No Thanks
War needs a why. Yes, war is ultimately senseless. But soldiers will not fight and die without a reason. “Their’s not to reason why, their’s but to do and die,” wrote the poet Tennyson in The Charge of the Light Brigade. But soldiers rarely volunteer these days simply to serve as cannon fodder. The public,… Continue reading Mission Incomprehensible
Many Americans look across the Pacific at China and see nothing but a vast digestive tract. A billion-plus people are developing quite an appetite: for oil to run their factories, for sheet glass to sheathe their skyscrapers, for grain to feed themselves and their livestock. Behind every recent resource depletion, it seems, lurks a growing… Continue reading Too Big to Fail
Last year in Hamdania, west of Baghdad, eight U.S. soldiers abducted an Iraqi man from his home, threw him in a ditch, and shot him. The soldiers placed an AK-47 and a shovel near his body. They wanted to make it seem as though he were an insurgent digging holes to plant roadside bombs. Planting… Continue reading Tampering with the Evidence
What is the world coming to when a wonky slide show wins an Oscar for best documentary? The Inconvenient Truth is about just that: what the world is coming to. And Hollywood is sufficiently freaked out by the prospect of eco-apocalypse to bestow its highest honor on such a low-tech cinematic undertaking. Al Gore might… Continue reading Just Climate Change
Back in the early 1990s, an editor at Harper’s asked me for suggestions of progressive foreign policy analysts who could participate in one of their roundtable discussions. I provided a short list, with Noam Chomsky on top. The editor thanked me politely but said that the Chomsky suggestion wouldn’t fly. In so many words he… Continue reading On Chomsky
At the beginning of Chinese filmmaker Jiang Yimou’s popular movie Hero , a martial arts master arrives at the court of the powerful Xin ruler. The master swordsman, an orphan who goes by the moniker Nameless, harbors a secret desire to assassinate the king on behalf of his own wronged territory, the nation of Zhao.… Continue reading The Rise and Fall of Nations
It’s not been a good time to be a journalist. Outside the United States, reporters literally take their lives into their own hands to cover dangerous stories. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 55 journalists died in 2006, a steady increase over the last several years. The mafia-style hit of Anna Politkovskaya in Russia… Continue reading Targeting Journalists
At Saturday’s anti-war demonstration in Washington, my 84-year-old mother slipped as she stepped off a curb and fell backward. A young man in a small knot of anarchists caught her and gently restored her to the vertical. And on we marched. Leave no grandmother behind! We shout at the television. We complain to our spouses,… Continue reading The Point of Protest
You’re astride a donkey, and it’s not going anywhere. You’ve got carrots in your pocket and a stick in your hand. Which to use? In the ideal world, the donkey would take a few steps forward to get the carrot that you dangle in front of its nose. If it slows down or gets distracted… Continue reading Bait and Switch
On Oct. 3, with the fall semester in full swing, the dining hall at Georgetown Law School was packed with students slumped over bookbags and laptops. Squeezed among their plates and papers were tabletop displays announcing that the day’s meal was part of an “Eat Local Challenge” that required the school’s chef to create a… Continue reading The Challenge Facing Local Food
The risk of war on the Korean peninsula remains high, and the U.S. government is raising it higher by opening an economic front. In September 2005, one day after regional negotiations produced an agreement with the potential to defuse North Korean-U.S. tensions, the U.S. government charged North Korea with counterfeiting $100 bills. Calling this alleged… Continue reading Sanctions and the Road to War on the Korean Peninsula
The movie Good Night, and Good Luck depicts how journalist Edward R. Murrow took down the most dangerous U.S. demagogue of his era with a simple, yet elegant, act of annotation. Murrow played excerpts on his CBS news show of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s speeches about the “Communist menace” and then refuted the charges. The lies… Continue reading Don’t Mourn, Annotate
Thousands of young people with long hair and studded tongues pay good money several dozen times a year to listen to lectures about genocide. Well, “lecture” is perhaps not the best way to describe Serj Tankian’s delivery. The tall lanky Tankian, who has cascades of curly hair and looks like the long-lost offspring of Frank… Continue reading Headbangers against Genocide
The headlines this week will be all Iraq, all the time. President Bush will unveil his not-so-secret plan of a military “surge” to rescue Iraq from all its other disastrous surges—in civilian deaths, pervasive violence, and unemployment. FPIF analyst Dan Smith, in Bush to Iraq: More War, argues instead that “Congress needs to act as… Continue reading Nuking Iran
