Japan was not the first country to realize the strategic importance of Central Asia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it took Tokyo three years to open embassies in the region. Several more years passed before Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto inaugurated a new “Silk Road” diplomacy. Today, however, Japan has engaged the five… Continue reading After Slow Start, Japan Engages Central Asia
This year the Association of Southeast Asian Nations celebrates its 40th birthday, and it has big plans. After four decades of being largely a political and security alliance, ASEAN is accelerating its plans for economic integration. The ASEAN leaders are so eager to pull together into an economic community that they recently decided to move… Continue reading South-East Asia: Democratic Deficit Growing
After an intense round of six-sided talks, negotiators are bringing home a deal on North Korea’s nuclear program. Of course the plan has flaws. It’s only the first step in stuffing North Korea’s nuclear genie back into the bottle and ending six decades of hostility between Washington and Pyongyang. It’s way too early for champagne… Continue reading Promising Start with North Korea
<p><b>China is everywhere you turn: the label on your sweater, every second item on the shelf at Wal-Mart, the computer on which you read this essay, the weather satellite zapped out of the sky in January by a ballistic missile. Unlike Britney Spears, however, China is not merely ubiquitous. It is an essential part of… Continue reading China the Indispensable?
Courtiers once collected special tastes for the infamous banquets of the Roman emperors “in every corner of the Empire from the Parthian frontier to the Straits of Gibraltar.”[1] The Chinese emperors, too, demanded a succession of unusual and exotic treats from the far-flung lands opened up by the Silk Road. Today, this tradition still lives… Continue reading Global Tastes
They don’t look alike. One is tall and thin, the other short and pot-bellied. If they ever meet for a summit, they could pose for photos as the Blues Brothers of international relations. But it’s not likely that George W. Bush and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will face the cameras together any time… Continue reading George and Jong
Advocates of eating locally grown food argue that you can save the world by buying tomatoes from a local garden, cage-free eggs from a nearby farm, and locally baked bread. The eat-local movement has been very popular in Europe for some time. Locavores – as these eaters are also called – are gaining strength in… Continue reading Eat Local, Think Global
Northeast Asia is a high voltage environment. In other words, an enormous gap in power separates the strongest and the weakest countries currently negotiating in the six-party process. Over the last two decades, this gap in power has sustained the Cold War in the region. It has both justified the maintenance of the huge U.S.… Continue reading South Korea Can Play the Role of Transformer
Two years ago, the ‘Tulip Revolution’ pushed Kyrgyzstan off the path of dictatorship. The subsequent direction the small Central Asian country has taken, and whether the revolution can serve as a model for the region, remain controversial. And now, with the opposition gearing up for mass demonstrations in April, the most politically lively country in… Continue reading Kyrgyzstan: Exporting the Tulip Revolution
People power does not just trouble the sleep of dictators. It can also introduce an element of unpredictability and uncertainty into the security debate in pluralist societies. People, to put it bluntly, can be a problem for the military because civilians frequently come between a military and its objectives. “In the short term, making governments… Continue reading People Power vs. Military Power in East Asia
Americans have an almost fetishistic attitude toward leadership. Like a magic wand, “leadership” is to be waved over the problems that affect the body politic as well as the seemingly intractable flaws of U.S. foreign policy. We search the horizon for a magical leader in the same way that the hapless clowns of Beckett’s play… Continue reading Picturing the President
Southeastern Europe is bracing for one final aftershock from the break-up of former Yugoslavia. The largely Albanian enclave of Kosovo is poised to declare its independence from Serbia after multi-party talks failed to reach a compromise by the UN deadline of December 10. Around the epicenter of Kosovo, the tectonic plates of geopolitics threaten to… Continue reading A Return to Diversity in the Balkans
At the center of East Asia lies the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on the Korean peninsula. The DMZ has been called the most dangerous place on earth. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers face one another across this divide. And yet, the DMZ is also the lifeline between North and South Korea. It connects the two countries… Continue reading The Paradox of East Asian Peace
If I want to command the attention of my friends at a bar or a restaurant, I don’t say, “Hey, I’ve got this great analysis to share with you.” I don’t ask, “Have I shown you this amazing data set?” I don’t say, “Check out these killer citations.” No, I say: “You won’t believe what… Continue reading What Happens Next
With their new high-speed train system, South Koreans can travel the full length of their country, from Seoul in the north to Pusan on the southern coast, in under 3 hours. In the next phase of construction, new tracks will cut this travel time in half again. The KTX train (pictured to the left) puts… Continue reading Postcard from Pusan
