The thinkable is finally the actual.After more than a year since it became plausible for the US to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism as a reward for cooperation in negotiations over the North Korean nuclear program, the US State Department has announced that it will remove North Korea from …
Continue reading The US finally goes through with delisting North Korea
The Asahi Shimbun has published an op-ed by Richard Danzig and Joseph Nye, who as foreign policy advisers to Senator Barack Obama outline how an Obama administration will approach relations with Japan.Superificially, there are not too many points of divergence with the Yomiuri op-ed penned by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman last month.Both Danzig-Nye …
Continue reading A problem-oriented or a partner-oriented US Asia policy
After nearly six months of work, during which it has passed from the hands of one leading US foreign policy periodical to another, an article questioning the fundamentals of the US-Japan alliance that I have co-authored with Douglas Turner has finally seen the light of day.It is available online here at Policy Innovations, a publication …
Stephen Colbert interviewed Madeleine Bordallo, Guam's congresswoman, Wednesday evening. Unfortunately Congresswoman Bordallo didn't get a chance to answer the question about Japanese tourists.http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/video_player/view/default/swf.jhtml
This weekend, the US presidential campaign comes to Guam, the island territory closer to Japan than the continental US that will soon be home to a vastly expanded US military presence, if all goes according to plan.Guam will be holding a Democratic caucus, and with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton struggling for every delegate, the …
I have learned that Ozawa Ichiro reportedly dispatched a DPJ member to observe Barack Obama's presidential campaign in Texas in advance of Tuesday's voting.He could have saved some money and looked closer to home at the politics of former prime minister Koizumi Junichiro.There are a few obvious superficial similarities — and a few equally obvious …
...Now that the city of Obama has given him his very own hissho daruma, described by Asahi as an "indispensable item" for Japanese elections.
Being back in the US, I have had a chance to reacquaint myself with American politics — and to be reminded of why I find the American political class so disappointing. The problem isn't just the failure to act; it's a failure to find new conceptual categories for the problems of the twenty-first century. US …
After winning the Florida Republican primary on Tuesday, Arizona Senator John McCain has more or less solidified his position as the likely Republican presidential candidate. Sankei's Komori Yoshihisa was quick to praise Senator McCain today for his unstinting support for the US-Japan alliance, pointing to lines from Senator McCain's essay in the November/December issue of …
I am back to New York after my sojourn in Tokyo.In honor of my return to the US, here are links to a couple posts at The Reality-Based Community on Barack Obama and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, written by Steven Teles, a former professor of mine. I particularly like his dissection of the sheer …
Tobias S. Harris 