By Tom Plate
It is said that the optimist peers at the glass and assesses it as half full, and the pessimist gauges it half empty. But the cynic asks: Where's the leak?
This past year was so bad, it was almost impossible to describe. New words were needed. For example, consider the ruckus of the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Denmark, headed by the indefatigable U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. It is now known simply as ``Copenhagen," which immediately morphs into a new verb ― ``to Copenhagen" ― which means something like to fuzz over the reality, such as ``zero plus zero equals whatever you want but never equals zero." As in ``polluted" means ``almost as clear as the eye can see." You get the idea.
That's one new term. Then from a proper noun ― the last name of our U.S. president ― comes the morphed verb: ``to Obama." This means to split political differences to such a fine degree that it's hard to detect the presence of any actual coherent policy change. A third I fear will make it into our political lexicon is ``to Ahmadi-Nejad," created to honor Iran's prevaricating and wholly annoying president. This proper noun-to-verb means, well, ``to prevaricate" ― that is, ``to lie." Catchy, eh?
Persistent illusions across the globe require the observer to develop the psychic and professional protection of a realistically cynical attitude towards people, places and things. But let us not give up hope. In this spirit, here are a half a dozen good things I hope will happen in 2010.
The World Will Pay More Attention to South Korea and Less to the North: A great contemporary success story is South Korea, too rarely rendered in its full prideful panoply. A much larger-scale version of the excellent Singapore story, it is a sweeping saga of economic development catapulting a once beaten-down people to First World status. Notice how Seoul recently landed a multibillion-dollar peaceful nuclear power contract from the energy-ravenous United Arab Republic (ordinarily the French or Japanese probably would have gotten it). Appreciate how it now ascends to the presidency of the so-called ``Group of 20' leading world economies, a sort of economic Olympic gold medal. Note, too, that today's Korean technology isn't the shabby brand of yore ― as those of you tooling around in a new Hyundai know happily. For South Korea, failure is not an option. By contrast, its northern neighbor is nothing more than a portrait of the pathetic. It's the tired story of failure with no exit. Maybe if we ignore it more, it will expect less from us?
These Bad Big Shots Will Resign: At the top of a long list of unhelpful figures, three especially prominent personages stand out: Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown (he's seriously politically tone deaf), Burma's (okay, Myanmar's) junta boss Than Shwe (a bad geriatric joke) and Kim Jong-il (rank incompetent). The world would be a much better place with all three off somewhere playing golf or checkers full-time.
India's ``Odd Couple" Named TIME Magazine's Next Man and Woman of the Year: Hey, boys at Rockefeller Center: Please take a look at nuclear-armed India, with more than a billion people, a hundred languages, many religions and as many problems, including nuclear-armed Pakistan. But it has been moving forward lately and could round out into a superpower center someday (maybe). One positive factor has been the steadily wise guidance of clear-headed reform economist Manmohan Singh, now enjoying (??) his second term as prime minister of giant India. This religious Sikh is smarter than President Barack Obama, wiser than China's President Hu Jintao and probably knows as many facts, figures and graphs (if you're into this) as Singapore's phenomenal nerd-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (past-labeled, by us, as ``Prime Minister Google"). Singh is well backed by ruling party chair Sonia Gandhi, the legendary Nehru's powerful granddaughter-in-law and India's reigning behind-the-scenes-matriarch. This odd couple should share the honor. We Americans need to understand India much better ― now.
Reticent, Reclusive, Impossible-to-Read Chinese President Hu Opens Up and Gets Down With the Western Media: This leader of China is of paramount importance to the world, but he's so tight-lipped that one is tempted to label him the Great Clam of China. He really needs to do everyone a favor and show the public some of the awesome qualities said to have gotten him to the top of the mainland heap: thoughtfulness and an encompassing command of the issues, tempered with the proclivity to press the ``repression" button at the first sign of trouble. Let some serious and respected journalist have an honest and open go at him. On the American TV side, who would be better than Charlie Rose, whose great work in interviewing complex Chinese leaders like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore qualifies him for the big chance. (If Rose happens to be unavailable … who is around to do Hu? Hmm…). Anyway, dream on: This one isn't going to happen.
Japan Finds Itself With a Successful Prime Minister: That's probably not the incumbent Yukio Hatoyama, who every day seems more and more overwhelmed by the very idea that he's prime minister. Japan, you see, tends to go through prime ministers faster than Tiger Woods through nightclub hostesses. The Land of the Rising Sun will begin to sink in the East unless it gets a grip on its political system and finds itself a prime minister with real staying power. This is urgent.
Syndicated columnist Tom Plate, a member of the Pacific Century Institute and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, celebrated the 15th anniversary of his Asia column last year. He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.