“Developing Trust in Asia Amidst New US Military Deployments: An Indonesian Perspective,” by Maria Monica Wihardja, Asia Pacific Bulletin No. 142, East-West Center, Washington, D.C., December 8, 2011. If we think the Chinese were upset about the announcement that 2,500 U.S. Marines would soon be station on Australia’s north coast, the Indonesians were much more upset. As the US makes more use of Australia as a part of its Pacific defense system, it will need to turn up the public diplomacy in Southeast Asia to counteract the Jihadist agitprop that is certain to be an unwelcome byproduct.
Category Archives: Asia
Asian Security in the Year of the Dragon
Image via Wikipedia
Each year, Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies conducts an exchange program that invites national security scholars from around the world to take a collective look at the Asian security environment and offer their points of view on the issues the region faces. This year they have produced another excellent collection, and it is available at the link above.
What I enjoy about this series is the often unexpected perspectives thes authors offer. My favorites from this collection are H.J.S. Kraft’s chapter on “The Continuing Malaise of National Security in the Philippines,” which strikes me as particularly fascinating given the evolving situation in the South China Sea; You Ji’s perspective on how China’s defense posture is evolving in response to America’s “Strategic Shift” away from Europe, Iraq, and Pakistan and toward the Pacific; and, of course, Andrew Erickson’s superb review of U.S. security concerns in the region.
As we ease into Chinese New Year, this would be an excellent time to peruse this collection. The Year of the Dragon promises much change, but a read through these chapters should minimize the surprises.
Related articles
- ASEAN Defense: China co-host ASEAN defense education meet to “Seamlessly integrate national security knowledge across society” (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
Holding Burma Together
Image via Wikipedia
Sitting as it does at the geographic crossroads between India, China, and Southeast Asia, Burma (Myanmar) plays a role in the stability of the region that goes overlooked outside of a small circle of Asia wonks. Most of us have forgotten that Burma broke the back of the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II, made up one corner of the infamous Golden Triangle in the opiate trade, and, as a relic of a colonial era, houses ethnic separatism that often erupts into violence. In some ways, Burma is the Iraq of Southeast Asia.
Most of us see the challenge of Burma as a a matter of easing the Military Junta from power and allowing free elections. It is, apparently, not that simple, and Beyond Armed Resistance gives us a glimpse into the complexities of Burma’s politics via a review of the aspirations of the Kachin, Karen, Mon, and Shan ethnic groups.
Deliberately setting aside armed ethnic uprising, including the Karen people‘s longstanding resistance to the Burmese government, Dr. Thawnghmung argues that the non-violent political activity of these groups is more important to the evolution of the Burmese state than civil conflict. Reading her book also offers an unintended insight into why the military feels obliged to keep such tight control over the country: dormant ethnic tensions could easily sunder the nation. What is more, we begin to see how Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy would face formidable challenges simply holding the country together if they were to come to power. No doubt, this prospect troubles the leaders of India, China, and Thailand: it should trouble Americans as well.
The junta has become the entire focus of western policy toward Burma. That focus, however correct, has masked the deeper challenges and rifts that plague the country. It must be no longer. Instead, our focus must become the fundamental challenges the country faces on its path to stability and development. Dr. Thawnghmung has argued in other venues that the first focus must be on establishing a national identity under-girded by a shared ideology and vision.
As Asia’s nations begin to expand their influence beyond their borders, weak states will become political and diplomatic (if not military) battlegrounds among the region’s powers. If Burma is to avoid this fate, it must emerge from its current transitional phase as a united, independent, and prosperous country. The well-meaning people around the world campaigning for the NLD would do well to heed the warning implicit in Dr. Thawnghmung’s writings: think beyond liberation, and do so now.
Related articles
- Historic Burma trip for Hillary Clinton: Enough focus on human rights? (csmonitor.com)
- “Burma’s New Hope” (ravcasleygera.wordpress.com)
- What will happen to China as Burma (Myanmar) gets closer with Vietnam, US? (csmonitor.com)
- Oppression, Torture and Gender-Based Violence against Karen Women in Burma (clockwards.wordpress.com)
ASEAN’s Dilemma: Courting Washington without Hurting Beijing | East-West Center | www.eastwestcenter.org
Amitav Acharya, “ASEAN’s Dilemma: Courting Washington without Hurting Beijing,” Washington, DC: East-West Center, October 18, 2011 Some good advice on how ASEAN needs to be careful to walk its precarious path between the two Pacific Superpowers, China and the US.