Capitalism and democracy go together like … like what? Peanut butter and jelly? Or a fish and a bicycle? The leaders in Beijing are happy to eat their peanut butter sandwiches without jelly. Since launching economic reforms in the late 1970s, the Chinese government has promoted rapid economic growth but without much in the way… Continue reading Iron Fist Economics
“Covering the Mekong,” Foreign Policy In Focus, December 29, 2006 “All Talk,” World Beat, December 18, 2006 “China’s Multilateralism or U.S. Bilateralism,” Inter Press Service, December 14, 2006 “China and the Uses of Uncertainty,” Foreign Policy In Focus, December 13, 2006 “Political Football,” World Beat, December 11, 2006 “China: What’s the Big Mystery?” Foreign Policy In Focus, December 4,… Continue reading 2006 Archives
“U.S. Media Coverage of North Korea” Thursday, October 12, 2006 6:30 p.m. Sejong Society Johns Hopkins University SAIS Benjamin T. Rome Building 1619 Massachusetts Ave. NW Washington, DC “Breaking Into Political Journalism” Wednesday, July 5, 2006 6:45 p.m. – 8:45 p.m. SALSA 1112 16th St., NW Washington, DC Register here “Writing that Grabs” Full day seminar… Continue reading 2006 Events
Korean Quarterly, Fall 2006
Washington vs. Pyongyang: War or diplomacy? In this analysis of US policy, John Feffer shows how Bush’s combination of uncompromising negotiating positions, strong rhetoric and firm containment measures has served to accelerate North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme instead of ushering in the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Unfortunately, Republican reverses in the recent US… Continue reading Washington vs. Pyongyang: War or Diplomacy?
The controversial musical Yodok Story played for three nights in the Washington, DC area. I saw a performance only a couple days before Pyongyang announced its nuclear test. It might seem that these two events occupy the opposite ends of the North Korean experience. The North Korean government has defied the international community and tried… Continue reading Yodok Story and the Bomb
The Mekong River–which translates to the “mother of all rivers”–starts in the mountains of Tibet, flows through China’s Yunnan province and then into Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. It’s an extraordinary region, home to 250 million people and some of the most dynamic and troubling developments in the world. In the vivid new… Continue reading Covering the Mekong
The regional status quo in Northeast Asia appears to have self-destructed over the last few years. North Korea has announced that it possesses nuclear weapons and, with its most recent test, may have kicked down the door to the nuclear club. Japan has already stepped out from under its “peace constitution,” and it is no… Continue reading China and the Uses of Uncertainty
North Korea’s decision to return to the negotiating table is a win-win-win situation, at least temporarily. The United States, China, and even North Korea gain from the announcement. However, the boost given to each country—a modest “October surprise” for the Bush administration, a diplomatic achievement for China, and a stronger negotiating position for North Korea—will… Continue reading North Korea Returns to the Negotiating Table
The United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) have enjoyed a close alliance for more than a half century. When South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun met with George W. Bush in November 2005, an official White House statement summed up the relationship between the two countries: “The two leaders agreed that the alliance not… Continue reading American Apples, Korean Oranges
According to a popular joke in Cuba, recounted in Jon Lee Anderson’s recent New Yorker article, the elderly Fidel Castro receives the gift of a baby Galapagos tortoise. He turns it down on learning that the animals sometimes live for over 100 years. “That’s the problem with pets,” Castro says. “You get attached to them, and then… Continue reading The Dictator’s Dilemma
China has embarked on a vigorous policy of engagement with regional institutions in Asia. From the steppes of Central Asia to the resource-rich waters of Southeast Asia, Beijing has implemented its own version of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “good neighbor policy.” But this playing-well-with-others approach has presented China watchers with an intriguing riddle. Is China’s new… Continue reading Chinese Multilateralism or U.S. Bilateralism
Many foreign policy challenges lie ahead for Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, but his most pressing concern is much closer at hand: North Korea, especially in the wake of its declaration of a nuclear test on Oct.9. Since then, Japan has been lobbying for strong United Nations-backed sanctions and implemented even stronger unilateral measures.… Continue reading North Korea Tops Abe’s Agenda
As the world’s most populous country and the fourth largest economy, China has undeniable global influence. Chinese President Hu Jintao’s meeting this week in Washington with U.S. President George W. Bush, their fifth in little over a year, further underscores Beijing’s central role on the global stage. China’s growing influence is felt perhaps most strongly… Continue reading China Turns Charm Offensive on Southeast Asia