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 …
Continue reading "Nobody running in 2008 is qualified to be president"
Novelist Thomas Mallon, writing at The American Scholar, provides a list of questions -- no answers -- about "the future of the humanities in America." (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)For a short piece of ten questions, Mallon provides an awful lot to think about. I particularly like number ten: "Are we also willing to admit that …
I can't say that I'm surprised to hear that North Korea delayed the start of normalization talks with Japan in Hanoi, right after reports out of New York suggested that the US and North Korea had positive talks.The unfolding of events seems almost too scripted to be real: just as international opprobrium falls on Abe's …
Continue reading All going according to plan…but whose plan?
Apologies for the lag in posting; life in Nagata-cho has gotten busy, leaving little time to dash off notes.In any case, I want to call attention to an article in Foreign Affairs by Tufts University professor and blogger Daniel Drezner, called "The New New World Order."Drezner argues that US foreign policy in recent years has …
Continuing from my previous post, this post will focus on the second Armitage-Nye Report's vision of Asia. My thoughts on the report's recommendations for the US-Japan alliance can be read here. (The report can be downloaded from CSIS here.)All of the report's predictions and policy recommendations stem from a principle stated on its first page: …
Continue reading Dissecting the second Armitage-Nye Report, part 2
Having read the new Armitage-Nye Report published by CSIS -- once again, available here -- I shall, as promised, provide more thorough commentary on its contents.As previously noted, the report is subtitled "Getting Asia Right Through 2020," with its purpose being to outline US Asia policy for the next two to three presidential administrations, regardless …
Continue reading Dissecting the second Armitage-Nye Report, part 1
It seems that someone in Washington is finally calling attention to the US government's dangerous fixation on the Middle East -- as freelance writer and onetime NYT correspondent Richard Halloran writes at RealClearPolitics, the Congressional Research Service has produced a report (available for downloaded here) warning that insufficient attention is being paid to the Asia-Pacific …
Yesterday I wrote about rising concerns that Japan will be criticized regarding the cheap yen at the G7 meeting this weekend in Germany; Japan, however, may also be running into trouble at the six-party talks due to restart this week in Beijing.This article in the FT hints at growing signs that Washington is increasingly open …
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is in Beijing this week at the head of a mission that includes Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.Will these talks achieve concrete results?I have my doubts, because I don't think talks of this nature can "resolve" long-term structural changes in the global economy. As noted in this article in the International …
Jeane Kirkpatrick, US ambassador to the UN during Reagan's first term and AEI senior fellow before and after her service, died last week at the age of eighty.Having spoken with her at length on one occasion and seen her speak on a number of occasions (and having helped her down the stairs once when a …
Tobias S. Harris 