The bubble is bursting. I’m not talking about the Greek economy, the collapse of which has bankers and finance ministers trembling from Athens to Antarctica. Nor am I talking about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which reminds us once again that our current energy security rests on shaky foundations. I’m talking about… Continue reading Terrorism in a Teacup
North Korea and Israel have a lot in common. Neither is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and both employ their nuclear weapons in elaborate games of peek-a-boo with the international community. Israel and North Korea are equally paranoid about outsiders conspiring to destroy their states, and this paranoia isn’t without some justification.… Continue reading The Israeli Exception
Social workers are fond of saying that they must start where their clients are. This basic principle of social work is not theoretical. It comes from decades of practice. Simply telling people what they should do rarely translates into their actually doing “the right thing.” So instead, social workers have turned the tables by beginning… Continue reading Starting Where North Korea Is, 38North
Earth Day was a big event this year. Sting sang on the Mall here in Washington. The citizens of Qatar turned off their power for an hour. The U.S. Navy rolled out its new biodiesel-fueled Green Hornet fighter jet. Okay, maybe the Earth was not so impressed with all the events held in its honor.… Continue reading Allied Regime Change
If the Russian army makes the bold decision to invade Germany, we can just nuke those damn communist soldiers into oblivion with the 200 tactical nuclear weapons we deploy in Europe. Oh, they’re not communists any longer? Oh, Germany and Russia have excellent relations at the moment? Oh, the Cold War has been over for… Continue reading Nuclear Follies
Let’s imagine that the Cold War was a detour. The entire 20th century, in fact, was a detour. Since conflicts among the 20th-century ideologies (liberalism, communism, fascism) cost humanity so dearly, it’s hard to conceive of World War II and the clashes that followed as sideshows. And yet many people have begun to do just… Continue reading The Really, Really Long War
In the Mayan game of pitz, the first team sport in human history, two sets of players squared off in a ball court that could stretch as long as a football field. The object of the game was to use hips and elbows to keep the ball in the air and, if possible, get it… Continue reading Blood Sport
The survivors of the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile are still scrambling to deal with the damage. Here, however, pundits are still scrambling to explain the dramatic difference in impact. Haiti’s quake on January 12 came in at 7.0 on the Richter scale, leveled the capital city, and left more than 200,000 dead. Chile’s… Continue reading Earthquake Olympics
I’m not a big fan of Dana Rohrabacher, the grandstanding Republican congressman from California. But last week at a congressional hearing on U.S.-Japan relations, he ably cut through the Pentagon’s doublespeak. The hearing’s topic was the current conflict between Washington and Tokyo over the military bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The United States… Continue reading Velvet Imperialists
On February 18, 1977, a thousand Nigerian soldiers surrounded the Kalakuta Republic and burned it to the ground. As republics go, Kalakuta wasn’t very large. Only 100 or so people lived there. But the immensely popular musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti had created this compound, in the Nigerian capital of Lagos, as a joyful and democratic space… Continue reading Music Is Still the Weapon
In the popular virtual game Civilization, you can build an empire and take over the world in a matter of hours. In other words, you can compress thousands of years of history into one long session in front of your computer. This is the gaming equivalent of time-lapse photography, which allows us to watch the… Continue reading Time-Lapse Foreign Policy
For a country with a pacifist constitution, Japan is bristling with weaponry. Indeed, that Asian land has long functioned as a huge aircraft carrier and naval base for U.S. military power. We couldn’t have fought the Korean and Vietnam Wars without the nearly 90 military bases scattered around the islands of our major Pacific ally.… Continue reading Can Japan Say No to Washington
In the blockbuster 2000 film JSA, two South Korean soldiers accidentally find themselves on the North Korean side of the Joint Security Area, at the border between the two countries. They meet their North Korean counterparts. But instead of fighting, the four soldiers become friends and arrange several midnight get-togethers. At the height of their… Continue reading Choco Pies vs. Cold Noodles
The Dutch government is the latest casualty of the Afghanistan War. Over the weekend, the Labor Party in the Netherlands walked out of the ruling coalition government to protest the extension of the Dutch deployment in Afghanistan. The Taliban is rejoicing. Oh, perhaps you thought I meant the Taliban in Afghanistan. No, I meant the… Continue reading Our Taliban
He’s a long-serving, unpredictable dictator. He’s invaded countries, sponsored terrorism, trained insurgents, and tried to develop nuclear weapons. His recent debut UN speech went 75 minutes over his allotted time, highlighted several conspiracy theories, and called for President Obama to be installed as president for life. He recently said that civil society has no place… Continue reading The Strange Case of Libya
