China’s Influence on Post-Cold War North Korea: The Whale and the Shrimp

Kim Il Sung’s demise and the crushing of the communist coup against Yeltsin in Russia following soon after left North Korea without its founder and without its major benefactor. China stepped up to support Kim Jong Il, ostensibly out of socialist solidarity but probably because neither has many other options. Both countries suffer from poor relations with other countries in the world. China is a feared bully in the region and North Korea is a reckless pariah. “Arguably China and North Korea cling to each other because they have nowhere else to turn―each believes that close cooperation with the other is vital to its own national security.” 1

The official Chinese line is that China and North Korea are as close as brothers, each relying on the other. “China needs peace and stability along its border, in order to ensure its rapid modernization. Likewise, the DPRK needs China’s cooperation, in order to press ahead with its socialist construction. Since both countries need each other for these economic and social purposes, stronger bilateral relations are inevitable. 2 The reality is that China perceives the need for North Korea to serve as a buffer against the forces of the United States and Japan. “With a shared border of 1,400 kilometers, North Korea acts as a guard post for China, keeping at bay the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. This allows China to reduce its military deployment in Northeast.” 3 China places great value on this buffer, but North Korea has not always reciprocated this feeling or had much appreciation for being such a buffer.

 Nonetheless, circumstances have thrown China and North Korea together, and now the world looks at them as big brother and little brother. With North Korean leadership’s apparent recklessness and willingness to engage in brinksmanship, diplomats have striven to leverage what influence can be brought to bear on the actions of the DPRK. This paper will examine how China came to be perceived as the one country in the world with influence over North Korea and whether this perception comports with reality.  

 

North Korea’s traditional patron had been the Soviet Union. After World War II, with China exhausted from the long running battle with Japan and a crushing civil war, Stalin saw an opportunity to grab part of the peninsula at relatively little cost. Why this particular conflict mattered to Stalin is unknown, but eventually it paid off richly for him and the Soviet Union. 4 Stalin permitted the establishment of a proxy force led by Kim Il Sung to rule the area and to be beholden to the Soviet Union. Kim Il Sung, by his good fortune and loyal service to the Soviet Union was installed almost by accident as leader of newly liberated North Korea in early 1946. However, the real power remained in the hands of the Soviets. “The Soviet authorities and the apparatus of advisors had a decisive influence on the life of the country and in the first years of the DPRK, Kim was only nominally ruler.” 5

Kim shrewdly assessed his position and eventually seized the opportunity that he was presented to consolidate his rule in Stalinist fashion he had been taught during his time as and officer in the Soviet Army. After the indecisive Korean War, when the frontier had returned to its antebellum approximation, Kim purged his government of potential rivals and began to play the Soviet Union and China off one another, first tilting towards one, then the other. 6 Kim proved quite adept at this type of stratagem and eventually became a willing participant in the Soviet’s Cold War against the West. In return, the Soviet Union provided material goods and energy to the North Korean economy. “The Soviet Union supported North Korea with massive military and technical aid, but after the Cold War, North Korea lost this support, and its economy seriously deteriorated.” 7 With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, North Korea’s most powerful friend and the basis for their economy suddenly went away.  

With the loss of the Soviet Union, Kim was forced to find another patron to prop up his decrepit economy. Lacking any other really options, he solicited China for support. This was a problematic strategy because Kim and many North Koreans believed that with the opening towards the US and the recognition of South Korea, Chinese had committed a serious affront. In the words of a Chinese analyst, the Chinese “betrayed them [North Korea]. We [the Chinese] embraced the U.S. and the enemy in the South.” 8 This betrayal was a particularly bitter one for Kim and North Korea. Kim had sought desperately to prevent China from recognizing South Korea but when his efforts came to naught, “North Korea accepted the blow with official silence.” 9 Kim was forced to bear his betrayal in silence and find some accommodation with the Chinese because he was out of options. The economic situation was dire, with many observers reporting that North Koreans were starving to death. “By the end of 1992, the North Korean government began to impose strict limits on food consumption, limiting individual intake to one-fourth of basic requirements.” 10

The degree to which Kim Il Sung was willing to put aside his historical wariness towards the Middle Kingdom and his bitterness at the recognition of South Korea in order to adopt a conciliatory attitude towards China was an indicator of how perilous the economic and political situation of North Korea actually was. The North Korean people were starving and the world was alarmed at North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon. North Korea needed friends but there always existed a concern that North Korea would turn on those who tried to help them. China seemed poised to move into the vacuum created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but remained somewhat wary. An observer noted that “nobody has a greater knack [than North Korea] for alienating friends and enemies alike.” 11 Even with their dire economic and political situation, North Korea continued to pursue their own policies even when those policies gave headaches to the Chinese leadership. Nonetheless, China continued to shield North Korea. China’s reason for doing so involved internal calculations about their own political requirements.  

Lord Palmerson, British Prime Minister, in a speech to Commons in 1848 noted that “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” 12 In slightly less elegant prose, China expressed the same sentiment: “The fundamental basis for the formulation of China’s national defense policy is China’s national interests… China takes all measures necessary to safeguard its national interests.” 13 China’s overriding interest has always been security. Even the nickname for China, “the Middle Kingdom” implies that there are areas on the periphery that serve to impede invaders before they can get to the vital, center of the nation. Korea has historically been one of those buffers, serving to keep the Japanese away and more recently, keeping the Americans away. In the estimation of most observers, the status quo on the peninsula which features a stable North Korea balancing South Korea to be the best possible buffer and one that best serves China’s interests. Later, we will examine whether a tranquil Korea is truly in China’s interest in their own estimation.

Another of China’s interests has traditionally been not to become entangled in alliances which might reduce their freedom of maneuver. Ironically, the only formal bi-lateral alliance China has is with North Korea, the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance Between the People's Republic of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea signed in 1961. 14 China generally does not attempt creative or risky diplomatic gambits and is extremely risk adverse when it comes to international relations. China is not above bullying or bluster, but they have little stomach for confrontation with the US. 15 Some of this risk aversion towards confrontation with the US lies in the fact that China lost more than 800,000 troops in the Korean War against American forces. 16 Of late, China has observed the US military fight and win battles year after year while the People’s Liberation Army has done little more than line its own pockets with business ventures. It is likely that the Chinese leadership has assessed that they are as likely to experience a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Americans as they are to win such an encounter.

This does not mean that China is unwilling to contest areas where they feel their national interests are in the balance. Although China is risk adverse, they are nonetheless still willing to commit overwhelming force when they feel that their core interests are threatened by some outside aggressor. The most obvious example of this was the willingness to commit millions of troops and to take frightful numbers of casualties, to prevent the US from entering China during the Korean War. China sees its buffering areas, Korea, Manchuria, Western China and Tibet, as tripwires, encroachments on which are signals to act. The reason that China was willing to suffer almost a million casualties was the specter of the well trained and equipped US army pushing into traditional Chinese lands over the Yalu River. Chinese commitment of troops showed dramatically “the sensitivity of the Chinese to any encroachment on their borderlands, their buffers, which represent the foundation of their national security.” 17

 Similarly, Chinese diplomats will expend political capital and will make daring diplomatic gambits when the Chinese leadership estimates that there is a significant threat to Chinese sovereignty. The last such bold diplomatic initiative occurred in 2003. China assessed that President Bush was unpredictable and likely to attack North Korea as he had Iraq. “The Chinese leader reportedly was alarmed that U.S. military action against North Korea might be imminent in the aftermath of Iraq and believed Beijing had to act promptly to avert war on the Korean Peninsula.” 18

The combination of North Korea’s desperation and China’s alarm at the intentions of the United States on the Korean peninsula might suggest that the two neighbors along the Yalu River would be find their diplomatic interests to be aligned. Conventional wisdom has long accepted that China has some influence over North Korean foreign policy. There are literally hundreds of web pages listed when one types “China’s influence over North Korea” into an internet search engine. However, savvy observers have learned to be cautious about observing “2+2” with regards to China and North Korea and assuming “4.” There remains much about North Korean and Chinese decision-making and internal political calculation that is unknown, especially in the aftermath of the death of Kim Il Sung and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  

Circumstances would seem to indicate that China should have influence on North Korean policies perhaps in moderating some of North Korea’s brinkmanship. However, North Korea has been stubbornly resistant to this supposed Chinese influence. There are competing hypotheses about what is actually going on in this relationship. One is that North Korea is stubbornly contrarian, doing the opposite of what China has urged in order to exemplify North Korean commitment to “juche” or “self-reliance.” Alternately, it is possible that China is not actually trying to influence North Korean behavior in any tangible way because of fear on the part of the Chinese that they worry that they actually do not have any influence over Kim so they are not willing to risk doing anything. The last and perhaps most worrisome explanation of the circumstances is that North Korea is actually doing EXACTLY what China wants. North Korea keeps the US, South Korea and Japan off balance by appearing reckless and unreasonable and this allows China to appear statesmanlike and reasonable. Further, North Korea’s alarming behavior encourages the other participants in the Six Nation Talks to more readily accede to North Korean (and, as the theory goes, Chinese) demands.  

