Opinion - The Korea Times

Demise of great US expert on East Asia

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― Scholars and journalists don’t always get along (right, call this Dept. of Understatement). But their need for each other is endless and often deep, even when each side bull-headedly refuses to admit it. Let’s put the matter this way: Journalists are generally scavenger birds of the moment, tweeting their view of contemporary history breathlessly and sometimes (alas) carelessly. By contrast the true academic is the whale of the knowledge kingdom, diving deep and displacing much when on the hunt for knowledge. I am brazen enough to say that I may actually know what I am talking about: over the decades I have been both an American journalist and an American professor, often at the same time ― as, for example, now. I admit my view of great scholars can trend toward the bucolic and completely ignore the large raft of professorial deadheads, footnote trawlers and tenured mediocrities that populate many universities. In part this positive blindness is because I pointedly avoid the loathsome academic bureaucrats who make you want to tear your hair

Nov 13, 2011By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Asian leader wins coveted American award

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― They honored the controversial, though increasingly appreciated, Asian statesman Lee Kuan Yew at the historic Ford Theater in Washington, D.C., recently, and frankly I wish I had been there. Exceptional leaders are hard to find anywhere on the globe, including Asia. Until his recent retirement, this tough-as-nails guy ― now 89 ― had helped organize and run tiny Singapore almost like nobody has ever run anything. He certainly didn’t do things 100 percent the American way. This made this U.S.-led award event all the more extraordinary and noteworthy. They call it the Ford Theatre’s Lincoln Medal. Recipients are said to somehow exemplify the legacy of old Abe himself. So now modern Singapore’s founding prime minister finds himself in the same category as past awardee Desmond Tutu, the legendary anti-apartheid crusader and 1984 Nobel laureate. And Lee becomes the first Lincoln awardee ever from Asia. Who would have thought? Western human rights organizations must be rolling over furiously on their bed of staunch principles. They so hated his contr

Nov 7, 2011By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Why US should get off high-currency horse

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― China often gets bad press in America, and sometimes it is deserved. But not always. Take the controversial case of Chinese currency manipulation. We know for a fact that it is a fact. None other than Ben Bernanke confirmed it in his public testimony. He told us that China’s suppression of the value of its currency is indeed a real factor tripping up the sputtering American economy. We have heard this indictment of Chinese “currency manipulation” many times before, but often from sources not worthy of trust, or so determined to demonize China as to be easily dismissed. But when Bernanke says it, I have to believe it. And probably you should, too. Our chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, bravely leaving leafy Princeton University in 2002 for Washington duty, is no academic drama queen or chintzy Washington demagogue. He is a public servant whose stature, had fate permitted him to head the Fed in more fortunate economic times, would transcend that of his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, who believed all too religiously in the inherent g

Oct 16, 2011By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Taiwan redux

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― The Taiwanese are being permitted to buy a $6 billion bundle of military goodies from the United States, but, says the Obama Administration, they are not to get their hands on the hot new jet fighters they want (measly upgrades only). Even so, from across the inherently-tense Taiwan Strait, China is in official huffy protest, allegedly angry that the U.S. is selling Taiwan anything at all. At the same time, the governing Beijing elite are trying to keep a composed public face. Well short of seeming wimpy to the home crowd, it nonetheless is demonstrating scant appetite for showy preliminaries to World War Three. And for that, of course, the entire world is grateful. Thus would include the incumbent Taiwan administration of President Ma Ying-jeou, now campaigning for re-election on its policy of engagement, not confrontation, with the mainland. Please note that it is not just China but also the United Nations and the vast majority of governments around the world that do not formally recognize Taiwan as an independent government. But that

Sep 29, 2011By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

’We are a threat to no one’

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― Despite everything it writes and proclaims, modern-day China, it still seems to me, continues to search for a clear-headed sense of its true self and its proper place in the 21st century sun. Where and how this otherwise predictable resource-seeking superpower will fit into the scheme of things on this troubled planet is the 1.3 billion people question. The leaders of China repeatedly deny that their country of many storied millennia has any ambition whatsoever to mushroom into a dragon-like hegemon. But precisely that scenario has been the consistent pattern of rising and ambitious nations throughout history. Yet China, we are told by China, will be different. But will it? And indeed, why should it be different from any other potent power in the course of history? Still, a newly re-proclaimed sense of defined difference was the urgent message under conveyance in an extraordinary new white paper issued recently by the Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. The State Council, roughly the equivalent of th

