North-east Asia is a critically important locus of geopolitics, but it lacks a regional security structure.
South Korea: Still Dreaming of Regionalism
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South Korea
East Asia’s History Wars Rage On
“Right now seems to be a relatively quiet moment in East Asia regarding historical controversies,” observes Daqing Yang, a professor of Asian history at George Washington University and a participant in a Sep.15 seminar on historical dialogue and reconciliation sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and the university’s Sigur Centre. “But just a few years back, heads of state canceled their summit meetings because of a visit to a particular shrine in Tokyo or because of history textbooks.”
Mad Cows, Mad People
Just months after taking office, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak’s popularity plunged below 20%. People poured into the streets in unprecedented numbers – in the largest demonstrations in Korean history – to protest against him and his government. His cabinet offered to resign en masse, and he had to sack all seven members of the Blue House senior secretariat. He was forced to abandon key policies such as his plan to build a canal across the full length of the country. And he felt compelled to apologize, twice, for his policy blunders and "lack of communication skills."
North Korea No Longer an Enemy?
In Korea in early June, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced what could potentially be the greatest shift in U.S policy toward the Korean peninsula in the last 50 years. Though the Western media paid little attention, the proposed change in tour lengths of U.S. troops stationed in Korea from 12 months to 36 months has profound implications.
South Korea’s Beef with America
On June 10, one million South Koreans from all walks of life poured onto the streets of Seoul, the nation’s capital, to protest the newly elected President Lee Myung Bak’s deal with the United States to fully open Korean markets to U.S. beef.
The Failed Expectations of U.S Trade Policy
As the principal negotiator for the landmark market access agreement that led to China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), I have reflected on whether the agreements we negotiated really lived up to our expectations. A sober reflection has led me to conclude that those trade agreements did not.
Food Safety on the Butcher’s Block
On April 11, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) released a report that found that of the national efforts to improve U.S. food safety, “none of the targets were reached in 2007.” According to the CDC, 76 million Americans – one in four – come down with food poisoning every year. Among the most common is E. coli, a byproduct of the system of industrialized animal agribusiness. Americans have a common perception that the problem stems from food coming from outside the country – from China, say, or Mexico. Instead, it’s our food that’s the problem.
What Lee Can Learn From Bush?
On the occasion of their first summit, George W. Bush should have a private, one-on-one, conservative-to-conservative chat with Lee Myung-bak. In this chat, the U.S. President should tell the cautionary tale of how his administration did everything it could to repudiate the North Korea policy of its predecessor ― only to end up in the very same position.
Talking Peace, Preparing for War
Northeast Asia heaved a sigh of relief at the latest news of a breakthrough in the nuclear negotiations with North Korea. The prospects of integrating North Korea into the international community and constructing a peace and security structure for the region have never been rosier.
Asia’s Hidden Arms Race
Often what is hidden in our world is so simply because no cares or thinks to look. Yes, a fair amount of attention has recently been given to the staggering new Pentagon budget request, the largest since World War II, that the Bush administration has just submitted to Congress for fiscal year 2009. It comes in at $515.4 billion – a 7.5% hike for an already bloated Pentagon — and that doesn’t include all sorts of Defense Department funds that will be stowed away elsewhere (even if in plain sight), nor does it include the couple of hundred billion dollars or more in funds to be appropriated largely via “supplemental” requests for the ongoing military disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the official budget, however, includes staggering sums for procuring major new weapons systems and for R&D leading to ever more such big-ticket items in the future. According to Steve Kosiak, vice president of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, “The fiscal year 2009 budget may be about as good as it gets for defense contractors.” When all is said and done, this will probably be a trillion dollar “defense” budget. As it happens, military budgets like this have a multiplier effect globally. After all, there’s no such thing as a one-nation arms race. It’s just that no one here thinking about what we’re about to feed the Pentagon pays much attention to such things. Fortunately, John Feffer, an expert on military policy and Asia, has been doing just that. He is the co-director of a particularly interesting website, Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington — with which Tomdispatch hopes to collaborate on projects in the future. (To subscribe to FPIF’s e-news service, click here.) In the following piece, he brings genuine arms-race news to all of us. Yes, Virginia, there is indeed an arms race underway; it’s taking off in Northeast Asia; and it’s dangerous. (Introduction by TomDispatch’s editor Tom Engelhardt.)