Let us examine the evidence for each hypothesis in turn. One explanation for North Korea’s stubborn resistance to China’s influence is that for die-hard communists, political concerns are more important than economic leverage, even for an impoverished economic basket-case like North Korea. In other words, ideology trumps all other considerations. Professor Yan Xuetong of Qinghua University in Beijing argued that even though economic ties have increased between the countries, political ties have remained strained. "This is a common phenomenon after the Cold War. Economic relations don't necessarily mean that the political relations of the two countries will be good or one has more political influence on the other." 19 
For some, the evidence of this lack of influence is apparent. The chief negotiator for the US in the Six Party Talks expressed surprise at the lack of respect and ingratitude that North Korea showed to the Chinese: 

I don't know about the Chinese people, but I would have been a little surprised to have seen a senior Chinese delegation go to Pyongyang with a rather fair request and to see the DPRK not receive the delegation at an appropriate level. 
And what was interesting was, of course, at about the same time there was a DPRK delegation in Beijing that was received at an appropriate level. Your President who's a very busy man, who has -- your President has worldwide responsibilities, and without stretching the imagination too much, I suspect he has more responsibilities than Kim Jong-Il does. And yet he found time to meet with the DPRK delegation and Kim Jong-Il did not find time to meet with the Chinese delegation. 20

Whether this lack of respect for Chinese views is childish ingratitude, reliance on juche or just hardball international socialist politics is probably unknowable, but for many observers, there is a clear lack of influence on the part of China over North Korea.

 Others are not so sure that China is actually doing anything to influence North Korea. This theory is that given Chinese geopolitical situation and ingrained North Korean intransigence, there does not appear to be any room for Chin to exert influence. North Korea’s own unique approach to diplomacy makes it problematic for anyone, including their ostensibly close ally, China, from having any influence on the Hermit Kingdom. Since China is closest to the situation it recognizes its own limitations. There is a risk that by over-pressuring North Korea, China would cause a backlash of resentment and perhaps create an unpredictable and dangerous enemy on their doorstep. 21 Conversely, if China were to attempt to pressure North Korea and be simply ignored this would make China seem ineffective and week. Christopher Hill’s emphasis in the quote above about Kim’s snub of the Chinese delegation was playing on this perception. Rather than be seen as ineffective, the Chinese leadership prefers to do as little as possible while appearing engaged and concerned. Observers call this the “mini-maxi principle,” with China trying to maximize the credit they receive for the appearance of effort, while actually doing the minimum possible. 22 Doing nothing because they have no real influence is thus turned into a net plus for the Chinese.  

 For others observers, China is pursuing a realpolitik advantage against their rivals in North East Asia. Regarding the geo-political situation, China is best served by North Korea keeping the other four member of the Group of Six off balance. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Chinese leadership sees these other countries as China’s main competitors in the world. To the extent that the US, Russia, Japan and South Korea must scramble to react to the latest North Korean provocation, China reaps the benefits. It is possible that instead of China attempting to moderate the excesses of the North Korean, China is actually encouraging and exacerbating North Korean unpredictability because of the consternation and distraction it represents to China’s rivals. In the zero sum game of balance of power politics, a disadvantage to China’s rivals represents an advantage to China, an advantage that China readily seizes. Although conventional wisdom may see that China would benefit from a peace and tranquility on the Korean peninsula, China’s perception may be very different. 

 The lack of real information out of either Beijing or Pyongyang makes it possible that any or all of the dynamics outlined above are at work at any given time. There also exists the possibility that none of these scenarios represents reality since all assume a high level of shrewdness and coordination between powerful leaders on both sides that probably has not existed since the passing of Kim Il Sung and Stalin. The two countries’ close proximity and similar socialist governments had made it easy to assume there is close coordination between the two. However, North Korea, known as a “shrimp among whales,” 23 has become adept at keeping all sides off balance. It is quite difficult to ascertain how much influence is wielded by anyone and on whom.  

Notes:
1. Scobell, Andrew. China and North Korea: From Comrades-in-Arms to Allies at Arms’ Length (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute) 2004, p 28.
2. Xiao Zan, “Beijing and Pyongyang Get Closer,” Beijing Review, September 27, 2001, pp 9-10.
3. Shen Dingli, “North Korea’s Strategic Significance to China,” China Security, Autumn 2006, p 20.
4. Friedman, George. “The Geopolitics of China: A Great Power Enclosed” Stratfor Reports, 12 June 2008.
5. Lankov, Andreĭ Nikolaevich. From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press) 2002, p 59.
6. Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas (Basic Books) 2001, p 10.
7. Center for Non-proliferation Studies, “North Korea,” WMD 411, no date, at http://www.nti.org/f_WMD411/f2d1.html accessed 20 July 08.
8. Hutzler, Charles and Gordon Fairclough, “The Koreas: China Breaks With Its Wartime Past,” Far Eastern Economic Review, August 7, 2003, p. 27.
9. Oberdorfer, ibid, p. 248.
10. Ahn, Ilsup. “North Korea Human Rights Crisis and Christian Response: A Korean American Perspective” unpublished paper presented to the Samford University Christianity and Human Rights National Research Conference, 11-14 Nov 2006 at http://www.samford.edu/lillyhumanrights/papers/Ahn_North.pdf accessed 20 July 2008, pg 8.
11. Eberstat, Nicholas. “Reckless Driving” Time Magazine, M ay 5, 2003 at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,449513,00.html accessed 20 July 2008.
12. Hansard, Thomas Curson. Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (London: G Woodfall and Son) 1848, Pg 122.
13. Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. “China's National Defense in 2002,” Xinhua Net at http://news.xinhuanet.com/zhengfu/2003-02/27/content_748657.htm accessed 20 July 08.
14. Peking Review, Vol. 4, No. 28, 1961, p. 5.
15. Scobell, ibid, p. 31.
16. Zhang Aiping, Chief Compiler, Zhongguo Renmin Jiefang Jun [China’s People’s Liberation Army] Vol. 1, Contemporary China Series, Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo Chubanshe, 1994, p. 137.
17. Friedman, ibid.
18. Scobell, ibid, p. 21.
19. Newhouse, Barry. “China's Influence Over North Korea in Question” Voice of America website 27 July 2006 at http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2006/china-060727-voa01.htm accessed 20 July 2008.
20. Hill, Christopher. “Foreign Press Center Briefing” State Department East Asia Update July 21, 2006 at http://fpc.state.gov/fpc/69311.htm accessed 21 July 2008.
21. Scobell, ibid.
22. Kim, Samuel S. The Two Koreas and the Great Powers. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 2006, p 61.
23. Snyder, Scott. Negotiating on the Edge (Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press) 1999, p20.

Bibliography
Ahn, Ilsup. “North Korea Human Rights Crisis and Christian Response: A Korean 
American Perspective” unpublished paper presented to the Samford University Christianity and Human Rights National Research Conference, 11-14 Nov 2006 at http://www.samford.edu/lillyhumanrights/papers/Ahn_North.pdf accessed 20 July 2008.

Center for Non-proliferation Studies, “North Korea,” WMD 411, no date, at 
http://www.nti.org/f_WMD411/f2d1.html accessed 20 July 08.

Eberstat, Nicholas. “Reckless Driving” Time Magazine, M ay 5, 2003 at 
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,449513,00.html accessed 20 July 2008.

Friedman, George. “The Geopolitics of China: A Great Power Enclosed” Stratfor 
Reports, 12 June 2008.

Hansard, Thomas Curson. Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (London: G Woodfall and 
Son) 1848.

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July 21, 2006 at http://fpc.state.gov/fpc/69311.htm accessed 21 July 2008.

Hutzler, Charles and Gordon Fairclough, “The Koreas: China Breaks With Its Wartime 
Past,” Far Eastern Economic Review, August 7, 2003.

Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. “China's 
National Defense in 2002,” Xinhua Net at http://news.xinhuanet.com/zhengfu/2003-02/27/content_748657.htm accessed 20 July 08.

Kim, Samuel S. “The Making of China’s Korea Policy in the Era of Reform ,” in David L. 
Lampton, ed., Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Reform Era (Stanford: Stanford University Press) 2001.

----- The Two Koreas and the Great Powers. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 
2006.


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(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press) 2002.

Newhouse, Barry. “China's Influence Over North Korea in Question” Voice of America 
website 27 July 2006 at 
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2006/china-060727-voa01.htm accessed 20 July 2008.

Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas (Basic Books) 2001.

Peking Review, Vol. 4, No. 28, 1961.

Scobell, Andrew. China and North Korea: From Comrades-in-Arms to Allies at Arms’ 
Length (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute) 2004.

Snyder, Scott. Negotiating on the Edge (Washington: United States Institute of Peace 
Press) 1999.

Shen Dingli, “North Korea’s Strategic Significance to China,” China Security, Autumn 
2006.

Xiao Zan, “Beijing and Pyongyang Get Closer,” Beijing Review, September 27, 2001.

Zhang Aiping, Chief Compiler, Zhongguo Renmin Jiefang Jun [China’s People’s 
Liberation Army] Vol. 1, Contemporary China Series, Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo Chubanshe, 1994.

Relative Costs of America's Choices in Korea

Cha and Kang identify six strategies for engaging North Korea. These six strategies include 1) robust defense and deterrence against the North, 2) trilateral coordination between Seoul, Washington and Tokyo on any action that takes place and 3) a continuation of the sunshine policy of family and cultural exchanges between the North and South. Cha and Kang also advocate 4) continuing unrestricted food aid to the North, 5) encouraging China to use their leverage on the North and 6) making it clear that retaliation for bad behavior on the part of the North Koreans would be swift. Before I can answer the question of which of these strategies would be least costly to the US, I must first compare the absolute cost of each.

For the US, participating in the robust defense against the North is just a small marginal cost on the overall defense budget. There are only approximately 30,000 troops stationed in the ROK, a significant portion of whose billeting and upkeep is paid for by South Korea. The attack aircraft and bombers that support the troops have other missions in addition to the South Korean mission and the remaining of the US Armed Forces that remain on call all have other missions as well. If Korea suddenly became a non-issue, the US would not see much savings because the cost, at the margin, for South Korean defense assistance is not that great, given the myriad of other defense responsibilities the US has in the region and around the world.