China’s Rough Edges
Managing Instability on China’s Periphery – Council on Foreign Relations.
A fair amount of attention has gone in recent years to China’s growing influence far from its shores, in particular in Africa and Latin America. The western powers are predisposed to hypersensitivity in these areas. Africa is no longer the southern extension of European empires, but the EU is not anxious to allow the continent to fall under the influence of any other power. In the Americas, the Monroe Doctrine is much changed but it is not dead: witness the reactions to Russian or Chinese warship visits to Venezuela or Cuba.
But as five scholars from the Council on Foreign Relations remind us, we would be foolish to forget that where China’s influence is felt strongest is in the Middle Kingdom’s near abroad, in the nations lining China’s extensive borders. What is more, China’s borderlands house some of the world’s most volatile hot spots: North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan.
The authors of Managing Instability on China’s Periphery seek policy options to try and prevent crises from emerging in those countries and potentially undermining the US-China relationship. The publication, released in September, is timely not simply because of the recent death of Kim Jong-Il and the resultant uncertainty over the Korean peninsula, but because many of us watching China (myself included) underweight the instability in China’s borderlands when analyzing how and why China thinking about the drivers shaping the PRC’s foreign and security policy.
That’s a significant oversight, and this book is a forceful reminder that we must change our calculus. China’s credible ascent to global power depends on the PRC first securing its own borders: if it cannot, the nation will have to focus its arms and treasure on keeping instability out rather than extending influence far from its shores. If, on the other hand, China can arbitrate peaceful transitions for each of these weak states, the nation will gain prestige and influence worldwide.
China understands what is at stake, and will thus view American initiatives in this de facto sphere of Chinese influence with suspicion. This is the minefield the authors seek to navigate for us, and as such their book is an essential read.
Related articles
- Pei: How Kim’s death risks China crisis (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)
- China wary of North’s economic woes (thehindu.com)
- Japan, S.Korea, China discuss Korean Peninsula + Related Article (laaska.wordpress.com)
- Analysis: North Korea after Kim (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)
So Much for “Chindia”
E-Notes: China And India: A Rivalry Takes Shape – FPRI.
Harsh Pant from King’s College London delves into how China’s rivalry with India is taking shape, moving the region beyond speculation about “Chindia” and tracking how China’s rise is compelling India to kick its own investments in its military into high gear.
In play are relationships with every other country in the region, from Iran to Indonesia, and again, the proximate cause of the growing trans-Himalayan tension is domestic politics in China.
An excellent review of the challenges in the region, and a superb compliment to Glaser and Schaffer’s analysis.
Will North Korea Start a New Cold War in Asia?
The New Cold War in Asia? | Center for Strategic and International Studies
Victor Cha at the CSIS explores several scenarios for how a crisis over North Korea in 2012 might turn into a larger standoff. Cha’s concise albeit unsurprising analysis correctly identifies Beijing as the reluctant party in a Sino-US-Korean partnership to contain the problem, because China wants stability rather than change on the peninsula.
The buried lede in the story, however, is Cha’s assertion that it is Chinese domestic politics, rather than calculation based on grand strategy, that compels China’s standoffish attitude toward Washington and Seoul. Indeed, Cha notes, Chinese domestic politics are what constrains the PRC from forming a grand strategy in the first place.
This is an assertion that begs for further exploration. What are the domestic political dynamics around the Korea issue? What could change inside of China – or inside of North Korea – to shift China toward the role of strong-armed peacekeeper? To what extend is China already using its leverage to quietly moderate North Korean behavior? What more could/should it do?
Clearly constrained by space, Cha leaves us with these questions. That should not keep the penny from dropping at Pacific Command in Honolulu or the State Department in Washington. The stratgy-making dynamic in China bears a growing resemblance to our own, and a shrinking resemblance to that of the USSR. Until we shift our understanding, it is we as much as the Chinese who risk making Northeast Asia the center of a new Cold War.
