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