Institutions almost never vote themselves out of existence. They just plug along, inventing new missions if the old ones disappear. Last week, two summits tried to inject new life into fading institutions. At the NATO summit, defense ministers gathered to figure out how an institution tied so intimately to the Cold War could still function… Continue reading Mouth-to-Mouth Summitry
Reply to John Feffer by Ed Herman: John Feffer uses the word “revisionism” or “revisionist” 16 times in his critique of my work on Yugoslavia. This is curious, as IPS and FPIF are supposedly dedicated to offering “unconventional wisdom,” which clearly ought to “revise” conventional and established opinion. But Feffer’s own analysis is hard to… Continue reading Strategic Dialogue: Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia, though you cannot find it any longer on maps, is still very much with us. The wars and political turmoil that convulsed this multiethnic country in the 1990s continue to reverberate today. These aftershocks can be felt in the standoff around Kosovo’s independence, the political fragmentation in Bosnia, the conflict between Macedonia and Greece,… Continue reading Why Yugoslavia Still Matters
When North Korea declared that it was planning to launch a satellite, the United States should have shrugged and gone about its business. Instead, the Obama administration has exaggerated the importance of the launch by treating it as a national security threat. There’s little reason to doubt North Korea’s claim that it simply wants to… Continue reading A Need for Restraint Over N. Korea’s Satellite
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why North Korea just launched another rocket. The country wants attention. It craves the prestige of putting a satellite into orbit. It hopes to gather information for its missile program. And it’s angling to up the ante in the great poker game called the Six Party… Continue reading What’s Up with North Korea?
The elderly gentleman had a remarkable history. He’d worked in the State Department in Latin America and Afghanistan. And, 60 years ago, he served as a translator in Tokyo in connection with the war crimes trial that resulted in 25 guilty verdicts and seven executions of Japanese war criminals just after World War II. Given… Continue reading Never Again (Maybe)
The deliberations that took place in Tokyo after World War II, which led to 25 guilty verdicts and the execution of seven Japanese, helped shape the international law around war crimes. The arguments made in the proceedings against Slobodan Milosevic and the instigators of the Rwanda genocide, as well as the recent indictment of the… Continue reading Japan: On Trial, 60 Years Later
Let’s say that China sends a ship 75 miles off San Diego to do a little surveillance. Those are international waters, after all, and Beijing is interested in the latest developments in our submarine warfare capabilities at Naval Base Point Loma. And it wants to do some reconnaissance for its own expanding fleet of subs.… Continue reading Naval Gazing
Consider the Bush administration’s preferred garb. George W. Bush favored the flight suit look when he landed on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln back in May 2003 for his premature enunciation that the Iraq War was over. The press went wild. “Here’s a president who’s really nonverbal,” Chris Matthews said, turning “nonverbal” for the first… Continue reading Foreign Policy in Fashion
It might seem like the worst possible time for Tokyo to think big. The global economic crisis is hitting Japan hard. The current government of Taro Aso is scraping the bottom of public opinion polls. And with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party poised to suffer a game-changing defeat in the upcoming elections, the domestic political… Continue reading Thinking Big in Crisis Time
Let’s say that President Barack Obama appointed me as his Karl Rove. My advice: Don’t move on. The best way to tie the opposition on the right into a pretzel is to go after the Bush administration for all of its high crimes and misdemeanors. The radical right will fall back to defend its conduct… Continue reading Don’t Move on Yet
With the United States on the verge of another Great Depression, the Know-Nothing opposition to the Obama administration should be worried that we are about to slip into the Third World. Instead, it’s fretting about the United States becoming an annex of Western Europe. TV pundit Sean Hannity has called the stimulus package the “European… Continue reading Turning European
Particularly over the last eight years, the United States was one big mouth. We lectured the world. We berated the world. We threatened and wheedled and roared. From the world’s perspective, however, the United States was like the teacher in the Peanuts comic strip: an incomprehensible wah-wah sound in the background. You generally ignored this… Continue reading Listen: Afghanistan
Editor’s Note: This essay is a condensed version of a paper originally commissioned by the Korea Economic Institute (KEI) for its Academic Paper Series. South Korea is currently engaged in a large-scale, expensive modernization of its military that aims to provide the country with a more robust and self-sufficient defense. The timing of this considerable… Continue reading Ploughshares into Swords
Just as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was arriving in Asia this week, Pyongyang was threatening to test a long-range missile. That’s its way of saying, “Don’t ignore us!” North Korea’s nuclear program is not in the top tier of foreign policy issues facing the Obama administration. The new team in Washington believes it has… Continue reading North Korea Sends Message: ‘Don’t Ignore Us!’