Trilateral coordination is another policy that does not cost anything at the margins. Already, the US, Korea and Japan are robust political allies and trading partners with massive positions in each other’s economies. Since there are numerous engagements on many different levels among all three countries, keeping North Korea on the agenda represents a policy of almost no recognizable cost to the United States. The benefit is quite substantial to this type of collaboration since South Korea and Japan recognize a North Korea to be a much more compelling threat that does the United States. Yet, since the US is willing to engage in and be an active part of the strategy to deal with the problems, South Korea and Japan are very grateful for the assistance. That gratitude is expressed through support of other US initiatives and requirements around the world that Japan and the ROK would not be a part of, except for their relationships with the US. For instance, both the ROK and Japan have been part of the coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan and have provided aid in reconstruction. Certainly, neither nation would have, had it not been for their relationships with the US.

The sunshine policy is another area virtually without cost to the United States. The US itself uses cultural engagement with enemies. In fact, at the time of this writing, the Iranian Olympic basketball team is traveling the US playing tune-up games against American competition prior to the Olympics. The cost to this type of engagement is negligible, and the exchanges are important to Koreans on both sides of the DMZ. How tangible the benefits are to such exchanges is difficult to ascertain, but since there is not downside, other than the potential for espionage, which exists anyway, these exchanges represent a low to no cost advantage to the US. 

Unrestricted food aid is a costly endeavor for the United States. With world population increasing and domestic US demands for bio-fuels increasing as well, the absolute value of US food stocks increases with its scarcity. The US government must pay for food that it then distributes to an enemy without requiring payment. Since North Korea is relieved of the responsibility to feed itself, it then has more resources to direct towards its nuclear and conventional forces. So, the US faces a situation in which the US taxpayer subsidizes the nuclear program of the North Koreans. This policy of food aid thus represents an enormous direct cost to the US and an even larger diplomatic and military cost since the improved North Korean forces continue to represent a threat that the US is supporting.  
 
Encouraging China also has hidden costs for the US. China is a ruthless bargainer and does not sell its supposed influence in North Korea for free. China demands concessions in other areas, like eliminating freedom of navigation transits in the Bohai Gulf, reducing engagement with Taiwan and eliminating Western criticism of Chinese atrocities inside the Middle Kingdom and in Africa. Also, the food aid that the West provides North Korea relieves China of some responsibility to feed and house economic migrants. Although encouraging China has many costs, there do not seem to be many tangible benefits from Chinese engagement with the North Koreans which suggests one of two things. Either China does not have any influence with North Korea, making any cost to the US simply not worth it at all. Or, China takes what the US and the West offers, and does not utilize the leverage it actually does have, making the US a sucker in the bargain.  

Blustering threats about retaliation directed towards North Korea have an enormous cost to the US. Idle threats discount American credibility and encourage bad behavior on the part of the North Koreans. Further, threats that are not carried out make the whole rationale for maintaining US forces on the peninsula moot. If the US is not going to use the forces arrayed there, then the cost of maintaining those forces, albeit marginal, is not worth it. Similarly, making threats that are not carried out encourages North Korea to continue pushing the frontier on what it can get away with. North Korea detonates a nuclear weapon, exports drugs to the US, and engages in massive state supported currency counterfeiting, yet the US never acts in response. The cost of idle American threats goes up as North Korea continues to engage in behaviors that should provoke a response of the US, but do not.

The most costly engagement strategy for the US is the policy of unconditional food aid to the North. The raw cost and the subsidy from the American taxpayer to the North Korea war machine make it doubly expensive. Clearly, the least costly engagement strategy for the US is the sunshine policy. People chatting, singing together and competing in tae kwon do is cost free, and has the potential, as yet unrealized, of actually bringing an end to the standoff on the peninsula.

North Korea's Early 90's Nuclear Program

North Korea’s nuclear program and the crisis that arose in the early 1990’s should be seen in the geopolitical context of the time. Many different influences were coming to bear on North Korea during this time. 1) The Soviet Union had broken apart, and the remaining states were virtually bankrupt. 2) Even prior to the breakup, Gorbachev was wooing the South Koreans in order to gain capital resources for his own economy, which proved to be an alarming development to the North Koreans. 3) China was making overtures to South Korea as well, in order to gain access to their capital and markets. 4) The US viewed the breakup of the Soviet Union and looked forward to a break in the international diplomatic tension that had existed since the beginning of the Cold War. In fact, some analysts were talking about the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, meant essentially “the end of history.” Without the
US actively engaged, there would be little reason for anyone else to pay attention to North Korea and their needs. I will examine each of these factors in turn.

 45 years of a command economy and the accelerated arms race with the US during the Reagan years essentially bankrupted the Soviets. The size of the Soviet Economy and the deprivation that they forced their people to endure did provide for some measure of capital that the Soviet Union distributed to other Communist countries and proxies around the world in an attempt to spread Communist hegemony and push back US interests. However, this policy proved unsustainable as the US economy and defense budgets continued to grow even though the US was aggressively countering the USSR around the world and continuing to upgrade its conventional and nuclear forces. Gorbachev had learned his lesson about the inability of communism to keep up with the West and attempted various political and economic reforms to stimulate the economy. However, he essentially let the “Freedom genie” out of the bottle. Soon events took a course of their own, with the former Warsaw Pact asserting their own destinies which culminated in the tearing down the Berlin Wall. As the empire of the Soviet Union, there was no longer any rationale to support client states all over the world, so these clients were cut off. North Korea clearly felt threatened by not having their long-standing ally to support them against a resurgent South Korea and the might of the US stationed literally across the DMZ.

Even prior to the formal dissolution of the Soviet empire, Gorbachev was running around the world, offering to reduce tensions in exchange for capital. South Korea proved to be an eager audience for this approach. So even prior to the formal cutting of ties with North Korea because there was no longer a geopolitical justification for the Soviets to maintain their empire, the Soviet Union had turned to the South Koreas for capital and markets. North Korea attempted to counter this diplomatically with appeals to the brotherhood of socialism but was forced to confront the fact that ideological purity could not compete with capitalism. Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il realized that North Korea could not rely on anyone else to provide their security, they would have to provide security for themselves.

China was also looking to the South Korea for money and markets and proved quite willing to throw North Korea aside to gain access to the ROK. Once again, even though the North Koreas appealed to socialist solidarity and shared enmity with South Korea and the US, the Chinese believed they needed South Korea to continue growing their economy. North Korea had their paranoid suspicions about being unable to rely on any one else for their security confirmed.
 
Victory in the Cold War lead many in the US to hope for a reduction in tensions around the world and a “peace dividend” that would allow political leaders to focus on domestic priorities. American leaders eagerly looked forward to the time when they would not have to think about and fund the responses to crises around the world. For North Korea, being ignored by the US would be s very dangerous thing. As the balance of power had shifted on the peninsula, the ROK army had developed capabilities in training and materiel that made them at least the equal of the DPRK in conventional forces. The lack of resources had caused the forces in the North to deteriorate relative to those in the South. The trends in that equation would continue to favor the South Koreans until the South had an overwhelming advantage. Given that eventuality, North Korea knew that the one safeguard they had to prevent the ROK from rushing North to finish the Korean War was the presence of the Americans. If the Americans lost interest in the Korean situation, seeing it as a vestige of a Cold War that had ended, then there was a significant chance the US would pull out. 

Such a withdrawal, blowhard KCNA pronouncements notwithstanding, would be extremely perilous for the North. Even short of an attack by the South, should the US pull out, there would be very little leverage to get the US back into negotiations for economic incentives . Given these considerations, since Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il were not willing to capitulate or make total accommodation with the South, the only logical course of action remaining was to build a nuclear weapon. Conventional wisdom has long held that states with nuclear weapons are immune from conventional attacks and that they get attention from great powers. North Korea’s overt pursuit of a nuclear weapon and the crisis it provoked bore out this wisdom. North Korea managed to get massive infusion of aid to stave off starvation, acquired capital from the South Koreans and kept the US engaged on the peninsula. The significance of the North Korean nuclear program which it pursued out of self interest showed other countries that having nuclear weapons is the best way to prevent regime change by the West. It is apparent that Pakistan, Iran and perhaps even Syria have learned this lesson.

Hussein: Don't Smear Me by Calling Me a Muslim

I love it how the press is always so quick to point out, like in this case, that Obama isn't a Muslim. "Indonesians are rooting for Obama not because he is some secret Muslim (they know he is a Christian) but because he spent some of his formative years in their capital city of Jakarta." What did Shakespeare say about these protestations? Hamlet Act III Scene III: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

If being a Muslim is so grand, why does his campaign consider being called a Muslim to be a smear? You can find a big entry about how B. Hussein is not a Muslim at fightthesmears.com

Is America Responsible for North Korea's Bad Behavior?

