Left Flank

Dani Rodrik is now blogging (although he picked TP-yuck!)

Can we expect a Drezner vs. Rodrik match on BHTV soon?

It's time to party in Pyongyang, but uninvited guests are crying. Some even are wondering why their gifts are unopened.

On the American side, the Bush administration for all its bluster has demonstrated its prodigious talents at inter-departmental infighting, in this case, State vs. Treasury. Whatever else is said, what state could take the Bush administration seriously?

But, this is all prologue to what is really the big news about the solid Japan-US front against Pyongyang. The defiant words Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President George W. Bush fired at the North Koreans pale next to Tokyo's quiet resolution of the comfort women and other compensation claims, Abe's apology, and Abe's resolution to end the post-WW2 period. According to Ampontan:

It has long been a tradition in Japanese politics for the ruling party to form governments headed by specific prime ministers and assign them a particular task or tasks. This practice dates back to the days before Pearl Harbor. At that time, however, Cabinets tended to be short-lived—they disbanded once they completed their narrowly focused mission. Prime Ministers weren’t chosen because of their popularity with the public.

I would hazard a guess that the same principle is, at least in part, still functioning in the case of the Abe Cabinet. The LDP has certain tasks it wishes to accomplish, and it chose Mr. Abe as the man to fulfill that mission—and one reason is that he is the man who spurred the party into acting on those tasks to begin with. These include amending the Constitution, upgrading the Defense Agency to a Cabinet-level ministry (mission already accomplished), and closing the book on the Second World War. They realize this agenda will take several years to complete.

Meanwhile, Moscow is in a much more giving mood, and is not too concerned about the missed April 13 deadline:

Moscow had put its efforts into economic and energy initiatives that would give it a more pivotal position regarding the overall settlement of the six-party accords, particularly on the issue of providing North Korea with energy. Recently Moscow has tried to present itself globally as a willing and avid provider of nuclear power to counties that want or need it. Thus Konstantin Pulikovsky, Putin’s former viceroy for the Far East and a man with excellent connections to Kim Jong-Il and North Korea and now the co-chairman of the Russo-North Korean Economic Cooperation Commission and head of the Russian Federal Service for Ecological, Technological, and Nuclear Monitoring, has publicly stated that the only alternative source for ensuring energy supplies to all of the DPRK is nuclear energy (Interfax, April 18). Presumably the energy in question is intended to come from Russia as part of the six-party accords and would have to be paid for by the other four members besides North Korea. However, Pulikovsky also carefully evaded commenting on the question of whether Russia would enrich uranium for North Korea’s future peaceful nuclear energy program (Interfax, April 18).

Russia is also contemplating the issue of forgiving North Korea’s $8.8 billion debt to Russia, largely incurred during the Cold War. Certainly Pyongyang is hoping that Moscow will forgive that debt and has publicly expressed the hope that it will do so (Xinhua, RIA-Novosti, April 18). However, any movement on that debt will have to be a top-level political decision, and no answer has yet been forthcoming from Moscow regarding the North Korean request for debt forgiveness.

Finally, Gazprom has completed a transaction giving it a controlling stake in Sakhalin Energy, the operator of the Sakhalin-2 project. This transaction, Russia says, should give a major impetus to completing the project and allow it to provide liquefied natural gas to Japan, Korea, and even the West Coast of the United States (Russia and CIS Business and Financial Daily, April 19). Russia evidently hopes that if North Korea enters the international oil and gas market, Moscow could take advantage of that development and exploit it for its own benefit.

Here as elsewhere, Russia is trying to leverage energy as its principal instrument for enhancing its overall international position, as well as its standing in key regions like Northeast Asia. Moscow also clearly is trying to insist on its interests being defended and advanced while shirking any responsibility for the ultimate settlement and blaming the United States for anything that goes wrong. These have been consistent tactics in Russia’s Korean strategy since the start of the six-party process. But with North Korea’s recent invitation to UN inspectors to verify its nuclear programs, it appears that a new chapter, based on fulfillment of the February 13 accord, is possibly beginning. If that agreement is fulfilled, it presages the transformation of the overall regional security equation in Northeast Asia. Then it will be critical for Russia to adapt an old strategy and tactics to a new and unprecedented situation in a key region of the world.

Between legalistic human-rights activists, Tokyo, and an incompetent Bush administration on one hand, and more generous patrons like Russia, I wonder where North Korea will turn? Hint: it has nothing to do with doing the right thing!

This is what stupidity looks like. Some middle-aged Korean man in my neighborhood started a fire on White Mountain by smoking cigarettes. Many men like to leave the trails and enter the woods to smoke in secret and silence. There are plenty of signs warning against this sort of criminal behavior, and many areas are roped off.

I hope the firefighters catch the guy who did this!

Technorati : busan, cigarettes, fires, smoking

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Watching the Democratic candidates, I was struck with the foreboding feeling that the Democratic Party is shrinking. Not only will the attenuated primary campaign winnow the candidates down to a handful until one man or woman becomes the nominee, but the platform choices will also dwindle. As the Republicans ramp up in response, the preliminary testing of the waters will turn into a black versus white smear campaign. The strength of the Democratic Party is its diversity, often expressing itself in fractiousness. From this point, and 90 minutes was too brief a time to tackle all the problems facing the American political system, the Democratic Party is selling a brand. TMV's Joe Gandelman expressed this turn in the road well.

