When pundits talk about the U.S. elections and foreign policy, they focus on Iraq and Iran. But the third member of the infamous “axis of evil” may prove to be just as influential. In the last several weeks, North Korea has stopped dismantling its nuclear facilities and has even threatened to rebuild what it has… Continue reading Stealth Crisis
Nearly 70 years after the Games began again in the modern era, the Olympics finally took place somewhere outside the West. It was 1964, and the host country was Japan. The Tokyo Olympics were an opportunity for Japan to erase the stain of history. It had been tapped to host the 1940 Olympics, but its… Continue reading Asia’s Olympics Debs
Within walking distance of downtown Rome there is a sheep farm that dates back to the Middle Ages. The Casale della Vacchereccia, leased from the Vatican, is nestled in a park that has preserved the kind of farmland that once surrounded Rome on all sides. The humble Vacchereccia still produces ricotta cheese from the milk… Continue reading Postcard from Rome
Being a futurologist means never having to say you’re sorry. Our predictions always come true eventually — or, if they don’t, well, how quickly people forget. Look at Newsweek’s George Will. He predicted that the Berlin Wall would endure, and in an article published on the very day in 1989 that the Germans were tearing… Continue reading The Goldilocks Apocalypse
According to the overpopulation crowd, the current food crisis is the latest evidence that the world has become too heavy with us all. We are currently at 6.6 billion and expected to approach 9 billion some time before 2050. Mother Earth is mad as hell and isn’t going to take us anymore. We’ve heard this… Continue reading Pop ’til We Drop?
Empires die hard. The war that broke out last week between Russia and Georgia is a terrifying reminder that the disintegration of the Soviet Union is far from over. Seventeen years ago, it looked as though that region might escape the worst consequences of imperial collapse. After all, the Baltic states achieved their independence with… Continue reading Die Hard
The debate has seesawed back and forth in the press, in blogs, on the street. Will George W. Bush, prodded by his pitchfork-wielding vice president, bomb Iran before the end of his term? According to one camp, an attack on Iran is so last term. In fact, the whole “evil axis” thing is passé. The… Continue reading Will He or Won’t He?
Here’s a tip on how to sound smart on foreign policy. When your friends are talking about the Iraq War, shake your head and look very somber. “The real problem,” you inform them, “is Iran. That’s the next battlefield.” Okay, people have been talking about Iran for several years now. And, according to Seymour Hersh,… Continue reading Be Ahead of the Pack
In the 1960s, a subculture of Americans became obsessed with alien abductions. Their ur-narrative revolved around the experience of Betty and Barney Hill, a sober, middle-aged, interracial couple who told of being taken from their car one night in 1961 and subjected to medical investigation by extraterrestrials with small bodies and large foreheads. They were… Continue reading North Korea, Japan, and the Abduction Narrative of Charles Robert Jenkins
With the Six Party Talks to denuclearise North Korea once again on the ropes and the world reeling from a deepening financial crisis, the United States is looking to China for help. The Pentagon still views China as a rising and potentially threatening military power. But the State Department has been relying on China’s mediating… Continue reading US/China: Rivals, Partners in Asia
After more than 15 years in the drafting, Burma unveiled its new constitution in February. The 194-page document has generated a widely disparate response. In May, just days after Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit Burma and killed tens of thousands Burmese, the military government reported that 92 percent of the population supported the new constitution in… Continue reading Burma’s New Constitution: Radical Change or Fig Leaf
Northeast Asia is a critically important locus of geopolitics, but it lacks a regional security structure. The Six Party Talks – involving the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan, and Russia – offer one potential model for regional collaboration. But the talks are stalled at the moment, with North Korea balking at a U.S.… Continue reading South Korea’s Persistent Dream of Regionalism
Northeast Asia is a relatively peaceful place. Although the Cold War still divides the Korean peninsula and the Taiwan Straits, there are no hot conflicts in the region. Negotiators in the Six Party Talks are attempting to solve the major security issues of the region through diplomatic means. But at another level, wars are being… Continue reading East Asia: History Wars
The Fergana Valley in the heart of Central Asia has a reputation for instability, violent conflict, and Islamic fundamentalism. The three countries whose borders intersect in this densely populated mountainous region – Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan – have struggled to build modern states in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This process… Continue reading Central Asia: Modernity vs. Islam
Back in the 1980s, it seemed the right thing to do. Groups were emerging in Eastern Europe that were just saying no to the Cold War, to the human rights abuses of their governments, to the stultifying lack of democracy in their societies. I joined the growing network of activists in the West that supported… Continue reading For Your Freedom and Ours
