Opinion - The Korea Times

Pardon Our Presidents!

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― American democracy is ― sure ― semi-corrupt, somewhat vulgar and genetically inefficient. But it does at least one thing especially well. Its treatment of former presidents of the United States is exemplary. This is not always true in Asia. Let's look at the record. Jimmy Carter was a mostly ineffective one-term president. But he has been nothing less than a giant-killer as an ex-president. In his post-White House life, he has been driven by caring and commitment. His occasional hard-edged public comments, such as his diagnosis of racism beneath the poison directed at President Barack Obama these days, are compass points. The former Georgian peanut farmer is a walking advertisement for the idea that the U.S. Constitution should include a device for allowing certain politicians to skip White House service completely and proceed directly to the Office of ex-Presidency. George H.W. Bush Sr., the high-class pro bono ex-Prez, could go down in history as the best one-term U.S. president ever. (John Kennedy never had a full-term, and of course

Sep 22, 2009By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Geopolitical and Personal Health

By Tom Plate Asia certainly offers the world fantastic cuisine of all kinds. Consider first some of their serious food for thought. Asia's intellectual chefs stir minds with heady geopolitical thinking. One of the region's four-star intellectuals is Singapore's Kishore Mahbubani, the former U.N. Ambassador and now Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He is what might be called a master fusion chef of saucy political ideas. ``Asia will demonstrate that the Western domination of world history over the last 200 years has been an aberration," he writes in ``Foreign Policy," the pleasantly punchy policy journal out of Washington. ``With China and India moving once again to center stage, we will return to the historical norm in which these countries are the world's two largest economies, as they were for 1,800 years." His book ``The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East" predicts a new world order that's as much Asian as Western. Asia is rising, insists this public intellectual, and the West has to learn how to share power, no

Sep 13, 2009By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Hatoyama’s Political Philosophy

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― It was just this side of comical. The leader of the new ruling party of Japan barely finishes acknowledging his Democratic Party of Japan's landslide win and a public-relations disaster strikes. The result: an ignominious international climb-down. What happened was not an ideal opening act for the next Prime Minister of the troubled country that boasts the world's second largest economy, after that of its ally, the United States. It might even have been called a really bad start. So, let's see what went on. Before the election, a Japanese magazine published an essay by Yukio Hatoyama, this soon-to-be prime minister of Japan and DPJ leader. It thoughtfully challenged some of the operational tenets of the American Century (the previous one). ``My Political Philosophy" decried the cold inhuman edges of globalization, raised (as have some in the Chinese elite and other global voices) doubts about the future global centrality of the U.S. dollar, called for a greater sense of shared opportunity among the nations of East Asia (and the world) and wonde

Sep 7, 2009By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

In Defense of Ban Ki-moon

By Tom Plate Surely the United Nations, terribly flawed though it is, offers the world enough benefit that sensible people should want to contribute to its chances of success. This necessary instinct is particularly palpable in Asia, where the United Nations work in the areas of economic and social assistance is viewed as vital, and where it is widely known that the prominent organization is now headed by a fellow Asian for the first time in decades. To be sure, no one here is under any opium cloud of delusion that, politically speaking, the United Nations is the second coming of some institutional Batman. Everyone knows that the cranky Security Council, the body's chief political arm, retains its debilitating and antediluvian World War II genetic inheritance: Former powers France and Great Britain, after all, still have veto power, while comparative giants like India, Japan, Brazil and Nigeria do not. How absurd is that? Nevertheless, the United Nations still counts for something. And in 2007, it perhaps meant a little more than usual in Asia. For the first time since the

Aug 30, 2009By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Sense and Sensibility of Kim

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― He had all about him the sense of a man of destiny, someone who was aware of living his life at some level above himself. Though sometimes too full of haughty egotism and regional provincialism, Kim Dae-jung was indeed the prophetic pathfinder his fellow South Koreans required in their mass march out of military dictatorship and corporate feudalism ― and into the 21st century of participatory democracy and economic maturity. Perhaps his best years took place in the early part of this decade. In 2000 he became the first Korean ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts (later discovered to have involved the passing of under-the-table cash to the North) with the implacable dictator Kim Jong-il. That recognition was worth celebrating nonetheless. So was the underdog South Korean National Team's astonishing rise to the final four of the 2002 FIFA World Cup competition. With both achievements South Korea seemed to come of age. It was Kim's vision, however, that Korea would lack full maturity until its two halves were made one. His dream

Aug 24, 2009By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Japan at Another Crossroad