How India Sees American Power in Asia
The great challenge in India’s foreign policy is trying to figure out what role the U.S. wants to play – and what it can play, in the Asian security environment. The U.S. and India have grown closer in the wake of the Cold War, but the relationship is far from an aliance.
Terisita Schaffer at CSIS does a superb job examining how India’s views of the U.S. have changed, how the Indians do not see the United States as a power in decline, and how the growing relationship between America and the Subcontinental power is changing the calculus in the regions’s international security.
If you read or plan to read Robert Kaplan‘s excellent Monsoon, this is a superb introduction or companion piece.
Related articles
- Three great powers (Asia News Network) (thuytinhvo.wordpress.com)
- In the News / India / IT / Competitiveness : Climbs 10 Spots, Overtakes China as Human Capital Goes Upwards (skillsinfo.wordpress.com)
Asia: Economics is Power
Competing For Economic Centrality in Asia | Center for Strategic and International Studies. an excellent article by Ernest Bower, who explains how Asian power politics are a matter of economic competition more than military confrontation.
Climate Change: What About the Crops?
Image by Jonathan Burr via Flickr
Food Security and Climate Change in the Pacific: Rethinking the Options
Asian Development Bank
September 2011
75pp.
In the debates around climate change, one of the frequently overlooked issues is what will happen to the food security of specific nations should temperatures rise enough to dislocate cultivated crops and alter fishing and livestock patterns. It would, indeed, seem a minor matter compared to the nightmare scenario of inundation.
Yet apocalyptic Waterworld predictions aside, crops and livestock are sensitive to temperature changes, and this is a matter of concern for countries of all sizes, even landlocked ones. This book offers some basic policy suggestions to help the nations of the APAC region, from the Pacific islands states to mainland Asia, prepare for the uncertain consequences of climate change.
Related articles
- Food and climate change: The forgotten link (chimalaya.org)
- The Pioneers of our Climate, Water and Food Security (chimalaya.org)
- Scientists eye ‘windows of opportunity’ for adapting food crops to climate change (foodsecuritysm.wordpress.com)
- FAO Launches Global Soil Partnership for Food Security and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation (chimalaya.org)
- Plan farms for climate change: Minister (agricultureafrica.wordpress.com)
Engaging Laos: Strategic Part of the ASEAN Puzzle | Center for Strategic and International Studies
Engaging Laos: Strategic Part of the ASEAN Puzzle | Center for Strategic and International Studies. A thoughtful overview that probes the role Laos could play in relation to Burma, Vietnam, and China. If our relationship with China goes even the least bit sour, we are going to be spending a lot more time in the region.
How Australia Sees America’s Priorities in Asia
U.S. Strategic Priorities in Asia.
by Rod Lyon
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Canberra
Australia is trying to figure out where it will stand as US strategy and capabilities in Asia evolve. This report offers a fascinating mirror view of how the US is seen by one of its closest – and most nervous – allies.
The Unexpurgated Pentagon Papers
Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnem Task force (The “Pentagon Papers“).
U.S. Department of Defense
1967
7,000pp.
In June of 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked significant portions of this report, blowing the lid off of the way the United States had conducted the war in Vietnem.
Today, thanks to the National Archives, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, and the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, the entire, original, unredacted seven thousand page report has been declassified and made available to the public. It also includes background documentation and a complete account of the peace negotiations, none of which were previously available.
That this release will become one of the most important documents in the study of the war is axiomatic. What is better, it is available at no charge to anyone with the desire and bandwidth to download its 1.5 gigabytes of PDF files. Whether you have read the original edition published by the New York Times or not, historians, political scientists, and Vietnam War buffs will want to grab this. I’m scheduling it for when I am back in the US, or someplace with really fast download speeds.
Related articles
- Review: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (steadydietoffilm.typepad.com)
- The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed. Fed Crimes Too Big To Understand? (worldnewsrecord.wordpress.com)
- Ah, Those “11 Words”! (nsarchive.wordpress.com)
Are the Afghans Learning to Defend Themselves?