It’s 1961. William Stockton, a well-respected doctor, is having a birthday dinner with family and friends. They toast his service to the community and joke about all the late-night work he devotes to his hobby. Dr. Stockton has just finished building a bomb shelter for his family. Before the guests can repair to the living… Continue reading Rugged Collectivism
By one estimate, China has been at the top of the global economy for 18 out of the last 20 centuries. That’s an impressive track record, whatever you might think of imperialism, communism, and all the other systems that have prevailed in that vast country over the centuries. Even President Obama made a nod in… Continue reading The Next Great Transformation
When I traveled through Eastern Europe in the wake of the 1989 revolutions, I carried a computer and a portable printer. I typed up my dispatches, printed them out, and sent them back to my employers by air mail. Even with the lag time of a week or more, my reports on conversations with activists,… Continue reading Will Facebook Remake the World? Harvard International Review
One year ago, Barack Obama was elected captain of the Titanic — er, I mean, president of the United States. It’s an understandable slip. Last year, the waters seemed to be rising on all sides. The U.S. economy was in a mess, and the government was rolling in debt. We were involved in quagmires in… Continue reading Obama’s Avatar Moment
By one estimate at least, Barack Obama has had the most successful first year of any president in recent history. According to Congressional Quarterly, Obama scored a 96.7 percent success rate in getting his agenda through Congress. Only Lyndon Johnson came close, with 93 percent in his first year. Although Republican opposition to the president… Continue reading Year One
In his first year in office, Barack Obama gave several exceptional speeches on foreign policy. In Prague, he endorsed nuclear disarmament. In Cairo, he called for a new engagement with the Islamic world. In Oslo, he repudiated torture. At these moments, the new president firmly broke with the policies of his predecessor and provided a… Continue reading Obama’s First Year Foreign Policy: C-
Without sufficient street-heat, according to the new conventional wisdom, President Obama is not going to implement progressive policies. His health care package reeks of insurance company influence. His bailouts favor Wall Street. Climate-change legislation rewards polluters through the shell game of “cap-and-trade.” Without strong social movements pulling Obama to the left, the new administration’s reforms… Continue reading Street Heat and Foreign Policy
Hillary Clinton is a commie symp. That’s a familiar line from the rabid right, which hasn’t yet gotten the news that the Cold War is over. Google the secretary of state’s name and “communist,” and you’ll get over a million links, some of them to neo-Nazi websites. Folks say the craziest things on the Internet.… Continue reading The New New Anti-Communism
“An Arms Race in Northeast Asia?” Asian Perspective, Winter 2009 “China’s Military Spending: Soft Rise or Hard Threat?” Asian Perspective, Winter 2009 Landlords, Peasants, and Intellectuals in Modern Korea (Review), Korean Quarterly, Winter 2009 “Bye Bye Dubai,” Providence Journal, December 31, 2009 “The Art of Extraction,” Foreign Policy In Focus, December 23, 2009 “A New START?” World Beat, December… Continue reading 2009 Archives
Asia is in the midst of its most peaceful period of the 20th century,” The Economist editorialized in 1993, “yet its nations are continuing to arm themselves at an alarming rate.” A similar assessment came from Newsweek: “East Asia’s arms race already makes it one of the few places where defense budgets are rising—and the… Continue reading An Arms Race in Northeast Asia
Introduction The rapid growth of China’s economy and its increasingly vigorous diplomatic engagement with regional and international institutions have given rise to much discussion of China’s “peaceful rise” to great-power status. At the same time, the Pentagon has identified China as the only potential hegemon on the horizon that stands a chance of challenging the… Continue reading Chinese Military Spending: Soft Rise or Hard Threat
Review of Ray Takeyh, Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 310 pages. Of all the relationships between the United States and its adversaries, the rift with Iran appears to be particularly long, deep, and difficult to repair. Iran’s seizure of U.S.… Continue reading Guardians of the Revolution (Review)
Review of Sergio Fabbrini, America and Its Critics: Virtues and Vices of the Democratic Hyperpower (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008); Sergio Fabbrini, Compound Democracies: Why the United States and Europe Are Becoming Similar (New York: Oxford, 2007); Sergio Fabbrini, ed., The United States Contested: American Unilateralism and European Discontent (New York: Routledge, 2006). During… Continue reading Transatlantic Clash of Civilizations (Review)
The teacher assembles a collection of chocolate-chip cookies and toothpicks. This is how the elementary school children are supposed to learn about the costs associated with coal mining. Each cookie is a mining property. The students each receive $19 in play money, which they use to buy these properties. They examine the cookies closely to… Continue reading The Art of Extraction
Richard Nixon was the greatest peacemaker in U.S. history. He orchestrated the historic opening with Beijing. And he presided over the most significant arms control treaties of the détente period: the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the ABM treaty. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. Let’s start over. Richard Nixon was the greatest warmonger in U.S.… Continue reading A New START