“What the hell have you come here for? We’ve got nothing here! The mines have shut down and those bastards in their offices are corrupt to the bone! We had a strike, but there’s no way of controlling them. It’s not like the USA where everyone’s rich and you’ve got democracy. Shulan Town? It’s a joke.”
U.S. President George W. Bush’s upcoming trip to South Korea in mid-February is an opportunity for the Bush administration to demonstrate its new vision by explicitly support the “sunshine policy” of South Korea’s President Kim Dae-Jung–a policy that has led to significant reduction in tensions in one of the last remaining hotspots of the cold war. Over the past year, the Bush administration has demonstrated little of the flexibility and vision necessary to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula. Instead, the administration has been inconsistent and obstructionist.
Immediately after the September 11 attacks in New York, South Korean and U.S. forces went into a state of heightened security alert that the North claimed was “threatening,” leading Pyongyang to break off ongoing negotiations on family reunions that remain stalled even today. Despite this reversal in negotiations, North Korea reacted to September 11 by unilaterally moving to sign two UN antiterrorism treaties and later expressing its willingness to sign an additional five.
President George W. Bush will visit Seoul for the first time in mid-February, as part of a major East Asian trip that includes visits to Tokyo and Beijing. Republic of Korea President Kim Dae Jung is urging Bush to give support to his “Sunshine Policy” toward North Korea and return to the policy of “engaging” Pyongyang pursued by the Clinton administration. A year after taking office, Bush has presided over a cacophony of mixed signals and diplomatic backsliding that has left U.S. policy toward Korea in disarray. But there is still a chance to revive crucial negotiations with North Korea that are deeply in the interest of American and Northeast Asian peace and security.
It was a speech foretold. After being compelled to make the “Friend-or-foe” choice after the September 11 attacks, Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf in his policy address on January 12th set about redefining the role of religion in Pakistani society and its domestic and external politics, with a special reference to Kashmir and terrorism. Islam, he said, has been misused and the Pakistani people exploited in its name. The general condemned acts of terrorism and in particular September 11, October 1, and December 13–the last two dates are of suicide attacks in Srinagar the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir) and on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi.
Since the December 13 attack on the Indian Parliament, the Indian government has not been engaged in the politics of actually preparing to go to war but rather in the politics of brinksmanship.
With the military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the mopping up stage, the United States and Russia are struggling to identify the boundaries of strategic cooperation. Initial optimism about broad cooperation has faded. In Moscow, officials and foreign policy experts are now concerned that the United States is experiencing “dizziness from success,” and is embarking on a unilateralist course.
More and more Pashtun leaders, angered by the mounting civilian casualty toll from U.S. bombing in eastern Afghanistan, are openly criticizing the government of Hamid Karzai for backing the operation.
If Americans needed any reminding how, during the cold war, U.S. policymakers subordinated Wilsonian principles of self-determination to the larger anticommunist struggle, they should read several secret U.S. documents surrounding Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor obtained and released this week by the independent National Security Archive (NSA). The documents confirm that visiting U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave a green light to President Suharto for the invasion.
Key Points