What happened to the global food crisis? It was in the news and out again as quickly as a bad Hollywood movie. The media covered the alarming increase in food prices that have hit poor people so hard. Riots broke out in dozens of countries. Zimbabwe, Sudan, and North Korea are on the edge of… Continue reading Empty Plate Club
Gas prices are above $4 a gallon; global food prices surged 39% last year; and an environmental disaster looms as carbon emissions continue to spiral upward. The global economy appears on the verge of a TKO, a triple whammy from energy, agriculture, and climate-change trends. Right now you may be grumbling about the extra bucks… Continue reading Are We All North Koreans Now? TomDispatch
I was on Wisconsin public radio last week, being interviewed on the state of U.S. foreign policy. All the callers were in perfect harmony. We all agreed that the last eight years have been a disaster for the United States, that we must move away from militarism and toward diplomacy, that we must, well, you… Continue reading Getting to Yes
China has not made much of an appearance in the presidential contest so far. Either of the two Chinas. I’m not talking about Mainland vs. Taiwan. I mean the two Chinas of the American imagination. There’s the cute, cuddly, panda-bear China, as sweet-natured and fun-loving as Jack Black, that produces excellent dumplings, fantastical kung-fu movies,… Continue reading Free Trade Follies
My first introduction to the Second Thoughts crowd was in 1989 when I attended a conference at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University and took a seat in the audience near Fawn Hall. Yes, that Fawn Hall: the secretary who dutifully shredded compromising documents for Oliver North during the Iran-Contra days. She was part of a tour put… Continue reading Second Thoughts
Aaron Hughes spent the spring of 2003 transporting supplies from Kuwait to Iraq as a soldier in the Army National Guard. Today, he is an outspoken anti-war activist. “I didn’t have an epiphany,” Hughes says of his turnabout. “I just continually hoped that I could help the Iraqi people, that my fellow soldiers would be… Continue reading The Way to a Just Foreign Policy
A devastating earthquake leveled the Chinese town of Wenchuan, leaving in its wake over 60,000 dead and five million homeless throughout Sichuan Province. It will take years to heal the damage of this tragedy. Nevertheless, even as aid organizations and local government scramble to erect temporary housing and supply drinking water, it’s important to step… Continue reading Wenchuan as Eco-City
For decades the world was held hostage to a Cold War that pitted the capitalist West against the communist East. The United Nations, which was created in part to bridge that emerging divide, could not help but succumb to the Manichean politics of the Cold War era. The structure of the international body, designed to… Continue reading Turkey: Uniter or Divider?
In our special Memorial Day edition, World Beat is publishing an obituary for Diplomacy, which died prematurely last week after an extended illness. The last seven years or so were difficult ones for Diplomacy. According to press reports, the mainstay of foreign policy began complaining of chest pains and nausea in 2001. In the lead-up… Continue reading The Day Diplomacy Died
Few people still dismiss global warming. Some climate deniers still mouth off in Congress, like James Inhofe of Oklahoma who called global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Novelist Michael Crichton, with his 2004 novel State of Fear and subsequent press briefings, has seemingly gotten mixed up about where non-fiction ends… Continue reading Climate Industrial Complex
When an infant touches a hot stove, it learns a lifelong lesson: don’t touch a hot stove. The infant might grow into a thoroughly irresponsible person, might acquire a nasty heroin habit or provoke a barroom brawl with Mike Tyson. But never again will he or she touch a hot stove. When it invaded Iraq… Continue reading Burned Again?
The National Library in Sarejevo still stands in ruins, 16 years after Serbian military forces shelled the building and destroyed over 90% of its priceless contents. The European Union and the Austrian government have helped rebuild the roof and the atrium. Last year Spain offered a little over $1 million to finish the reconstruction. But… Continue reading Books not Bombs
During the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo, the inhabitants of the Bosnian capital received thousands of cans of food from the international community. The shipments helped keep the city alive. So it is perhaps not surprising that Bosnian artist Nebojsa Seric Soba would construct a Monument to the International Community in the form of a… Continue reading Postcard from Sarajevo
In a Russian novella by Yuri Tynyanov, the tsar mistakenly hears an underling refer to a “Lieutenant Kije” and immediately assigns the imaginary officer to guard duty. The wheels of bureaucracy begin to turn, and the army must come up with new tasks for this non-existent Kije. Much hilarity ensues. Irfan Besirovic has suffered quite… Continue reading The Erased
The huge yellow banners on the façade of the building under renovation contain short statements that could be part of an advertising campaign or perhaps a conceptual art project. But the stories that are now appearing on this building (pictured) and bus shelters throughout downtown Ljubljana, the capital of the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia,… Continue reading Postcard from Ljubljana