North Korea experienced a moment of ignominy when President Bush declared them to be part of the “axis of evil” during his State of the Union in 2002. Following the attacks of 9/11/2001, the world expected that the United States would be mostly concerned with hunting Middle East terrorists, but the US signaled that North Korea was still a pressing concern. American attention was potentially worrisome given the political bias in the US in favor of attacking perceived enemies. However, the DPRK gauged that President Bush’s signal meant North Korea still had leverage in negotiations with the US. Pyongyang had the attention they wanted from Washington but that attention was of the most menacing kind. North Korea was engaged in a delicate balancing act, wanting to improve their negotiations posture as they always had through brinkmanship and intransigence, but wary of overly provoking a newly enraged America. Although the international context had changed, North Korea still sought to put the West into the same old dilemma: “wanting to respond punitively to DPRK misbehavior, but being forced into negotiations to minimize the risks of a costly larger conflict.”(Cha and Kang, pg 88)

While it is true that the US toughened the diplomatic tone in exchanges with North Korea following 9/11, there was no substantive change in the behaviors of American forces on the ground. For 50 years along the DMZ, there had been periodic swings in aggression and conciliation, and yet a familiar stasis has prevailed. What had changed was the US’s newfound willingness to overtly overthrow hostile regimes, and the North’s avowed pursuit of a nuclear weapon. The rhetoric and tension on the peninsula during this period should be evaluated in the context of the other contemporary crises confronting the US and previous North Korean actions. As always, for North Korea to command the attention of the US, it was necessary for them to be provocative. Both sides engaged in posturing, but no one ever made an overt move that would have disadvantaged North Korea and forced them into “doing anything, even if it is high-risk, to arrest such losses.” (Cha and Kang, pg 71) The US was belligerent in other areas of the world, and this seemed to spill-over into relations with North Korea, but relations on the Peninsula were essentially as they had ever been. 

When the crisis of 2003 is viewed in the light of the nuclear test of 2006, and the eventual dismantling of the cooling tower of 2008, it seems that the crisis was less an event onto itself, and more part of the overall negotiating strategy of the North Koreans. Trying to evaluate the crisis of 2003 is like evaluating any negotiation in medias res. It is not until after the end-game that one can evaluate the effectiveness of a particular intermediate tactic. American actions in the run-up to 2003 may have seemed reckless but with the apparent dismantling of the DPRK nuclear program, those actions can now be seen as measured and prudent.

Kristof enlightens us

We should be so thankful we have Nick Kristof to point out what a moron Bush is. What an original idea for a column! I mean, Bush has consistently said that the only way to counter the Taliban is to bomb them, and with the most expensive bombs possible. Read this from the evil, moron Bush from 2002:

"We're also helping to rebuild schools and hospitals and clinics. Some of the first rebuilding is being done by the U.S. Army Civil Affairs soldiers, who are working with relief agencies to rebuild dozens of schools. With us today is Captain Britton London, who enlisted friends, family members, church groups to supply Afghan students with thousands of pens and pencils
and notebooks. Captain London is a man after my own heart. He started a --he got the equipment necessary to start the first post-Taliban baseball league. (Laughter.) He brought me a ball -- two balls signed by the Eagles -- the Eagles, the Eagles, the mighty Eagles of Afghan baseball. (Laughter.) And they practice -- they're practicing now, and the games are held once a
week. 

Our soldiers wear the uniforms of warriors, but they are also compassionate people. And the Afghan people are really beginning to see the true strength of our country. I mean, routing out the Taliban was important, but building a school is equally important."

Nick Kristof is a hack who does zero research about a subject if fits into his "Bush is an idiot" column template. So some mountain climber writes a book about building schools and hands out a press release about it and instead of talking about how this effort dovetails with that the military is already doing there, Kristof turns that into a club to beat Bush without any additional research. Such propaganda against Bush and the military is unsurprising from Kristof and the New York Times but this does not mean their casual slurs disparaging the efforts of civil affairs and engineer troops doing this same job of building schools throughout Afghanistan are not still offensive. 

Deterrence on the Peninsula

Since the signing of the armistice that ended the Korean War, neither side has violated the Demilitarized Zone in strength. There have been minor skirmishes and provocations along this frontier, but there have been no events or series of events that has seriously threatened the status quo. The conventional foreign policy assessment as to why there have been no major violations of the armistice was conventional deterrence. Victor Cha puts it bluntly: “North Korea has not attacked for fifty years because deterrence works.” (pg 54) Cha does not define “deterrence” but the definition one selects for that word is crucial to determining how the policy works on the peninsula.

 

Cha implies that “deterrence” is actually the rational reaction to the balance of power, a rough equivalence in the war making capabilities of the two sides across the DMZ. The clear implication is that “deterrence” is the only rational response by one side to what an opposing side with equal capabilities is doing or can do in the near future. The way “deterrence/balance of power” is expressed on the peninsula, so long as the US neither provokes nor makes North Korea feel that the only possible response is a cross-DMZ attack, the balance is maintained. Unfortunately for classic balance of power calculations, no dispassionate analyst would assess the situation on the peninsula as a balance.

The US military is the most capable in the world. American forces have fought at least one war every generation using the most advanced armaments in regions all over the world. South Korea fights with and trains with the Americans around the world and has a population and economy that vastly larger than the North. There is little likelihood that North Korea is prepared for the combat power of the US and the ROK. Further, captured North Korean vessels are in such poor condition that it is hard to imagine that weapons kept in North Korean war reserve will be in better condition than that which is actually employed. Yet, even with such a disparity in capabilities, there still exists deterrence. The only explanation for this is that all sides have agreed to attribute lacks of attacks to balance of power when in reality; the South and the US have consciously chosen not to destroy the North.  

 

An alternate definition of deterrence is one has less to do with a country’s leadership’s rational reaction to the carefully weighted assessment of their enemy’s capabilities, and more to calculated self-interest. On the Korean peninsula, it is in every player’s interest to maintain the status quo. The North Korean leadership does not want to experience the catastrophe that awaits Communists whose countries fall violently. South Korea does not want the expense and recession that awaits should they be forced to assimilate the impoverished and backwards North. The United States has a myriad of other crises around the world and would prefer to put off the reckoning on the peninsula as far out in the indeterminate future as possible.  

Source:

Cha, Victor D. and David C. Kang. Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (New York: Columbia University Press) 2003.

I work on my creative wrting, and you are my victim

SCENE ONE:

TWINK is in her office, rocking out to "Take on Me" by aha on her Ipod, arms gesticulating wildly, seemingly without reference to the music when a COWORKER comes in.

COWORKER: Hey Corky, the boss needs his BIOS defragged, if you know what I mean.

TULIP (removing ear buds): What?

SCENE TWO:

TWINK is a hospital waiting room, with a TV mounted on the wall playing a Bon Jovi marathon. Since she is the only one in the room, she is singing along and keeping time to "Living on a Prayer." In another room, a NURSE is watching a monitor of the camera in the waiting room and talking on the phone.

NURSE: We have a Level I Corky in the waiting room, we need a straight jacket, a SWAT Team and 90 cc's of Phenobarbital, stat!

Obama and McCain breaking even

Obama and McCain virtually even in tracking polls.

Numbers from tracking polls for President are like the popular vote itself. Obama, like Kerry and Gore before him, will win New York City by a massive margin that will skew the overall percentages. In 2000, Bush lost the overall popular vote by 500,000 but lost New York City by more than 1 million. We won outside the 5 boroughs and won the election.  

I would think that breaking even in the popular polls means Obama is actually behind when that translates to electoral votes.  

I would drag you to watch this movie

I saw a movie yesterday on TCM that was a lot of fun to watch: Homicidal. The plot of this black and white film from 1961 was nothing special. A woman stages a phony marriage with a justice of the peace to get close enough to kill him and that killing has something to do with her real husband’s pending inheritance. I got it, pretty standard mystery-thriller fare.

What made this movie stand out was the casting gimmick. An actress named Joan Marshall, billed as Jean Arless, played the parts of Emily and Warren. Emily was a wasp-waisted homicidal hottie, who duped a bell boy into the phony marriage, then gutted the JP. She later careened around Solvang CA, seducing druggists, menacing her sister in law and tormenting a stroke victim. Warren, as portrayed by Joan, looked like a young Freddie Mercury to include the lisp and overbite. When “Warren” made his appearance on screen, I did not initially pick up on the fact that Joan was portraying him. However, I did think to myself, “that is one strange looking, overbiting effeminate actor with a really high voice who is wearing a really big, ill fitting suit coat.”

Kissing bricks or peacefully praying for the destruction of the US and Israel?

You decide.

FAQ

So often people ask me:  TO, why do you drink Gold Coast?

Why don't you vote?

Why do you write all those posts that you wrote?

Answers:  Because that stuff is so freaking strong and GOOD.

Because I am not a resident of this state, and I keep forgetting to get a ballot.

None of your beeswax.

Dumbest tradition in sports

Kissing the bricks.  So stupid

In which TO is sanguine about the economy

Sure, gasoline is expensive, but since the dollar is weak, prices in the US look really good to outsiders getting that influx in cash. They are turning around, borrowing more dollars to build plants to produce cheaper exports in their own country and that keeps our manufactured products cheap. Meanwhile, foreigners can buy our goods at a discount to them and invest their excess money here.

That is the reason high gas prices are not killing the economy. And I think we will see a oil price collapse, soon.  Gas prices are up, demand is down and I see many fewer cars waiting at pumps.  If Congress pulls their heads out and allows drilling, combined with this lower demand, means we would see gas under $3 by Labor Day.

What's going on in China

Stratfor mentioned the crucial aspect of Chinese industrial success, massive subsidy of energy prices. It is not just wage differentials keeping consumer products cheap, it is all the money that the central government is paying not to have a fuel cost shock like the American economy is enduring.

If individual Chinese people and companies had to pay market prices for gasoline and fuel oil, industries would shut down, people would park their cars and the country's economy would collapse. On the other hand, if China continues paying these subsidies, there will not be any money left to loan to companies to modernize to keep up with consumer demand. This too will doom their economy as countries and factories with cheap labor, access to Western capital markets and oil of their own (Mexico) are able to once again be competitive with the Chinese.

What did North Korea want during the Beijing talks?