The neoconservative movement thrilled to what it called the “unipolar moment.” After the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Soviet Union followed suit, the United States was the last superpower standing. America faced a choice. It could use the unprecedented opportunity to help build a new international system out of the rubble of the Cold War.… Continue reading A Multipolar Moment
You might have missed the news: China is now No. 3. Statisticians have finally crunched the 2007 numbers and discovered that China surpassed Germany that year to become the third-largest economy in the world. With its gross domestic product (GDP) at $3.32 trillion, the Chinese economy is now poised to overtake No. 2 Japan at… Continue reading What’s the Matter with China
The global economy is taking a beating from the latest crisis. The United States, EU, and Japan expect growth of only 1.5% or so in 2009. The International Labor Organization forecasts a “global jobs crisis” that will add 50 million people to the ranks of the unemployed and cast 200 million workers into extreme poverty… Continue reading The Risk of Military Keynesianism
Here’s the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean 4. The film opens with Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow dropping anchor in New York harbor. He descends on Wall Street with his mates and, after a quick costume change at Brooks Brothers, storms the boardrooms of Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and other major firms. They don’t need… Continue reading Our Pirates and Theirs
Last week, shortly after being inaugurated, President Barack Obama ended the “global war on terror” (GWOT). Or so The Washington Post reported. The new president countermanded the Bush administration’s extralegal approaches by mandating the closure of Guantánamo within a year, outlawing the use of torture in interrogations, and putting the CIA out of the secret… Continue reading GWOT’s End
Mladen Miljanovic, who won the prestigious Bell Award in 2007 as the best young visual artist in Bosnia Herzegovina, grew up during the wars that split apart Yugoslavia. He lived in the area of Bosnia that became Republika Srpska. His home was near one military base, his school near a second. More than once he… Continue reading Postcard from Banja Luka
According to the British historian Eric Hobsbawm in The Age of Extremes, the 20th century didn’t truly begin until 1914. World War I, with its new technologies of violence and effective termination of several empires, brought what Hobsbawm called the “long 19th century” to a close. Those with a more scientific bent might date the… Continue reading Inaugural Mulligan
He was focused on domestic issues. He promised a “compassionate conservatism.” In a 2000 presidential debate with Al Gore, he recoiled from the image of an arrogant United States offending the rest of the world. “If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us,” he said. “If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us.”… Continue reading Bush’s Path from ‘Humility’ to ‘Bring it On’
The United States is the largest exporter of arms in the world. Imagine what would happen if we became the largest exporter of the arts instead. This is just one of the ways that an art stimulus package could be used to change the way America relates to the world. By turning swords into paintbrushes,… Continue reading From Arms to Art
Early on in his administration, George W. Bush decided not to focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Did the president consider the problem too difficult to solve? No, that wasn’t quite it. Too much of a domestic hot potato? Wrong again. Instead, the 43rd American president had his eyes on the prize. And not in a… Continue reading Lame Legacy
Japan: The Price of Normalcy John Feffer In the early 1990s, the Japanese military adopted a cute mascot by the name of Prince Pickles. He’s a little guy with a big head and big eyes who lives in a tranquil country bordering on some pretty dangerous territory. In three action-packed comic books aimed at young… Continue reading Japan: The Price of Normalcy
There is a deep affinity between the United States and Israel. I’m not talking about the Israel Lobby, which concentrates its influence in Washington. Or the connections between neoconservatives and the Israeli right wing. Or the rhapsodizing of fundamentalist Christians, who embrace Israel as part of their scenario for the Apocalypse. The affinity runs deeper:… Continue reading Israel: Mini-Me?
Korean Quarterly, Winter 2009
Review of Theodore Jun Yoo, The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea: Education, Labor, and Health, 1910-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp. 316 It is the unusual academic book that begins with a double suicide. Playwright Kim U-jin and singer Yun Sim-dok are the tragic lovers who open Theodore Jun Yoo’s new… Continue reading The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea (Review)
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Winter/Spring 2009