If you’re going to throw rocks at the government, you’d better dress up for the occasion. That’s the take-away point from the media coverage of the protests in Pakistan. Splashed across the front page of newspapers last week was a picture of a Pakistani lawyer in a suit launching a projectile at the police. The… Continue reading Fashion Statement
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the ending of martial law in Taiwan. But don’t expect any major global celebrations of Taiwanese democracy. For all the vibrancy of Taiwanese politics and the high performance of Taiwan’s economy, the island is something of an embarrassment to the international community. Taiwan looks like a state. It… Continue reading The Taiwan that Roared
The Kaesong Industrial Complex is a veritable Rorschach test for those who follow developments on the Korean peninsula. Everyone who looks at the special economic zone located in North Korea just north of the DMZ sees something very different. And these interpretations often reveal more about the viewer than the viewed Unification advocates in the… Continue reading The Kaesong Industrial Complex
Immigration is one of the top election-year issues. When the Bush administration tried earlier to push through a comprehensive immigration reform bill, anti-immigrant groups unleashed a grassroots protest over the proposed amnesty measures and helped to defeat the bill. Last week, the Senate refused to consider a bill that would have allowed the children of… Continue reading A Modest Proposal
“The glory of Our Empire shines on this universe with brilliance,” a ruler once declared in a letter to courtiers in London. “Not one single person or country is excluded from Our kindness and benevolence.” He had good reason to be pleased. His country sat astride the global economy. His army was large, his domains… Continue reading Big Red Checkbook
At the corner of 18th and K Streets in Washington, DC, a banner keeps a running tally of U.S. casualties in Iraq. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union updates the banner daily so that “corporate lobbyists and the foreign policy think tanks that dominate the canyons of K St. NW as well as the… Continue reading The Grim Numbers
I cut my political teeth on the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s, working to persuade my college to divest from companies doing business in South Africa. It wasn’t easy work. What did I know about investment portfolios? We were a small group, and we didn’t have any business majors providing pro bono advice. We knew… Continue reading Divest Now?
When two young boys square off in the school playground, they will often appeal to higher powers. “My big brother can beat up your big brother!” they cry out as a scare tactic. Even if the two kids don’t come to blows, one will still try to impress the other by claiming that his elder… Continue reading Summit: Post-Playground Politics
I have a confession to make: I’m losing my faith in the political process. When it comes to foreign policy, the candidates are using their bully pulpits to sermonize in the dullest possible way: all heat and no enlightenment. They preach to the converted. They disparage the unorthodox and adhere to the party platform, chapter… Continue reading We Get Religion
They look like portals that deliver people from one planet to another, as in a science fiction movie. You turn a corner in Manhattan and there they are: full-sized figures in full military uniform emblazoned on graffiti-laced walls. The faces of the U.S. soldiers appearing in these arresting images are blurred as if in great… Continue reading Art as Jujitsu
The future has arrived, but the Futurists didn’t make it. In the early part of the 20th century, the Futurist movement of artists in Italy, led by Filippo Marinetti, glorified war as a dynamic organizing principle for their art work. If art was about energy – and the raw power of the modern machine age… Continue reading The Art of Anti-War
Kosovo almost got its own flag. According to the compromise proposal of UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, the international community was to grant “supervised independence” to Kosovo, the largely Albanian enclave in southern Serbia. This compromise plan provided Kosovo with its own constitution, its own national anthem, and perhaps most symbolically, its own flag. And… Continue reading The Taiwan of Europe
Name the country in the Middle East that is most anti-American. Egypt? Palestine? Lebanon? Try again. Try instead our key NATO ally, the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid, and one of the countries in line for membership in the European Union. Try: Turkey. According to a new poll from the Project on International… Continue reading Bazaar-o-World
As the call to prayers in Istanbul gets louder – thanks to more sophisticated amplifying systems – the number and size of Turkish flags have grown in proportion. This is the fundamental conflict in Turkey today. On one side are the secularists, the heirs of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. On the other… Continue reading Postcard from Istanbul
In the mid-1970s, Coca-Cola tried to sell the convenience store 7-Eleven on the idea of a 32-ounce cup for soft drinks. The 7-Eleven rep doubted that the public was ready to drink that much: the larger cup was “absolutely insane.” Alas, American consumers proved him wrong and soon came the Super Big Gulp (44 ounces)… Continue reading Xtreme Gulpism