North Korea had a simple goal for the Beijing talks with the United States. Pyongyang reckoned that direct talks with the US would convince Washington to decouple from Seoul and withdraw American troops. Such a withdrawal would open the peninsula to reunification on North Korea’s terms. The problem with the policy of “decoupling- withdrawal-reunification” was the single-mindedness with which Pyongyang pursued it. Rather than setting realistic intermediate goals that could actually be reached as confidence building measures, the North Korean maintained strident adherence to the over-arching goal. In addition, South Korea was adamantly against the US making concessions without being present for the negotiations.

For the US, the major concern in establishing a dialogue with North Korea was to establish a dialogue. The foreign policy advisors for the first President Bush had developed a mindset that talks themselves had intrinsic value. There was no need to give the interlocutors on the US side a goal or policy to pursue, since achieving talks was goal enough. Eventually, the US began to pursue minor concessions such as tangible steps to improve relations with South Korea and the return of remains of war dead. But since South Korea was cut out of the negotiations, the US was happy just to talk and the North Koreans were making unrealistic demands, there was little real incentive or expectation for progress. It was only when the US, Japan and South Korea offered tangible goods to the North through KEDO did negotiations begin to bear fruit. 

Why hasn't North Korea attacked?

Since the 70’s North Korean offensives against South Korea have only been at the negotiation table. North Korea has been careful to be only belligerent enough to give credence to their bluster at the negotiation table but not to such a degree that would provoke a substantial response from the South. What explains this inaction? Snyder seems to be arguing that North Korea has made a conscious decision that the best way to extract concessions is through a series of hard nosed and unpredictable negotiation stances which has obviated the need to actually invade. Oberdorfer makes the case that the various parts of the North Korean government do not have know what the strategy actually is, so they cannot present coherent policy positions.  

The combination of these two observations probably explains why it is North Korea has never actually attempted to forcibly reunite the country. Kim and his son have nurtured a personality cult but there is evidence that they must nonetheless still keep factions within their government off balance to prevent the rise of alternate power bases. The different style and tactics in North Korean negotiation are not so much Kim’s grand design, but instead are the concessions he must offer to the various factions who are vying for preeminence. The fact that the North has not invaded could be a rational assessment of the dominance of South Korean and American combat power but is probably because communist states cannot take precipitous action without unanimous consent among the ruling clique. 

Latest on China

Stratfor mentioned the crucial aspect of Chinese industrial success, massive
subsidy of energy prices. It is not just wage differentials keeping
consumer products cheap, it is all the money that the central government is
paying not to have a fuel cost shock like the American economy is enduring.
If individual Chinese people and companies had to pay market prices for
gasoline and fuel oil, industries would shut down, people would park their
cars and the country's economy would collapse. On the other hand, if China
continues paying these subsidies, there will not be any money left to loan
to companies to modernize to keep up with consumer demand. This too will
doom their economy as countries and factories with cheap labor, access to
Western capital markets and oil of their own (Mexico) are able to once again
be competitive with the Chinese.

Colonialism's Effect on Southeast Asia

Southeast Asian history features the stories of indigenous cultures that had arisen without much intermingling with outside influences, save for the occasional raids by the remote neighbors, being forced to contend with the arrival of Chinese and Western sailors and adventurers. In some cases, especially in the first years of the scramble for colonial holdings, the interaction was benign and even beneficial on both sides. “European visitors to Southeast Asia in the seventeenth century approached Asians as equals, displaying an openness and readiness to learn that was often lacking in the nineteenth century, when scientific and industrial developments had produced a technological gulf between Europe and the rest of the world.” 1 In other cases, the interaction was more indifferent, such as the West’s interaction with Siam. Often, the relations were much more negative and wrenching, as it was in Vietnam and every other country with which it came into contact. The Chinese went to Southeast Asia for tribute. Chinese Emperors believed that since China was the Middle Kingdom, all other peoples were compelled to literally pay respects to Chinese power. “[The tribute system] showed that China was the superior centre and its rules had duties toward all other rulers as his inferiors.” 2

Colonialism in Southeast Asia brought modern Western ideas and concepts to Southeast Asia. Some of these new ideas included the nation-state and its concomitant bureaucratic structure, education for ambitious youth in political theory and human rights, new economic opportunities and travails and new perspectives on religion. Each of these innovations served to change the nature of life in Southeast Asia countries. Prior to the arrival of colonial powers, Southeast Asia had a small population that was probably a result of a number of factors including high female work load, rampant gonorrhea, prevalent abortion and instability of residence. 3 This dynamic changed as the colonial powers brought colonial governmental structure and the will to organize the economy to produce salable goods. With more order and with economic incentives for the people in the region to remain in place to produce raw materials, populations began to increase. As more wealth was produced, more outsiders were drawn to Southeast Asia, bringing their own cultures and religion into contact with the locals, and engendering change, and unfortunately, prejudice. “Throughout the region, the many different ethnic groups live side by side with their diverse languages religions customs, occupations, and education and social statuses. As in much of the rest of the world, these differences give rise to prejudices and stereotypes.” 4 The differences also gave rise to nationalism.

Nationalism, as it was expressed throughout Southeast Asia, looked different in each country. The various religions and cultures found in the countries in the region were so unique that some observers coined a term for the unique Southeastern Asian expression of nationalism. “We shall use the term ‘indigenism’ to describe the structure of policies and institutions created to transform the racial dimensions of the colonial type economies inherited by Southeastern Asian societies.” 5 While these scholars further broke down “indigenisms” into the individual country “ism” for each unique county in Southeast Asia, the scholars noted that all countries did share one characteristic. Even though each country had different colonial experiences, all people shared a similar, negative perception of colonialism. “Contrasting sharply with the diversity in colonial policies and practices is the uniformity of images held by Southeast Asians of their colonial experiences. Nationalism is seen as the movement to liberate the national society from the constraints…which prevented the fulfillment of individual and collective capacities for economic and political development.” 6

Kratoska hinted at what might be the actual root for these negative colonial images in the minds of indigenous Southeast Asians: the usurpation of traditional ruling prerogatives by the efficient colonial bureaucracies. The colonial bureaucracies allowed the state to reach into areas previously untouchable by any central authority. The colonial powers’ influence and authority touched all people within a large geographic region. Because colonial policies were so pervasive in a way previously in a way that had not previously been experienced, all people in the colony shared the same antipathy to the big, foreign authority in their presence. 7 The shared loathing of the colonial power resulted in “indigenism.”
It should be noted that most nationalists and revolutionaries in Southeast Asia did not object to structure and bureaucracy per se. Revolutionary leaders, most of whom had been educated in the West, understood that an efficient bureaucracy was intrinsic to the functioning of the state. Further, most Southeast Asian revolutionaries did not object to the usurpation of power from the local chieftains (unless, of course, the displaced chieftain returned as a revolutionary). Instead, the indigenous leaders objected to the foreigners being in power, not to the governmental structure necessary to projecting the power. These local leaders were content to displace the colonial rulers while maintaining the trappings of power. 8

An example of this phenomenon is Indonesia. Prior to the arrival of the Dutch, the people of the islands that eventually came to be known as Indonesia saw themselves as subjects of a this or that kingdom or as members of a particular ethnic group. After the Dutch set up political boundaries and asserted authority throughout the islands did the people on those islands have something towards which to direct their resentment and around which to unite. Ambitious, Western educated revolutionaries recognized the power of the resentment that could be leveraged to expel the Dutch while at the same time admiring to political infrastructure that the Europeans had created. After finally forcing the Dutch out, the revolutionaries grabbed power but soon realized that the temporary unity displayed by the Indonesians in ridding themselves of their colonial overseers would not persist. Indonesia has found that replacing a foreign hegemon with a local authoritarian has not instantly improved the lives of the people. 9

Indonesia has striven to create itself as a nation-state, but has been largely unsuccessful since the people have reverted to their natural affiliations to local leaders, ethnic groups, and now increasingly, religious preferences. These sub-allegiances work to subvert the foundation of a nation state in general, and in Indonesia in particular, making the idea of a nation state in Southeast Asia a chimera. “In some way the state's sovereignty is inherent within the people, expressive of its historic identity. In it, ideally, there is a basic equivalence between the borders and character of the political unit upon the one hand and a self-conscious cultural community on the other. In most cases this is a dream as much as a reality. Most nation-states in fact include groups of people who do not belong to its core culture or feel themselves to be part of a nation so defined.” 10

The fact that many Southeast Asian revolutionaries only recognized their desire to overthrow and supplant their colonial masters after availing themselves of Western educations is another common theme to the post-colonial period. There is some evidence that many of these highly educated individuals would have been content to return to a position of power in their own countries even only to serve the colonial administration. However, Western powers were not willing to provide much opportunity to these returning scholars. So, instead of working within the colonial structure to buttress the status quo, these revolutionaries worked to undermine it. Colonialism thus “contained the seeds of its own destruction.” 11 Young people with good educations could recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the colonial system, and therefore could attack the weaknesses and preserve the strengths. Additionally, these young, intelligent leaders could to some extent rally the people who as we have seen, shared with these returning intellectuals an antipathy towards foreigners, although the antipathy grew out of different causes such a lack of respect for religion or blame for wild, disconcerting economic swings. “The colonial powers inadvertently nurtured Asian nationalism by combining political repression with opportunities for Western (or Japanese) education. The most talented and capable indigenous leaders were offered the benefits of colonial education but denied profession opportunities to use it. Strain rapidly increased between traditional values and new ones, between efforts to adapt modern Western material techniques and the need to maintain a distinctly non-Western cultural identity, and between the impulse to assimilate the intruder and to expel him completely.” 12

Another by product of colonialism was introducing new religious beliefs that supplanted indigenous, traditional ones. These new beliefs became a way to set populations apart from one another. “Southeast Asia is a crossroads of many religious influences, which have always been treated syncretically. One precondition for this basically peaceful syncretism is the fact that the different religious communities largely eschew orthodoxy and content themselves with their followers' commitment to a particular ritual practice (orthopractice).” 13 This syncreticism has begun to erode however, as the religions brought into the region by the colonial powers begin to insist on a rigid orthodoxy enforced through worldwide communications and hardened in reaction to one another.

