You can lead two parties to a negotiating table, but you can’t make them compromise. As the United States and North Korea head into six-party negotiations this week, both countries find themselves boxed into a diplomatic corner. These hardening positions make a robust agreement unlikely even though such a deal is in the long-term… Continue reading U.S. must abandon hard-line stance in talks with North Korea
It’s all about you. Your mid-afternoon candy bars. Your wallowing in all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets like a pig in mud. Your inability to just say no to that supersized French Fries, that Massive Gulp of soda, that waste paper basket full of popcorn at the gigaplex. The personal responsibility movement, which has brought us… Continue reading Fat Chance
Call it the “wooing and booing” strategy. Washington is reaching out to Beijing on such issues as North Korea’s nuclear program and the “war on terrorism.” At the same time, the Bush administration is blaming China for America’s trade deficit and gearing up to slam Beijing on human rights at the United Nations next… Continue reading Washington Woos and Boos Beijing
Taiwan and South Korea share a good deal in common. They both suffered under Japanese colonialism. They both built prosperous economies within the space of only a couple generations. They are both relatively new to democracy, having shrugged off authoritarian dictatorships within the last 15 years. They rely on U.S. weapons and military guarantees. And… Continue reading No Politics as Usual in East Asia
Gulliver and the Lilliputians Superpowers don’t like multilateralism. They fear that smaller countries will gang up to tie their hands, as the tiny Lilliputians bound mighty Gulliver in the famous novel. In the last four years, the U.S. Gulliver has defied the Lilliputians and projected an unprecedented amount of unilateral power – military,… Continue reading Gulliver and the Lilliputians
Pushing Arms John Feffer Secretary of State Colin Powell okayed the arms deal with one finger. It was late February at a press conference in Washington to unveil the State Department’s new D-Trade, a paperless process for granting licenses to military contractors. After joking that the State Department had only recently junked its last… Continue reading U.S. Pushing Arms
“Push and Pull: East Asian Regional Security” Advocacy Days presentation, March 6, 2004 The current crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program takes place within a regional security context with an important push factor (U.S. military policy toward the region) and an equally important pull factor (a “revolution in Asian military affairs”). The… Continue reading Push and Pull: East Asian Regional Security
Grapes, not Golf Boris Fras is the Jose Bove of Slovenia. He hasn’t attacked any McDonalds with sledgehammers. Nor has he made it into the headlines for destroying genetically modified crops. But in his vineyards and among his olive trees along the Adriatic Coast, Boris Fras is waging the same battle as his farming… Continue reading Grapes, Not Golf
Photo spreads of supersized weapons, sidebars of eye-popping stats, and prose of pumped-up power: What is happening to popular science magazines? It’s not quite hardcore, like the descriptions of raw, sweaty military ops in Soldier of Fortune or the Marines’ in-house organ, Leatherneck. The science magazines have more of a soft-core vibe. Over the last… Continue reading The Military Industrial Porn Complex