Editor’s Note: This op-ed originally appeared in the Boston Globe on 4/5)
When North Korea declared that it was planning to launch a satellite, the United States should have shrugged and gone about its business. Instead, the Obama administration has exaggerated the importance of the launch by treating it as a national security threat.
The war that ended 20 years ago has lived on in a menu of weapons systems we have continued to develop, modify, and build at ever increasing cost, if not utility, since then. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ announcement of significant cuts in several of those systems signals that in a new administration and a severe fiscal crisis, this Cold War legacy may finally be winding down.
Yugoslavia, though you cannot find it any longer on maps, is still very much with us. The wars and political turmoil that convulsed this multiethnic country in the 1990s continue to reverberate today. These aftershocks can be felt in the standoff around Kosovo’s independence, the political fragmentation in Bosnia, the conflict between Macedonia and Greece, and the failure of European integration to encompass most of what was once Eastern Europe’s most Western-leaning country.
When North Korea declared that it was planning to launch a satellite, the United States should have shrugged and gone about its business. Instead, the Obama administration has exaggerated the importance of the launch by treating it as a national security threat.
The deliberations that took place in Tokyo after World War II, which led to 25 guilty verdicts and the execution of seven Japanese, helped shape the international law around war crimes.