Colonialism’s effects in Southeast Asia continue to this day. The region has a large, dense population brought about by the economic effects of colonialism. The density of population and the wealth in the region has brought many different cultures into contact, and altered the religions and culture. Colonial education policies introduced ideas about nationalism and human rights that encouraged and inspired revolutionaries who ultimately overthrew the colonial order. The revolutionaries co-opted the colonial bureaucratic structure to administer the governments they now controlled. The results have been mixed, but the legacy of colonialism and the nationalism it engendered remain to the present.

Notes
1 Paul Kratoska, “Nationalism and Modernist Reform” in Nicholas Tarling, ed., The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia Volume Two, Part One From c. 1800 to the 1930s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1999, pg 250.
2 Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank, The Cambridge History of China Volume 10 Late Ch’ing, 1800-1911, Part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1978, pg 30.
3 Nicholas Tarling, “The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia Volume One, Part Two From c. 1500 to c. 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1999, pg 117.
4 Clark D. Neher, Southeast Asia Crossroads of the World (DeKalb, IL: Southeast Asia Publications) 2004, pg 16.
5 Frank Golay, Ralph Anspach, M. Ruth Pfanner, Eliezer B. Ayal, Underdevelopment and Economic Nationalism is Southeast Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press) 1969, pg 9.
6 Ibid, 17.
7 Kratoska, ibid, pg 248.
8 Ibid.
9 Leo Suryadinata, Nationalism and Globalism, East and West (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asia Studies) 2000, pg 38.
10 Hastings, Adrian. The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) 1999 , pp. 2-5.
11 Michael Brecher, The New States of Asia: A Political Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 1963, pg 22.
12 Mark Borthwick. Pacific Century: The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia (Boulder: CO: Westview Press) 2007, pg 153.

Bibliography
Borthwick, Mark, Pacific Century: The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia (Boulder: CO:
Westview Press) 2007.

Brecher , Michael, The New States of Asia: A Political Analysis (Oxford: Oxford
University Press) 1963.

Golay, Frank, Ralph Anspach, M. Ruth Pfanner, Eliezer B. Ayal, Underdevelopment and
Economic Nationalism is Southeast Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press) 1969.

Hastings, Adrian, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism.
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) 1999.

Horstmann, Alexander, “Reflexive transformation and religious revitalisation:
perspectives from Southeast Asia” EASA Biennial Conference 2006 website, 21st September, 2006 at http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa06/easa06_panels.php5?PanelID=54 accessed 27 May 08.

Kratoska, Paul, “Nationalism and Modernist Reform” in Nicholas Tarling, ed., The
Cambridge History of Southeast Asia Volume Two, Part One From c. 1800 to the
1930s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1999.

Neher, Clark D., Southeast Asia Crossroads of the World (DeKalb, IL: Southeast Asia
Publications) 2004.

Suryadinata, Leo, Nationalism and Globalism, East and West (Singapore: Institute of
Southeast Asia Studies) 2000.

Tarling, Nicholas, “The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia Volume One, Part Two
From c. 1500 to c. 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1999.

Review of Austronesian Taiwan: Linguistics, History, Ethnology, Prehistory

Austronesian Taiwan: Linguistics, History, Ethnology, Prehistory, (Berkeley, CA: Phoebe A. Hearst Museum, University of California 2000) edited by David Blundell is an excellent introduction to the study of the origin and spread of the indigenous people of Taiwan into the Pacific. Any scholar interested in studying a competing theory to the popular idea that Polynesian people moved directly from mainland China to the Philippine Islands and beyond would find Dr Blundell’s book to be the natural place to start. The book itself is made up of contributions by scholars from various fields in the study of indigenous Taiwan peoples. There are chapters from anthropologists, professors of linguistics, archaeologists, ethnologists, musicologists and historians, among others. While there is a great deal of information and some provocative theories contained within this book, some readers may find themselves distracted by passages of inelegant prose written by authors for whom English is not their first language.

Dr Blundell is from California and received his PhD from UCLA in Anthropology after extensive undergraduate and masters’ level studies of Asian languages and cultures. He took a teaching position at National Taiwan University in 1984 and soon after began conducting research in Formosan groups, prehistory, and socio-linguistic mapping. The contributors to Austronesian Taiwan provided papers to the “Austronesian Studies in Taiwan: Retrospect and Prospect” conference that took place in Berkley in late October 1997. Dr Blundell then edited these submissions, some of which were in their original languages, and compiled them into this volume.
The central thesis of this book is that Taiwan is the historical home for all Austronesian people who speak Formosan and Malayo-Polynesian (MP) languages. Dr Blundell gathers evidence from many academic disciplines to support this thesis, but the most compelling arguments are linguistic and archeological. For example, the MP languages in evidence from Madagascar to Easter Island share sentence structures, accents and words with the many Formosan languages indigenous to Taiwan. However, the Formosan languages of Taiwan have larger and more varied vocabularies and display more distinctive features from one another than do the MP languages from the Formosans. The implication is that the MP languages are much younger and are descended from the languages in Taiwan.

The second compelling argument for Taiwan being the locus of the Austronesian peoples is the archaeological record of “red slipped” pottery in Oceania. The pottery suddenly appears on these islands with no archeological precursor around 2000 BC. In contrast, there is a voluminous archaeological record with regional variation on the island of Taiwan for more that 2000 years previous to the appearance of this Oceania pottery. When the pottery evidence is viewed in tandem with the linguistic evidence, it would appear that some people who working with pottery and speaking an Austronesian language departed from southern Taiwan to the next nearest islands of the northern coast of Luzon in the Philippines. The descendants of those people then migrated further out into the Pacific and to Southeast Asia.

Dr Blundell and his contributors had to deal with the alternative theory that Austronesian peoples launched directly from the Southeastern coast of China towards Luzon then curled back up at some later date into Taiwan. The counter to this theory is the Penghu Islands archaeological record. These small islands in the Taiwan Straits have an archaeological record that predates that of both Taiwan and of Oceania but is more recent than that on mainland China. This timeline comports with the theory that these proto-Austronesian people hopped from the mainland to the next nearest islands, the Penghu, as a response to ecological or demographic pressure. From there, the descendants of these people hopped to Taiwan, stayed a few thousand years, then moved onto the Philippines.

The information and arguments presented in the book are compelling, as far as they go. However, advances in DNA analysis of rat bones found throughout Southeast Asia and Oceania as well as further Y-chromosome and mitochondrial analysis of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific and southeastern Asia will answer many of the questions left by the conjecture-based linguistic and archaeological evidence in this volume. Determining the actual pattern of migrations in southeastern Asia and Oceania will allow for more informed assessments of the historical and pre-historical evidence. Austronesian Taiwan is a valuable contribution for students of southeastern Asian history.

Curse you Steve Czaban!

He has been advertising this new beer, Leinenkugels, on his radio show in the mornings.  I decided to give it a try.
I bought some Honey Weiss at the 7 Day store and was shocked to find that it is as expensive at Guinness!  So, I was half hoping that it would be bitter, or metalic or would give me a hangover, but unfortunately, it is a really good beer.  So, instead of sticking with the tried and true Silver Bullet at 5 for 6, I am now going to have to shell out for this $8 stuff.  Woe is me, and curses on your moustache, Czaban!

New Obama Poster

Courtesy Tennyson and Malkin

The real cause of civil wars

A reader asks: "Do you think it is possible that these characteristics are more inherent to instability and ineffective government and those the real cause of civil war? Most of the countries we looked at were African nations which have been riddled with unstable conditions for many years now. To me the relatively young and uneducated populations in these countries seem more the result of the chaos stemming from civil war rather than a cause of it. Is this different than an observer noting that an ice cream shop sold more sundaes on a hot day, therefore ice cream sales affect warmer weather?"

If I read your question correctly, you are asking if it is possible that civil war is symptom of dysfunctional governance, just as are the youth bulge and illiteracy. I think there are two responses to this: 1) Civil war is exacerbated by surplus manpower. To illustrate this point requires an examination of the youth bulge.

The youth bulge is caused when medical advances allow more people to live longer lives and also decrease infant mortality. When these medical advances occur before a society transitions from a preference for large family sizes, there develops a sizeable cohort of youth for whom there is little to do and little upward mobility. Longer life spans for older men allows older men to stay in their professions or retain their wealth longer before passing it on to their children. In polygamous societies, older men with more wealth make better marriage partners for younger women who might otherwise be available to men nearer their own age. As a consequence, these types of societies must deal with populations of young men who do not have women, and who do not have any viable means for getting ahead in society except through glory in battle. Opportunistic leaders eager to assert power and/or seize resources or wealth find it easy to recruit armies from these young men. Opportunistic leaders with armies will inevitably clash for supremacy. (Cincotta)

I think the causation looks like this: A developing nation in any economic condition experiences an increase in lifespan at the same time experiencing a decrease in infant mortality. The society begins to destabilize as young, rootless men compete violently for dwindling supplies of available wealth and wives. Opportunistic leaders recruit armies from these men. Civil war results.