By Tom Plate With all eyes on a rising India, an awakened China and a roiling Islam, we tend to take good old, solid Japan (still the world's second largest economy, please don't forget) as a given. But that is a mistake: These are the times that try Japan's soul. This brilliant, proud society - both ancient and modernized ― looks to be at yet another crossroads. The current Prime Minister, Taro Aso, has been ignominiously compelled to call a national election in August, even though all forecasts predict a possible landslide for the opposition: the Democratic Party of Japan. If that happens, the long-leading Liberal Democratic Party that Aso temporarily heads would face the prospect of having itself become the opposition, at least for the foreseeable future. But this might be healthy for Japan: One true test of the vibrancy of a competitive democracy is the ability to make smooth transitions from one party to another. Until now, Japan has been all but a one-party octopus rarely benefiting from muscular opposition. So rather than feeling diminished by the August calamity

Aug 2, 2009By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Impact of Attack in Jakarta

By Tom Plate Jakarta is closer than we realize. That's why President Barack Hussein Obama's condemnation of the suicide bombings of those two Western-brand luxury hotels in the capital of sprawling Indonesia was no we-have-to-put-out-something-or-other response. It reflected real alarm: If it can happen there, why not in Atlanta or Providence or the Poconos or ― Los Angeles? Obama knows his administration is scarcely immune from a U.S. ``Jakarta jolt" just because his middle name happens to be Hussein. He needs his anti-terror policy to seem tough as nails, even if he prefers that it not trample all over the U.S. Constitution. But the credibility of his security policy ― and perhaps his Presidency ― rests on the assumption that if something like Jakarta ever happened here on his watch, it would not be because he had let our guard down via liberal coddling of terrorists. But that is the certain charge from Republicans should anything like a Ritz-Carleton/JW Marriott occur here. In fact, that implication, without of course a single new terrorist explosion in the United

Jul 19, 2009By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

China Tensions

By Tom Plate There was never much doubt in the mind of a single reputable expert anywhere in the world that there were parts of China ― and not just Tibet ― that had ethnic unrest that could boil over. Nor was there the slightest possibility that the masters of the People's Republic of China would be able to escape, within its capacious borders, the kind of Muslim assertion of identity (at least in some measure) that was flaring up in other parts of the world. In fact, when the previous American government sought a helping hand from other countries in its infamous ``war on terror" after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the U.S., Beijing, noticeably, did not say no. It had, after all, its own ``Muslim problem" and could anticipate its own future pain ― and thus the need for understanding by others, if it could get it, should a crackdown prove necessary. And indeed, China's turn has now come. Its problem, in the far western desert plains of China, concerns the Uighurs, the Turkic Muslim ethnic group that once dominated Xinjiang Province. No longer: The massive infl

Jul 13, 2009By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Worrying About US Media

By Tom Plate Everyone knows that the American news media is proud as Papa of its reputation as the storied giant-killer of politicians and as the always-barking watchdog of government. Famously, aggressive journalism decades ago by The Washington Post and other major media institutions actually dethroned an elected President, Richard Nixon. This was the most iconic example of adversarial American journalism in action. Additionally, courageous reporting of the grim reality of the Vietnam War by dogged U.S. correspondents emboldened the anti-war movement and eventually helped rally public opinion behind the war critics. More recently, reported scandals in the U.S. news media have dramatically shortened the careers of senators, governors, mayors, religious leaders, investment bankers, organized-crime figures and other pillars of the establishment. It is perhaps ironic, however, that this in-your-face news-media system is more respected throughout the world for its sheer brassiness than emulated as a model for universal use. In Asia, perhaps especially, serious people wo

Jul 5, 2009By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Hong Kong and Obama

By Tom Plate HONG KONG ― They are worried about America, no doubt about it. ``It looks like your new President can actually chew gum and walk at the same time! Obama is perceived extremely enthusiastically in Hong Kong,'' explains David Dodwell, CEO of the consulting firm Strategic Access here. ``But the danger is that expectations for him are so high. If in a year's time the much-vaunted U.S. recovery hasn't happened and the awesome costs of rescue are becoming clear, then the burden of domestic policy pressures may force difficult and unpleasant developments on trade and protection, and on China in particular.'' Dodwell, a career journalist based in Hong Kong, was articulating the concern of a small group of Hong Kong enthusiasts attending a special Vision 2047 Foundation breakfast-thought-session at the Hong Kong Club. It seems as if they are as agitated today as they were in 1997 ― but not about the same thing. And 1997 was the year that Hong Kong was converted, via peaceful negotiation between London and Beijing, from a British colony to a Special Administration Region

Jun 30, 2009By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Read more

Pardon Our Presidents!

Geopolitical and Personal Health

Hatoyama’s Political Philosophy

In Defense of Ban Ki-moon

Sense and Sensibility of Kim

Japan at Another Crossroad

Impact of Attack in Jakarta

China Tensions

Worrying About US Media

Hong Kong and Obama

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