Asia & Pacific Archives - Page 102 of 382

Marching Orders for Japan’s Reactionaries

by Jon Reinsch | Oct 18, 2012

Richard Armitage is at it again. George W. Bush’s deputy secretary of state has made a career of telling Japan what to do. When then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had second thoughts about joining the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq, Armitage told an official, “Don’t try to back off.” Earlier, he had advised Japan (in Gavan McCormack’s paraphrase) to “pull its head out of the sand and make sure the Rising Sun flag was visible in the Afghanistan war.”

Hawaii: Head of the Tentacled Beast

by Jon Letman | Oct 18, 2012

The announcement of America’s “Asia-Pacific pivot” by its first Hawaiia-born president was highly fitting, since the Hawaiian Islands are at the piko (“navel” in Hawaiian) of this vast region. A less flattering metaphor for Hawaii’s role in the Pacific is what Maui educator and native Hawaiian activist Kaleikoa Kaeo has called a giant octopus whose tentacles reach across the ocean clutching Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, Jeju island, Guam—and, at times, the Philippines, American Samoa, Wake Island, Bikini Atoll, and Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Japan’s Right Seeks to Leverage Islands Dispute With China Into a Nuclear-Arms Program

by Conn Hallinan | Oct 17, 2012

Japan’s right-wing is trying to make the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands dispute an example of why Japan needs nuclear weapons.

The First Year of Peace on the Korean Peninsula

by Christine Hong | Oct 11, 2012

This year may signal the 59^th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice Agreement, yet according to South Korean peace activists like Kang, it signals the last year of war on the Korean peninsula. I spoke recently with Kang Jeong-Koo, a longtime activist-scholar and a steadfast champion of peace, at the Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea (SPARK) headquarters in Seoul.

R2P Strikes a Chord: Sovereignty Alone Is Not Enough

by Ian Williams | Oct 11, 2012

Out of deference to its founding principles of respect for sovereignty, the United Nations has failed to protect populations from slaughter.

Review: Obama and China’s Rise

by Shiran Shen | Oct 9, 2012

The main geostrategic challenge facing Asia—as well as the U.S. presence there—has been the extraordinary rise of China in the past decade. In Obama and China’s Rise, Jeffrey Bader, a veteran diplomat of over 30 years, recounts his experiences working for Obama’s presidential campaign and serving as the senior director for East Asian affairs on Obama’s National Security Council from January 2009 to April 2011.

Agent Orange on Okinawa: The Smoking Gun

by Jon Mitchell | Oct 8, 2012

Since 1945, the small Japanese island of Okinawa has been unwilling host to a massive U.S. military presence and a storehouse for a witches’ brew of dangerous munitions and chemicals, including nerve gas, mustard gas, and nuclear missiles. However, there is one weapon the Pentagon has always denied that it kept on Okinawa: Agent Orange. But a recently discovered U.S. army report puts lie to those denials once and for all.

Romney’s Debate Zinger About China Provides Opening for Constructive Policy Debate

by Kevin Martin | Oct 5, 2012

Mitt Romney’s comment about China in the first debate was no doubt intended to capitalize on American concerns about the U.S.-China economic relationship

From Pacific Pivot to Green Revolution

by John Feffer, Emanuel Pastreich | Oct 4, 2012

The low rolling hills of the Dalateqi region of Inner Mongolia spread out gently behind a delightful painted farmhouse. Goats and cows graze peacefully on the surrounding fields. But walk due west just 100 meters from the farmhouse and you’ll confront a far less pastoral reality: endless waves of sand, absent any sign of life, that stretch as far as the eye can see.

Postcard from… Darwin

by Graeme Dunstan | Sep 27, 2012

When the first contingent of 250 U.S. Marines flew into Darwin last April, they were greeted on the tarmac with a personal handshake by Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith and welcomed to the city by the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory (NT), Paul Henderson. When they left, there were no politicians to be seen.