An alternate answer to your question is: 2) It just doesn’t matter which came first, the chicken or the egg or, if you prefer, the hot day or the sundae. Collier has identified the ingredients that, when present, indicate a country is in or will shortly be in civil war. How those ingredients came to be present is not particularly important. The fact that these characteristics are present means that the same prescription applies; free trade, energetic peacekeeping and tutorials on government. As Collier puts it: “Our utter neglect of trade, security and governance policies for the bottom billion is a scandal -- and an opportunity. Properly used, these policies have real power, which is why they were employed for the recovery of Europe.” (Collier)

Sources:

Cincotta, Richard. “State of the World 2005 Global Security Brief #2: Youth Bulge, Underemployment Raise Risks of Civil Conflict” Worldwatch Institute website March 1, 2005 at http://www.worldwatch.org/node/76 accessed 28 March 2008.

Collier, Paul. “Will the Bottom Billion Ever Catch Up?” Washington Post online 21 Oct 07 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/19/AR2007101901543.html accessed 28 MAr 08.

Argument against Sri Lanka as a counter-insurgency

It may be splitting hairs, but it seems that what is going on in Sri Lanka does not really qualify as a civil war. Consider the Correlates of War (COW) definition for Civil Wars: “To be recognized as a civil war, a conflict had to (1) occur within a generally recognized state (2) produce at least 1000 deaths per year (3) involve the national government as an active participant and (4) experience effective resistance from both the rebels and the government.” (Walter, pg 48) Combine that definition of civil war with Colliers’ construct of civil war: “a relatively high proportion of young uneducated men; an imbalance between ethnic groups, with one tending to outnumber the rest; and, a supply of natural resources like diamonds or oil which simultaneously encourages and helps to finance rebellion.” (Collier, Bottom) Then, consider that statistics for Sri Lanka in Table 1. Sri Lanka stands out from the rest of the countries in the table in literacy, average age and in the lack of a “resource curse.”

The sides in Sri Lanka appear to be two combatants contesting an international border rather than a rebel group against a sovereign country. The north and east of the island has been identified internationally as a Tamil homeland since at least 1873 when the frontier was demarcated by Britain. (Manogaran) The LTTE, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, collect taxes in the areas they control, run schools and even have a navy and an air force. (Shtender-Auerbach) The latest assessments by observers of the conflict see the war headed for stalemate. “However, since mid-2007, the Sri Lankan ground forces have not been able to show any notable successes, giving rise to fears among military observers that there could be a prolonged stalemate, leading to public disillusionment.”

The combat between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government may share some of the characteristics of civil wars seen around the world, but this conflict should fit into another category. This new category should include wars between states and quasi-states. Wars between states and quasi-states, such the one between Israel and Palestine and between China and Taiwan, feature capable combatants across a clearly demarcated frontier. Further, the sides have fought to a stalemate although considerable animosity exists on both sides and can flare into combat quickly. Removing these “state vs quasi state” conflicts from the discussion about civil wars makes the causation for civil war more clearly defined and more readily apparent from the Table 1 data.

Sources:

Balachandra, P.K. “Sri Lanka may be heading for military stalemate” India eNews Feb 6 2008 at http://www.indiaenews.com/srilanka/20080206/95922.htm accessed 29 Mar 08.

Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 2007.

Manogaran, Dr. Chelvadurai. “Sinhalese - Tamil Relations & the Politics of Space” Tamil National Forum 29 June 1997 at http://www.tamilnation.org/forum/manogaran/970629space.htm accessed 29 Mar 08.

Shtender-Auerbach, “What Happens When a "Poor Man's Air Force" Goes Airborne?” The Century Foundation, 5/3/2007 at http://www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=TN&pubid=1569 accessed 29 Mar 08.

Walter, Barbara F. Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press) 2002.

Predicting civil war with the Collier Construct

“The construct by Paul Collier states that: Civil war has nothing much to do with the legacy of colonialism, or income inequality, or the political repression of minorities. Three thing turn out to increase the risk of conflict: a relatively high proportion of young uneducated men; an imbalance between ethnic groups, with one tending to outnumber the rest; and, a supply of natural resources like diamonds or oil which simultaneously encourages and helps to finance rebellion.”

Paul Collier accepts the University of Michigan Correlates of War (COW) definition for Civil Wars. “To be recognized as a civil war, a conflict had to (1) occur within a generally recognized state (2) produce at least 1000 deaths per year (3) involve the national government as an active participant and (4) experience effective resistance from both the rebels and the government.” (Walter, pg 48) Given these assumptions, the Correlations of War Project has identified 213 conflicts since 1816 that meet these definitions. (Sarkees, pg 123-144) Going down the COW list, it is apparent that many of the COW’s civil wars feature Collier’s three increased risks. However, Collier himself points out that his observations are not able to predict which countries will have a civil war. “More fundamentally, our model cannot be used for prediction. It can tell you what structurally are the factors underlying proneness to civil war and what is sometimes more interesting, what seems to not be very important. From that, it can tell you the sort of countries that are most at risk. But it cannot tell you if Sierra Leone will have another civil war next year. That depends on a myriad of short-term events.” (Collier, Bottom, pg 19) Similarly, Collier’s observations do not hold true for every civil war. Take for instance his observation about an imbalance between ethnic groups. “One of the few low-income countries that is completely ethnically pure, Somalia, had a bloody civil war followed by complete and persistent government melt down.” (Collier, Bottom, pg 25)

The table constructed from the UN data seems to bear out Collier’s three factors. The table compared 10 states at-risk for civil war and 2 controls (United States and Great Britain), each measured in four variables: median age, percent of uneducated young men, ethnic balance and presence of natural resources, the “resource curse.” More or less arbitrarily, I grouped those countries with a median age less than 21, a school life expectancy in single digits and/or literacy of less than 51%, a dominant ethnic group that is less than 75% of the population, and the presence of a resource curse. The Sudan and the Ivory Coast meet all those criteria. One observer sees the Ivory Coast as heading towards disaster. “The Ivory Coast, therefore, is not just another little tribal war in the making — but potentially a major catastrophe.” Sudan is mired in a number of conflicts that may have had distinct beginnings, and a North-South orientation, but have devolved into something more general. “…the prospects of ending Sudan's armed conflict seem gloomy, stating that Sudan ‘entered the twenty-first century mired in not one but many civil wars.’” (Ronen)

Collier carefully notes that his factors do not predict when a country will experience civil war. For example, Bhutan, impoverished, land-locked, adjacent to two countries experiencing civil war (Nepal and Tibet), with low literacy could be a potential cite for civil war, but is instead on the verge of elections to replace a benevolent monarch. (CIA) Since Collier has identified broad variables in his construct and because Collier himself has identified the construct’s limitation, the Collier civil war construct is probably correct but required additional refinement to become more of a predictive tool than a descriptive one.

Sources:

Chirot, Daniel. “Chaos in Ivory Coast: Roots and Consequences” Globalist: Power of Global Ideas website at http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4264 accessed 25 Mar 08.

CIA. “Bhutan” World Factbook website at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bt.html accessed 28 Mar 08.

Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 2007.

Ronen, Yehudit. “Review of The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars by Douglas H. Johnson” Middle East Quarterly Spring 2004 at http://www.meforum.org/article/1528 accessed 28 March 08.

Sarkees, Meredith Reid (2000). "The Correlates of War Data on War: An Update to 1997," Conflict Management and Peace Science, 18/1: 123-144.

Walter, Barbara F. Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press) 2002.

Lessons from the First Afghan War

Given the United States then-recent retreat from Vietnam, scholars have questioned why the Soviet Union would have invaded a small country on the periphery of its empire thereby risking getting bogged down in an foreign adventure. Michael MccGwire saw the Soviet Union’s invasion as a reasonable response to concerns about its own security on its southern frontier. “The Soviets saw Afghanistan as part of their national security zone, and their intervention was directly comparable to those in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 and not some new departure.” 1 Raymond Garthoff argued that the Politburo believed the security situation in Afghanstan was so dire and such a threat to their interests that they had no choice but to intervene. Garthoff analogized that Afghanistan is to Russia as Mexico is to the United States. “…No one in the American leadership sought to understand the Soviet position by imagining a comparable parallel situation on the southern border of the United States (moreover with a hostile China and an adversarial alliance in place of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans). In such a case, it would not have been difficult to imagine an American intervention to save American lives and strategic assets and to preemptively preclude hostile presence.” 2 An Afghani observer rejected the rational geopolitical calculus as an explanation for the Soviet intervention, and instead identified the cause as the Soviet Communists’ lust for power and empire. “The concern that the Soviet leaders showed about their ‘insecurity’ of their southern borders was a mere rationalization for their drive for expansion, a drive reminiscent of nineteenth-century colonialism.” 3

The fact that Afghanistan actually bordered the Soviet Union supports Garthoff’s argument that political instability and other nations’ mischief in Afghanistan were strategic justifications for Soviet intervention. The Soviet Union had never let political challenges go unanswered on its frontiers, as MccGwire pointed out, so it was no surprise that the Soviet Union would intervene aggressively and in force as it had previously. The Soviet Union would use proxies like the Cubans or Nicaraguans in more remote insurgent battles like Angola or Latin America without injecting their own forces in those places in anything more than limited “advisor” role. Proxy wars were expensive drains on the Politburo’s treasury, but less so than would be an actual overseas deployment of an expeditionary army. Overseas proxy battles were certainly less likely than an actual Red Army deployment of provoking a response by the United States Army, and thereby actually destroying détente. 4 The proof of Afghanistan’s strategic importance can be seen in the fact that a few years after the Soviet Union’s defeat there, the Soviet Union empire had broken up. While the withdrawal from Afghanistan can not be seen as a direct causal link to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the psychological damage done by the defeat there, coupled with the drain on capital that the anemic Soviet economy could not sustain, doomed the empire.