Security Force Assistance in Afghanistan: Identifying Lessons for Future Efforts | RAND.
Stripping the politics and the rhetoric out of the question, RAND scholars Terrence Kelly, Nora Bensahel, and Olga Oliker dig into whether and how the Security Force Assistance (SFA) program has been effective in the Afghan counterinsurgency.
The idea behind SFA is getting the Afghans to fight their own internal battles. In some cases, arguably Iraq, that program works, allowing US troops to go home even when there is an active insurgency.
I would not expect RAND to be as caustic in its analysis as other sources, but in a way that can actually be accepted and acted upon inside the E-ring in the Pentagon, what RAND says delivers a punch, and it is read carefully.
Well worth the read for those watching the evolving situation in Southwest Asia.
Related articles
- Premature to leave Afghanistan: Smith (news.theage.com.au)
- Post-Petraeus Afghanistan: Turning Defeat into Transition (time.com)
- Afghan Official: Talks on Track for Longterm Pact (foxnews.com)
A Primer for Afghan Peace Talks
Image via Wikipedia
It seems likely that the focus in Afghanistan is going to shift away from eliminating the Taliban to finding a negotiated solution for coexistence between the tribes and factions that have found themselves on one side or another of the current conflict. The concern of all is that history has a tendency to echo, and nobody really wants to return to a state of constant, unmediated civil war.
Part of that challenge is ensuring that those negotiating on behalf of the world’s great powers are well-briefed: an abiding danger in any mediated negotiation is that the mediators are badly informed. Against that challenge, James Shinn and James Dobbins have written Afghan Peace Talks: A Primer. In the book they not only introduce the parties to the talks and the challenges those talks will face, but also a pathway to an agreement, and a draft framework for the agreement itself.
Whether peace can be brought to a region fraught by conflict for the better part of two centuries, where the wounds between tribes remain fresh and deep, is a matter whose answer lies far beyond the tactics of negotiation and whether the outsiders are prepared to engage effectively. Each of the Afghan tribes and the Taliban must believe that their best interests like in cooperation rather than conflict, a matter that speaks to their respective visions of the future and Nashian game-theory more than great power politics.
Yet great power unity is essential for success, and the authors lay out a thoughtful framework of international influence and interests in the process. They recognize that if the U.S., Russia, India, China, or Iran decide that a negotiated peace in Afghanistan is not in their best interests, the conflict will continue. Thus there are really two layers of peace talks: the one in which Kabul and the Taliban agree to peace, and one in which the rest of the world agrees to stand together to preserve the delicate balance.
In breaking these challenges down to their fundamentals, Shinn and Dobbins have done much more than create a briefing book for negotiators: they have given all of us a program and a scorecard that will make the otherwise byzantine maze of Afghan politics much more comprehensible.
Related articles
- Taliban Talks Raise Fears of Talibanization (waronterrornews.typepad.com)
- US And Afghanistan In Taliban Peace Talks (news.sky.com)
- Talks on new US-Afghan pact strains relations (sfgate.com)
- AP EXCLUSIVE: Afghans scuttle US-Taliban talks (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Afghanistan scuttles secret talks between U.S., Taliban (ctv.ca)
Saving the Kurds
Image via Wikipedia
If things go as currently planned, the U.S. military will be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. Regardless of the other issues facing Iraq as a nation, one that concerns the U.S. and most countries in the region is the matter of how to help the Arab peoples and the Kurds in the region find a modus vivendi.
In Managing Arab-Kurd Tensions in Northern Iraq After the Withdrawal of US Troops, Larry Hanauer, Jeffrey Martini, and Omar Al-Shahery point out that the modest pace of Iraqi reconstruction politics makes it unlikely that a domestic political solution will come in time. They make clear that the U.S. will need to maintain involvement in Northern Iraq to manage the issue until Iraq can craft a federalist system that will allow for a degree of Kurdish autonomy.
The authors advocate using a series of “Confidence Building Measures” (CBMs) to keep inter-communal tensions low enough in the interim to allow for a longer-term solution to come out of Baghdad.