Sep 20, 2011By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

China’s smart diplomacy

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES – China’s new and first aircraft carrier isn’t fully operational yet. But whatever its ultimate naval potency, we know that it does at least float! It’s currently in a mainland dock for further dressing up and hosting of crew training before setting sail. We recall that the very idea of China even acquiring an aircraft carrier, when originally floated by Beijing, was not popular elsewhere. Hearts sank around the world, then enamored with China’s declared policy of “peaceful rising.” Why would a truly peaceful-rising country need an aircraft carrier? The answer is that the Chinese apparently want what the Americans have. It’s not that China is preparing for war as far as anyone knows with the U.S. It’s simply behaving as any rising power has throughout history. It now has serious money to throw around, so why not have a serious military to throw around, too? You could perhaps wish otherwise, but then you’d be guilty of seriously wishful thinking, if not self-delusion. So let’s sit at the feet of Harvard’s Joseph S. Nye, Jr., who explains h

Aug 15, 2011By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Democracy cliches, please

By Tom Plate ABU DHABI ― “Political man” is a complicated species. Cultural conditions and history differ widely. Humility in the interpretation and prediction of human nature is the wisest bet. The evolving “Arab Spring,” as the media term it, is viewed through Western eyes as if the transformation of Ali Baba and the Seven Thieves into Thomas Jefferson and the International Court of Justice. This is a joke, and an insult to Arab political man. Western eyes are often shaded by ideological or provincial thinking. Other political cultures arise from different circumstances than the West and shape their thinking accordingly. Western democratic forms of government transplant only with dignity and are no cure-all. The Philippines with a Western-style democracy has less economic development to show for it than any number of autocracies. Even in the United States right now, our sometimes elegant and venerable democracy seems on the verge of running out of gas. Its theoretical one-man-one-vote inclusiveness seems mostly notable nowadays for producing brain-dead divisiveness alon

Jul 15, 2011By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Understanding China as Kissinger does

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― It is very tempting to proclaim “On China” as the most important new nonfiction book of 2011. But that it may well be. Several reasons compel this judgment. The first is that this extraordinarily clear-headed analytical study has just one central focus: China. So it does not wander all over the lot and its central focus is not exactly some tiny study of Montenegro: For China is the home for close to one out of every four citizens of this planet and, of course, China is no longer asleep. Reason number two is that any authoritative study of China, such as this one, helps us understand the all-important China-U.S. relationship. What are the stakes here? It seems reasonable to believe that if Beijing and Washington construct their policies on parallel tracks that are as accommodative of each other as is consistent with their respective national interests, then the probability of a world war occurring will be greatly reduced. Those are therefore some stakes. The third obvious reason why this book merits special ranking is that its author is Henry K

Jun 21, 2011By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Ban Ki-moon deserves pat on the back

By Tom Plate What’s surprising about the probable confirmation of incumbent United Nations Secretary General Ban ki-moon for a second five-year term is not its near-certainty. It is the virtual lack of controversy surrounding it. This is to say that if you judged the former South Korean foreign minister’s first term solely by the generally critical news media coverage of it, you might be led to conclude that his tenure had been a failure. And yet the probability is that the member states of the Security Council and the General Assembly will react to his formal announcement of candidacy on Monday with little dissent at all. So the question we might want to ask is: Why in the world is that? Why do we read and see one version of reality in our news media, and yet the true reality would appear to be something quite different. There are several reasons. The first is that the vast percentage of the negative coverage of Ban’s first term has come from the news media of the West. You can troll all day in the news media of Asia, for example, and be hard pressed to find much disa

Jun 7, 2011By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Very risky business ― IMF style

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― We need to have a clear understanding about what is happening with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Do not for a minute believe the current scandal is just one of those more or less happening things. It may not be the total end of the world for the IMF, but if the world’s largest money-granting bureaucracy doesn’t straighten its act out soon, the beginning of the end of its primacy may be at hand. The current reassessment comes about in the wake of the embarrassed resignation amid sordid sex-assault scandal of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the once-Olympian IMF director, and the consequent scramble to anoint a successor to the powerful position of global bailout banker-in-chief. Although not that widely known, the IMF plays a key part in world affairs and is easily in the same league of importance as the United Nations. Much of the time the IMF worries about unthinkables ― such as world financial catastrophe. Most normal people, we would agree, do not fret much about global financial stability. They assume they will always be able to make a visit

May 24, 2011By Tom Plate

Tom Plate

Read more

Demise of great US expert on East Asia

Asian leader wins coveted American award

Why US should get off high-currency horse

Taiwan redux

’We are a threat to no one’

China’s smart diplomacy

Democracy cliches, please

Understanding China as Kissinger does

Ban Ki-moon deserves pat on the back

Very risky business ― IMF style

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