Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
South Korea

Revolution in Japan

by | Aug 28, 2009

Japan has been a one-party oligarchy for a very long time. This may not be a polite thing to say about a democracy and a U.S. ally. But Japan has been ruled by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for the last 54 years, except for a few nanoseconds after the Cold War when the ruling party temporarily lost its grip on power. Because of this stifling consensus among a small political elite, “Japanese democracy” has an oxymoronic connotation and Japanese politics has been one of the most boring topics in the world.

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Japan-ROK Relations on the Rocks

by | Jul 8, 2009

Japan and South Korea are allies. That means they are constrained from going to war with one another. Despite a long history of conflict — including Japan’s colonization of Korea during the first half of the 20th century — the two countries have had to make nice as part of their anti-communist alliance with the United States. For the better part of the Cold War, the two countries suppressed, or were forced to suppress, their mutual antagonisms. 

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Playing the Hawk With North Korea

by | Jul 1, 2009

SEOUL – If the Obama administration needed a rogue nation to demonstrate its foreign policy resolve, Central Casting couldn’t have supplied a better candidate than North Korea. The government in Pyongyang routinely promises to unleash destruction of biblical proportions on its enemies. It has pulled out of international agreements, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has sentenced two U.S. journalists to 12 years of hard labor on the charge of violating its borders. And after conducting two nuclear tests, it now declares itself a nuclear power.

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Dealing with North Korea’s Tests

by , | Jun 19, 2009

North Korea has conducted its second nuclear test. The big question now is whether the world’s response will recognize the unique features of this most recent intensification of the crisis, and so effectively answer Pyongyang’s latest challenge to global nuclear stability and the embryonic disarmament renaissance.

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Outsourcing North Korea Policy

by | Jun 11, 2009

The United States has basically thrown up its hands in the current crisis with North Korea. Washington has mounted an aggressive campaign at the UN to further isolate the world’s noisiest nuclear aspirant. But no one thinks that UN actions will have much effort.

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Korean Tragedies

by | May 29, 2009

Future historians will view the Bush administration’s assertion of unilateral U.S. power and authority as the last gasp of the American empire. The imperial overstretch that historian Paul Kennedy diagnosed near the end of the Cold War is finally hitting us: the banking crisis, the recession, the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ever-increasing Pentagon budget.

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East Asia’s History Wars Rage On

by | Sep 18, 2008

“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.”

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