By contrast, Vietnam’s strategic importance to the United States was a more tenuous case. Many American leaders in that era ascribed to the “domino theory” when countering Communist expansionism. The domino theory explained the fear that allowing one small country on the periphery to fall to the communists would discourage neighboring states and embolden expansionist communists. According to the theory, many states would fall if one fell. Eventually, the falling states would imperil the United States. “Domino theorists held that the capture of one Third World state would allow the capture of the next, and the next. In other words, they believed Third World states were highly cumulative assets. 5 President Kennedy was a believer in this theory and made an impassioned argument in support of the theory on the Huntley Brinkley Show: “I believe it. I believe it. I think that the struggle is close enough. China is so large, looms so high just beyond the frontiers, that if South Viet-Nam went, it would not only give them an improved geographic position for a guerrilla assault on Malaya but would also give the impression that the wave of the future in Southeast Asia was China and the Communists. So I believe it.” 6

While it is clear that there was a deep belief in the wisdom of intervention in Vietnam, history has shown that America’s defeat there did not result in “dominoes” falling in Asia in any way that could be considered a threat to American power. The United States emerged in the years following defeat in Vietnam as the world’s superpower. The lack of repercussions for America’s geopolitical position following the defeat is evidence of the lack of strategic importance of the war there.

Operationally, both the US and the Soviet Union ran out of time in prosecuting their particular operational approaches to the counter-insurgency. The US eventually adopted a Philippine War -style approach that attempted to protect villagers and destroy insurgents in an attempt to allow civilian rule to take hold. The Soviets attempted to ethnically cleanse recalcitrant populations and relocate those more amenable populations into recently cleansed areas to forestall disturbances. Both of these counter-insurgency strategies, the benign and the repugnant, require time to in order to achieve the goals. As noted by Sarah Sewall, the key to a successful counter-insurgency is time. “Since a national COIN strategy is a long-term proposition, building a unified and bipartisan approach is critical for the Nation.” 7 Both the United States and the Soviet Union ran out of time and as a consequence, had to leave the battlefield in defeat.

Tactically, US forces remained effective throughout the war. Colonel Summers argued that American forces performed superbly throughout the war. American forces never lost a major engagement on the ground or in the air. 8 On the contrary, the Soviet forces performed in a desultory fashion, often committing atrocities against civilians. Observers noted that many Red Army units and their Afghani counter-parts had no interest in performing basic patrolling or rudimentary attacks that could have been devastating to the Afghan insurgency. The Red Army was poorly trained, poorly led, rife with alcoholism and engaged in systematic, sadistic hazing of conscripts. Morale was very bad. 9 The Afghan Mujahadeen were not note to have any particular tactical skill, but the Soviet Army was unable or unwilling to exploit the obvious weaknesses of the insurgency. 10

Afghanistan held more strategic significance for the Soviets than was Vietnam for the United States. Afghanistan was a restive province on the southern periphery of the Soviet empire, and to the Russian autocrats in the Politburo, Afghanistan appeared indistinguishable from neighboring countries already in the Soviet orbit. The Soviet leadership could not afford to have such a country on its southern frontier as an example of liberty and to provide manpower and materiel for insurgencies inside the Soviet Union proper. Even though the political leadership defined Afghanistan as strategically vital, the Red Army did not perform well enough to prevail in its counter-insurgency fight. In contrast, Vietnam did not represent a real strategic concern for the US, but the US military nonetheless performed admirably against the insurgency. What was common in the two counter-insurgencies, that of the US and the Soviet Union, was a lack of time to follow through to victory. Consequently, both were defeated.

Sources:

1 MccGwire , Michael. Perestroika and Soviet National Security (Washington: Brookings Institution Press) 1991. Pg 94.

2 Garthoff, Raymond L. Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington: Brookings Institution Press) 1994. Pg 1074, Notes

3. Kakar, M. Hassan. Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979-1982 (Berkeley: University of California Press) 1995. Pg 49.

4. Bialer, Seweryn. The Soviet Paradox: External Expansion, Internal Decline (New York: Knopf) 1986 . Pg 312.

5. Van Evera, Stephen. Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press) 1999. Pg 113.

6. US General Services Administration. Public Papers of the President: John F. Kennedy, 1963 (Washington: Government Printing Office) 1964 in James N. Giglio Debating the Kennedy Presidency (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield) 2002. Pg 88.


7. Sewall, Sarah. “Modernizing U.S. counterinsurgency practice: rethinking risk and developing a national strategy” Military Review, Sept-Oct, 2006 at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PBZ/is_5_86/ai_n17093153/pg_11 accessed 17 March 2008.

8. Summers Jr, Harry. On Strategy II: A Critical Analysis of the Gulf War (New York: Dell Books) 1992. Pg 47.

9. Reese, Roger R. The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917-1991 (London: Routledge) 2000. Pg 172.

10. Jalali, Ali Ahmad and Lester W. Grau. The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War (Quantico: Marine Corps Studies and Analysis Division) 1995. Pg 404.

Thailand's First Counter-insurgency Fight

The most striking characteristic of the Thai counter-insurgency is the time it took to finally get it right. From 1965 to 1983, the Thai government groped for the strategy that would work to effectively counter the insurgency. The early Thai counter-insurgency effort looked somewhat like the early American counter-insurgency effort in Vietnam, heavy on the conventional war with little effort to redress the economic and political grievances that motivated the Maoists. Many Thais recognized that the Maoist complaints about the political system had resonance, but instead of joining the insurgency, many disaffected Thais turned their dissatisfaction to more traditionally Thai outlets like Buddhism, Thai nationalism and love of the monarchy. These outlets were more attractive to most Thais that what the Maoist in the Communist Party of Thailand were offering. The insurgency failed to grow and thrive even though the Thai military adopted many of the heavy-handed tactics of the seen in other counter-insurgency fights that generally backfired.

The unique character of the Thai people offered the counter-insurgency additional time to find the right strategy. As we have seen in the other case studies, the key variable to counter-insurgency is having the time to allow the right strategy to work. Seventeen years is a long time to fight any kind of campaign, but that kind of time is generally what is needed to be successful. The time allowed the Thai military to put into practice a counter-insurgency strategy the broad outlines of which are now familiar. The conventional military provided real security in the villages to allow grass-roots political reform to take place. Special units hunted and destroyed the military capability of the insurgents. At the national level, general political reform addressed the systemic problems that might have compelled the ideologically inclined to side with the insurgents and tip the balance away from the government.

As Jon pointed out, CPT strategic mistakes also contributed to the Thai government victory. Most of those mistakes can be attributed to the nature of communism. Communists are atheists, anti-religious, controlled by outsiders and anti-monarchical. Thus, the CPT had a hard time swimming in the sea of the Thai people who were Buddhist and traditional monarchists. The Maoists just could not change or hide their nature, and were thus always at a disadvantage in their organizing and concealment in the countryside. There is a Zen Buddhist story that goes something like this: A Buddhist master reached into a stream to save a scorpion that was drowning while a soldier stood nearby. As the master lifted the scorpion on the bank to save it from drowning, the insect stung the master, then the soldier immediately stomped the scorpion to death. The student asked why the master would save a scorpion knowing it would sting and that the soldier would kill it. “It has its nature, I have mine, he has his.”

The extent to which the CPT insurgency was wedded to Maoist ideology probably was a lucky thing for the Thai counter-insurgency as Robert mentioned. By the time the Thai counter-insurgency was heading to victory, Maoism had been discredited everywhere, including in China. Whatever political problems existed in Thailand seemed trivial compared to the prospect of foreign domination, concentration camps and bankruptcy that communism had to offer. The Thai people could see what communism wrought for their neighbors in Laos and Vietnam. Those examples had no appeal for the average Thai and that perception contributed to the defeat of the CPT.

What is up with Syria? or Never attribute to malice or conspiracy that which can be explained by stupidity or incompetence

Stratfor doesn't know: The events in Syria of September 2007 make no sense and have never made any sense. The events we have seen since February make no sense either. That is noteworthy, and we bring it to your attention. We are not saying that the events are meaningless. We are saying that we do not know their meaning. But we can't help but regard them as ominous.

This is my take: I think one point Stratfor did not make is that the Syrians have never shown 
themselves to be particularly adept at long term strategic thinking. Maybe things seem disjointed and illogical because that is the nature of Assad's thought process. Aligning themselves with North Korea, trying to build nuke plants, continuing to test the patience of the US and Israel, blatantly interfering in Lebanon without much strategic purpose...Syria does not have much of a plan except trying to punch above their weight. They are like the 5'2" tough guy who swaggers around hurling insults and threats and occasionally bullying someone even smaller...eventually someone bigger and tougher will tire of the act and crush him. Just a matter of time.

Killing People for Safety

Iain Murray wrote in the National Review Online "Not all those whose flights have been canceled will cancel their trips. Some will find slots on other airlines, but some will choose to go by car (there being no appreciable competition from rail in most markets). Automobile travel is more dangerous than commerical plane travel for long distance trips. With the number of cancellations in the thousands, we can expect very many people to have gone long distances by road who wouldn't have otherwise. There is a chance that some of these people will be involved in a fatal accident. It is plausible, therefore, that grounding the flights will have fatal consequences."

Well, duh.  Family of 4 dies in a rental car on the highway, not news.  Plane slides off the runway because some wiring was crossed, BIG NEWS.  Bureaucrats might feel some heat (that is about it, can't be fired, after all) so they shut down the air traffic grid.  The FAA would rather people die than have to answer some questions at a press conference.  But, that is the Federal Gov't for you, in a nutshell