Saddam Hussein’s solution to the problem of Kurds within his borders was to kill as many as possible and thrust the rest on Turkey and Syria as refugees. The authors are trying to save Iraq’s current government from having to go down that path simply because nobody was paying attention after the last American dogface was flown out of the region. They understand that failure to do so will have a polarizing effect on the politics of the entire region for decades to come.
Related articles
- Theocracy of Islam Kills Fifty Kurds in Iraq (americandefenseleague.wordpress.com)
- Iran shells Iraq’s Kurds – again (waronterrornews.typepad.com)
- How the Internet Mourns: “But What About the Kurds?” (theawl.com)
- Barzani: Article 140 must be enacted if Kurdistan is to stay part of Iraq (currencynewshound.wordpress.com)
- Neocons’ Iraq Criticism Rings Hollow (3quarksdaily.com)
- Inside an Iraqi Kurd refugee village (bbc.co.uk)
The British Army and Modern Counterinsurgency
The attention given to failed efforts to contain insurgencies like Vietnam tend to drown out the cases of successful outcomes where insurgent groups were defeated. Of the successes, the one that proponents and practitioners of counterinsurgency continue to come back to is Britain’s defeat of Malayan communists between 1947 and 1960. Given the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, interest in the lessons of the Malayan Emergency is high again.
As a result, there is plenty of current literature on the topic, the best of which is probably John A. Nagl’s Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. Contemporary accounts, on the other hand, drawn as they are from the context of the times, can often be more enlightening as they lack the additional haze that comes with the passage of time. Such an account is Riley Sunderland’s Army Operations in Malaya, 1947-1960.
Given unprecedented access to the files of the War Office in the United Kingdom, Sunderland made his study just as the U.S. was expanding its involvement in Vietnam. The intent, therefore, was to give the U.S. Army as much insight as possible into how to fight a successful counterinsurgency. The work is interesting not only because it provides some interesting perspective on what the Americans did and did not learn before escalating the Vietnam effort, but also because it informs the today’s conflicts without using Vietnam as a yardstick.
Even a superficial analysis suggests that the U.S. Army could have learned little from the Malayan experience. The British succeeded in their effort because they were able to contain the growth of the insurgency long enough to secure the countryside. By the time the U.S. showed up in Vietnam in force, not only was the guerrilla infrastructure well into its second decade of development, it had a sympathetic and supportive sovereign country next door to sustain it. Nonetheless, some of America’s more successful tactics in Vietnam (the USMC’s Combined Action Platoons, for example) were rooted in the Malayan playbook.
Sunderland’s account is a testament to the need to stop insurgencies early, and the futility of fighting them once they have reached a critical mass. For anyone interested in whether and how it is possible to quell an uprising with armed force, this book will provide much food for thought.
Related articles
- The Success of The Special Air Service in Malaya (socyberty.com)
- Operation Nasi Kerabu: Finding Patani In An Islamic Insurgency (ZI Publications, 2011) (themalaysianreader.com)
Bringing the Bad Boys Home
Image via Wikipedia
One of the most important aspects of a successful counterinsurgency effort is how the government handles former insurgents once they have effectively switched sides. Simply letting them go leaves them susceptible to the same forces that put them into the insurgency in the first place, but relocation leaves them both disconnected and alienated, once again making them perfect recruiting fodder for the movements they had left.
In Reintegrating Afghan Insurgents, Seth Jones examines the experience in Afghanistan and comes up with recommendations for turning former insurgents into productive members of society, even as the insurgency continues.
Jones’ recommendations are operational rather than political or strategic: to a certain extent he assumes that the insurgency is on the wrong side of history. Nonetheless, what makes this a worthy read is that the conclusions apply not only to Afghanistan, but to any insurgency. Jones keeps his recommendations short and to the point, making this accessible to the layman as well as the expert. Free download.
Where is the U.S./R.O.K. Relationship 10 Years After 9/11?
Norman Levin at the RAND Corporation has been thinking and writing intelligently about East Asia generally and Korea specifically since I was in high school. His insights into US relations with the region are insightful and pithy.