If you tuned in to tonight’s Democratic candidates debate and expected fireworks, you were likely disappointed. If you tuned in expecting a major gaffe, you were disappointed. If you tuned in expecting to see The Major Star emerge from the pack, you were disappointed.

But in a debate hampered by format as well as the natural caution of salesmen warily rolling out their products in front of potential buyers for the first time, the watchword was â€ūcontentâ€? and a unity of sorts around the concept that the next President must make a drastic departure from the policies, political style, unilateral international brinksmanship of the Bush administration.

Short in vision, short in substance, I would add. Senator Joe Biden delivered the only «aaaahhhh» moment as far as I was concerned.

I also find myself in perfect agreement with The Glittering Eye. I don't want to vote for Senator Clinton if I don't have to, but former Senator John Edwards does deserve credit for his healthcare plan. I hope Edwards and Governor Bill Richardson can spare more on that issue, with Senator Obama as a third. I just Hillary is watching and soaking up these debates, because she will need all the help she can get (it's interesting to note how her favorables are falling). And, it can't be said enough, she has to learn how to speak without sounding shrill.

I think I just placed my marker again, but I'm not thrilled with it: Richardson and Clinton, in any order.

In the past three days, my wife and I have watched 23 animated, fiction and documentary films from around the world at BUDi. Not one of them was a lemon, and the whole experience lasted no more than two hours each day. And, as my wife never fails to remind me, they were all completely free. She's ready for next year.

Seriously, though, I was impressed by both the festival and the movies. Low-key, certainly, that is, for a small staff, but the presentation was flawless. My wife is still waiting for the drawing for the free iPOD, but we did receive a free DVD of last year's winning films. But now, I wonder why anyone would watch a movie for two hours, when so many Hollywood (and Hallyu) films are so atrociously facile and factory-produced. In the age of YouTube and iPODs, who wants to sit in cinemas or even deal with the regional restrictions of the DVD? Like a day-long concert or a rock opera, what can a 2+ hour film give to the movie genre that a lean 5-minute cannot?

Or, millstone?

On April 17, I passed the final deadline of my contracted period of irregular reserve status in the US Army. After four years and an honorable discharge in April, 1999, I am finally a civilian.

It was the best and worst decision of my life.

Hooah!

I'm hanging my boots over the powerline tonight!

Looking at the NYT Campaign Finance Map, I believe I have the solution to campaign finance in the US: forbid New York from contributing, and let North Dakota foot the bill.

Check out the demographic breakdown for your favorite candidate, and subtract the New York, Florida, and California totals. If money is speech, according to the latest interpretation of the Constitution, perhaps these regions have spoken enough already!

Andrew J. Bacevich in The Atlantic highlights yet another disastrous consequences of the Bush administration's bungled Iraq and ill-conceived Iraq War: Warrior Politics. Bacevich links the Generals' Revolt and the most recent rank-and-file rumbling, The Appeal for Redress, to a potentially unconstitutional and politically destabilizing tendency for armed services personnel to express political opinions, and for politicians to exploit that fact. As Bacevich points out, warrior politicking is not new, only now it is public, not the generals' game or a quiet matter for the chain of command, and could lead to praetorianism.

What is praetorianism? Samuel P. Huntington identifies praetorianism as the military intervention in politics caused by the absence or weakening of effective mediating political institutions (Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 196). As Bacevich argues:

As the Founders anticipated, a democracy intent on maintaining a great and powerful military establishment confronts acute challenges. Deflecting those challenges today requires renewed attention to hallowed principles of civilian control. In recent decades, these principles have eroded badly. The irresponsible politicking of generals and admirals is one reason. But so, too, is the abdication by Congress [read Reps. Kucinich, McGovern, and Lewis] of its constitutional duties on matters of peace and war—and the recent exploitation of that abdication by an imperial, irresponsible, and habitually dissembling administration.

Bacevich traces the armed services' hellbound trajectory to 1973.

With the establishment of the all-volunteer force in 1973, those serving in the ranks began to see themselves as full-fledged members of the profession of arms. At the same time, a new American way of war placed a premium on advanced technology, requiring highly skilled and well-educated troops. One result is troops who are opinionated, who expect their opinions to be taken seriously, and who are more likely to ask what the Army can do for them.

The creation of the all-volunteer force had a second consequence. Military service, once viewed (at least nominally) as a civic obligation, has become a matter of choice. As a result, the burden of â€ūdefending our freedomâ€? no longer falls evenly across society. Those choosing to serve do not represent a cross section of America, and most are presumably well aware of that fact.

To assuage uneasy consciences, the many who do not serve proclaim their high regard for the few who do. This has vaulted America’s fighting men and women to the top of the nation’s moral hierarchy. The character and charisma long ago associated with the pioneer or the small farmer—or carried in the 1960s by Dr. King and the civil-rights movement—has now come to rest upon the soldier. The signatories of the Appeal for Redress make full use of the prerogatives of this ranking.

(...)

On matters of policy, those who wear the uniform ought to get a vote, but it’s the same one that every other citizen gets—the one exercised on Election Day. To give them more is to sow confusion about the soldier’s proper role, which centers on service and must preclude partisanship. Legitimating soldiers’ lobbies is likely to warp national-security policy and crack open the door to praetorianism.

If the bombs exploding in Baghdad don't awaken Americans to the damage caused by the Iraq War, perhaps Bacevich can sway opinion.