The Jiji wire service carried two articles today that report on South Korean officials criticizing Japan for its focus on the abductions issue in the multilateral de-nuclearization talks.First, Yu Myong-hwan, South Korea's newly appointed ambassador to Japan, said at a press conference with Japanese journalists in Seoul that the resolving the nuclear issue must take …
Category: Observing Japan Blog
Alliance or agreement?
Talks resume in Beijing on the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and the big story is that Japan and North Korea came to blows over the abductions issue.This was always the danger of Japan's pushing the abductions issue at all costs in the face of the North Korean stone wall: the US will have to …
China is not creating its own risk fleet…yet
In the years before World War I, Imperial Germany developed its "risk fleet" -- a large fleet of relatively little utility -- to force the Royal Navy to focus on defending the British Isles, a textbook example of the concept of a fleet in being.It is with this in mind that I read this op-ed …
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Assertive Japan
Michael Green's review of Kenneth Pyle's Japan Rising in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, is now online here (via RealClearPolitics). I previously discussed a draft version of Pyle's book here.I find Green's review interesting because it gets at the ambiguities of Japan's re-emergence. Green (and Pyle) are correct to point out that Japan's strategic …
The future of American power
I found this post by Suzanne Nossel at Democracy Arsenal fascinating, in that it is a fair, reasonable critique of the Iraq War that does not indict the very idea of the US using its power in support of its values abroad.I particularly like her points "the US Military has limits" and "military power can't …
Seeking options
I found this op-ed by Gregory Clark in last Thursday's Japan Times fascinating. Clark suggests that North Korea may well be more open to an agreement with the US than commonly assumed, because Pyongyang is looking to expand its foreign policy options: "Even less is there any realization of an even more important factor possibly …
The california rolls are safe
After announcing plans to institute a certification system for Japanese restaurants overseas back in November, Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, headed by the beleaguered Matsuoka Toshikatsu (the subject of this superb book -- more on this soon), has decided to abandon these plans after opposition from citizens' groups and after a panel chaired …
China’s Good Cop?
When I read articles such as this one from the IHT, I have a hard time figuring out if China's Premier Wen Jiabao is simply playing good cop to the PLA's bad cop or if Wen actually believes the argument he advances at every opportunity.If it's the latter, then the bureaucratic infighting within the PRC's …
The Economist on the Japan-Australia agreement
The Economist this week weighs in on the Japan-Australia Security Declaration, the main point of which can be found halfway into the article: "...The louder the denials from both sides, the more evident is the main catalyst for the security pact: the rise of China."It's hard to deny that China's rise loomed large over security …
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"Nobody running in 2008 is qualified to be president"
So says The New Republic's John Judis, in an article that more or less sums up my take on the US presidential election that is still more than a year and a half away.Judis makes the case that foreign policy being the unique preserve of the presidency, the main criteria by which to evaluate presidential …
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Tobias S. Harris 