His 2004 monograph Do the Ties Still Bind? The US-ROK Security Relationship After 9/11 is no exception. Levin’s point then, as I suspect it would be today, is that since the Cold War ended, we have casually tossed away a major opportunity by not giving greater attention to South Korea. Little has changed in the US-ROK relationship in the past seven years, so this slim volume is still relevant, especially as we turn to the South Koreans to help defuse the growing threat of a nuclear North Korea in transition.
One of Levin’s points is that we should stop talking so much about the future of the alliance and start attending to the problems that beset it today. He is right, of course, but unfortunately it is no longer practical to examine the US-ROK security relationship in isolation from the rest of the region. By necessity, US policy makers have found it convenient to see Korea as a guaranteed friend as the US grapples with wider regional and global issues. Even leaving aside 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Russia’s aspirations, China’s ambitions, and Japan’s budding defense renaissance set the tone in the region even more than Kim’s nukes.
Nor does it help that South Korea has a complex relationship with the North, a vital relationship with China, and a quiet rivalry with Japan. The security and economic interests of the US and the ROK diverge in a growing number of areas, a fact that is the likely driver of the ROK’s insistence on a more “equal” relationship with the US.
Levin’s book is a welcome window into the growing complexities of what was for five decades America’s most dependable alliance.
Related Articles
- Is China Also Clueless About North Korea? (time.com)
- The Less the U.S. Does In East Asia, the Better (radcontra.wordpress.com)
- Clinton Pledges Trade Pact With Korea By End Of Year (huffingtonpost.com)
- S. Korea Exports Rise to Record, Adds to Rate Increase Pressure (businessweek.com)
- US Alliance Commitment to Korea in the Age of Austerity: Big Cuts Loom (asiansecurityblog.wordpress.com)
Rethinking U.S. Policy in Southwest Asia
Immediately before Richard Amitage passed away earlier this year, he chaired an independent task force on Southwest Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The result was U.S. Strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, a book that provides both a nuanced look at the US policy choices in the region and recommendations to fix what is broken.
The book is not a meditation on whether the US and NATO have any business in the region, nor does it offer an endorsement to the Obama Administration’s policies. Instead, the report offers qualified support, suggesting that the problem is not the policy but how we are executing on the ground.
I pay attention to Pakistan and Afghanistan because China does. The next four years in Pakistan and Afghanistan will define the limits of U.S. power and its ability to influence events in Asia. As much as China would like to see American influence circumscribed, having the countries slide into a chaotic power-vacuum or serve as the cradle of a fundamentalist caliphate would threaten China’s stability more directly than it would harm U.S. security.
On his deathbead, Richard Armitage was haunted by fears of chaos in the region. What haunts me is the prospect of a new great game between India, China, Russia, and Iran, all focused on Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the anger of tribes sick to death of living on a battleground. Read this short book: it offers a narrow path away from that future.
Related Articles
- Lawmakers reject upbeat Afghanistan-Pakistan view (sfgate.com)
- The Petreaus doctrine. If this is winning, than what is losing? (stevenleesdouglas.wordpress.com)
- Pakistan rejects US assessment of its terror fight (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Reading: it’s all about Asia this week…
-
Asian Companies Wary of Social Media – WSJ.com
A decent article, and I like Bob Pickard’s quotes. I wonder, however, if the problem with social media shouldn’t have been extended to a larger problem with communicating generally. The social media issue is a symptom, not the problem.
-
Hacker vs. Hacker – BusinessWeek
Hackers aren’t so cute anymore, are they?
-
Amazon Crusader. Chevron Pest. Fraud? – BusinessWeek
A fascinating read. What I am trying to decipher is whether this is a brilliantly-staged character assassination on the part of a gigantic corporation and its expensive hired guns, or whether in fact this fellow Donziger is, in fact, a caricature of an ambulance-chaser. Almost as good as a Grisham novel
-
China’s Facebook Syndrome – BusinessWeek
There are good articles about the internet in China, and there are great articles about the internet in China. This, sadly, is neither. Rather than provide a nuanced view of why local internet companies do well in China and why the foreigners fail, the authors go instead for the Single-Factor Soft Kill: those darn protectionist Chinese.
Unfortunately, because this is BW, it will likely become a meme.
If only Tiff Roberts or Bruce Einhorn had written it.
-
George Monbiot’s writing this in a Guardian blog is a guaranteed flame-magnet, but it is important that the debate around nclear power does not devolve into an environmentalist rout. Hard, hard questions have to be fully answered about HOW we move forward before we start pulling the plug on every single nuclear plant out there.
I have yet to see someone prove, using figures in BTUs, that renewables are the answer to the problem given current and projected generation capabilities. What this crisis should, and I think will do, is push funding of alternative energy research to the top of the priority list.
-
America’s Navy and the rise of China – The Washington Post
Of all of the conservative pundits of the Neocon generation, George Will remains my sole favorite because he is the most intelligent of the group. This editorial, while interesting in its perspective from the Naval War College, does little to actually address Chinese intentions. It merely points to the importance of China’s focus on developing a blue water navy.
Which, frankly, is good, because we really need to go no further at this point. To bang the gong and rend our clothing over China’s construction of a small aircraft carrier would be foolish. But to take note that China, traditionally a land power, has finally acknowledged that its rise demands a maritime dimension, is necessary and appropriate.
Now if only the U.S. Navy could figure out how to buy ships and planes without bankrupting the nation, we’d be in great shape.
-
Japan nuclear crisis escalates | World news | The Guardian
The Guarddog offers a remarkably even-handed discussion of the events and makes some salient points, primarily that TEPCO’s biggest error was not screaming for help much sooner. Never, never, let the guys appointed to run the business day-to-day handle a crisis of any magnitude. Get experts immediately.
All of Japan will pay the price of TEPCO’s face.
-
China Suspends New Nuclear Projects as Radiation Fears Spread | China Digital Times (CDT)
Samuel Wade at China Digital Times does an excellent job wrapping up reports of China’s plans to review its nuclear program.
-
Jungle of Problems: Beijing’s Failure to Protect Consumers – China Real Time Report – WSJ
In what I think is one of the best pieces he has ever written for the Wall Stret Journal, Boalt Law professor Stanley Lubman obliquely raises a compelling specter: if the Party and the government do not compel local governments to start protecting consumer interests as a first priority, they are allowing a vacuum into which non-governmental forces could step.
This prospect scares the daylights out of the Party, because they believe that the emergence of popular non-governmental associations could form the nexus of a viable political opposition. One need look no further than Poland’s Solidarity movement to understand their fear.
-
Be Afraid, Very Afraid – Yahoo! News
An entertaining review of Ron Rosenbaum’s “How the End Begins,” a pessimistic but thought-provoking book about the prospects of nuclear war in a post-cold war world.
The Iraq Effect: The Middle East After the Iraq War
More compelling Chinese New Year reading.
In this excellent analysis, researchers have pieced together what remains the most important untold story out of Operation Iraqi Freedom: American arms and blood have opened the door for opportunities for Russia and China.
This study raises some critical questions about who should be policing the global system – America, or an international consortium.
Current Studies in Japanese Law
Japanese law has always been something of a mystery to those who do not practice the profession, but given the unique relationships between government, business, and even organized crime in Japanese society, the law in Japan makes for interesting reading.
If you’re interested in the Japanese legal system, labor unrest, or crime in Japan, this book is sure to be of interest. It covers issues such as strikes, police, the court system, and the practice of law in Japan.
Managing a Changing Relationship
This pdf book provides an interesting retrospective on the China-Japan relationship. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the context of the currently fraught relations between these two powers in Northeast Asia.
India as a New Global Leader
This excellent book is composed of essays from four expatriate Indian experts in economics, politics, and international relations. Published by the Foreign Policy Centre in the UK, the book examines India as a bridging power, the unique attributes India’s diaspora gives its diplomacy, India’s knowledge economy, and the challenge of energy security for India’s growing population.
In the face of growing rhetoric about the brick countries, it is refreshing to see an analysis that offers thoughtful examination of India’s challenges as well its opportunities. While the short volume is certainly not comprehensive, it does provide an excellent overview in the necessary balance to better evaluate India’s future.
Contributors include Sunil Khilnani from Johns Hopkins, Parak Khanna from the Brookings Institution, consultant Prasenjit Basu, and Brahma Chellaney from the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.
