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Tom Plate

Tom Plate, distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, is the Pacific Century Institute's vice-president. His first book ― "Understanding Doomsday, on the nuclear arms race" ― was published in 1971. His article was distributed by the South China Morning Post.

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Tom Plate

Obama can grab opportunities in Asia

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― Over the next week or so, our troubled American President, fresh from that unmistakable midterm elections rebuke, will hit the foreign-relations trail. All the stops are in Asia, the world’s fastest rising region that is perhaps slowly becoming its most important. Thankfully, many parts of Asia are not so antagonistic to America these days. Barack Obama should find it a relief to spend time with people who like him. In India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan, he may even find leaders who wish to work with him productively. After Tuesday’s Democratic debacle, there are fewer of those types left in Washington. Yes, the president’s Asia journey was planned and scheduled long in advance of the congressional elections, which blew up in the Democrats’ face. But the serendipitous timing could hardly be better: The international arena still offers huge opportunities for presidential initiative and accomplishment. The U.S. Constitution and more than two centuries of practice have created vast space for presidential action in foreign relations.

Nov 5, 2010By Tom Plate
Tom Plate

Are China, Japan heading for collision?

BY Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― The people of China and Japan deserve better leadership at the top than they have been getting. The ineptitude of their governments has been close to astonishing. But better leadership is not immediately in prospect for either ancient nation. That means relations between the two giant economies will probably get worse, when improvement is urgently needed before some part of East Asia blows up. Let’s not all fall asleep: History is full of blowups that no one ever expected. Perhaps the Japanese malaise is the more obvious of the two problems. Except for the five-year reign of Junichiro Koizumi (2001-06), Japan hasn’t had continuity at the top since the glory years of Yasuhiro Nakasone (1982-87). Japanese Prime Ministers have had all the staying power of seasonal lint ― and the result is a political mess. No one can make a tough decision ― at a time when all the easy decisions have long ago been made and the hard ones continue to pile up. It’s getting worse. The country’s economy is in a seemingly permafrost and the morale of the ordinar

Oct 26, 2010By Tom Plate
Tom Plate

Avoiding war with China

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― Genuine leadership is always eye-catching, and sometimes history-making. This otherwise commonplace observation is especially true when it comes to the matter of war between China and Taiwan. This unthinkable explosion would, if it did happen, jar otherwise prosperous East Asia back into a stone age ― and bring America to the brink of war with China. Wise leaders prudently push forward despite all sorts of easy reasons to stay put ― or bury one’s head in the sand. Great leaders are anything but a dime a dozen, of course. But Asia, surging economically even as the U.S sags and Europe sputters, can make the claim that it has put forward at least a few. The latest to emerge from that increasingly dynamic region is President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan. His most recent claim to fame rests with the recent free-trade pact his government signed with that goliath on the other side of the straits: the People’s Republic of China. Called the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) (don’t ask why, not worth it), the deal provides for a lowering of official

Sep 5, 2010By Tom Plate
Tom Plate

Doing right thing for Muslim world

By Tom Plate NEW YORK CITY ― What’s the one major issue the West absolutely and totally must get right in the years ahead? If the obvious answer is not peaceful international relations with a fast-rising and increasingly assertive China, then it has to be the West’s ever-more complicated relationship with the world’s Muslims. And this assignment is predicted to be difficult at best. Certainly this would-be “clash of civilizations,” as the famed late Harvard professor Sam Huntington dubbed it, seemed all but inescapable in the wake of the horrific leveling of the World Trade Center twin towers in 2001 by Islamic hyper-terrorists. Sensible people on both sides of the Islamic line accept that demented terrorists of all stripes will always exist, whether in the mountains of Pakistan or in the flatlands of Oklahoma. They can be contained but not eliminated. Are our own misconceptions and prejudices when dealing with the worldwide Islamic community, of well more than a billion mainly innocent souls, also vital to contain? If all Muslims are extremists, then we should have t

Aug 20, 2010By Tom Plate
Tom Plate

Dangers on high seas of East Asia

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― The Obama administration is raising the U.S. profile in the South China Sea and in the newly troubled seas around the Korean Peninsula. Its decisions are sound enough, and they have been put forth carefully and with proportionality. But they do entail risks and may test the China-U.S. relationship. This column is meant as a warning signal. Let’s take a look at the two main aspects of this development. The first involves South and North Korean waters. These are now bobbing with U.S. and South Korean warships in a military display. This is for the benefit of North Korea, whose navy apparently was the culprit that sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 seamen. The aim is to deter the communist regime in the north from further foolishness. The other audience for the military show is the South Korean public. The March sinking of the Cheonan vessel shocked the South Korean public, which expected more retaliatory spunk from its Navy. But now the secret is out: the South Korean military, whatever its virtues, probably is not ready for prime

Aug 8, 2010By Tom Plate
Tom Plate

Who are greatest leaders of Asia?

By Tom Plate American Journalist and Columnist Director of Asia Pacific Media Network LOS ANGELES _ The ineffable quality of leadership is so hard to define. But everyone knows we need it badly, especially in difficult times; and while the experts tend to quarrel over definitions, ordinary people tend to know real leaders when they see them. It is my hypothesis that the extraordinary rise of Asia in recent decades cannot be understood or appreciated without some reference to outstanding leadership. Consider the experience of other regions of the world. In the 19th century Europe immensely benefited from the machinations of its Machiavellian empire-building leaders. In the 20th century _ the so-called American Century _ no one can imagine the U.S. having such global success without its Roosevelts, Ikes and JFKs. So now, as Asia bodes to supersede America as the dominant global region of the 21st century, one might ask whom history will identify as the leaders that helped push Asia so far forward. That is the central question a new book series, the first volume of

Jun 13, 2010By Tom Plate
Tom Plate

Tokyo’s cirque du soleil

By Tom Plate Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned last week. Big deal. That's the reaction almost everywhere ― and particularly in the United States (to the extent anyone noticed). Yes, the important neo-national dailies (Wall Street Journal, New York Times) plopped the story on page one, where it belonged ― but it was dutiful play at best. Japan, with a relatively modest population of 127 million, is still the world's second largest economy. But it is no longer what it once was geopolitically: The land of the rising sun is now overshadowed by China, and further diminished by its own political ineptitude. Hatoyama, who collapsed on center stage, is the fourth Japanese PM in the last four years to resign. What a circus! In the nineties so many Japanese politicians whizzed through the PM door that you could barely keep count. The Clinton White House was known to quip: ``We're just figuring out how to pronounce the new PM's name and then he's gone." Hatoyama was the latest of the ``blue blood" PMs cast in the star role by virtue of family eminence. His grandfath

Jun 6, 2010By Tom Plate
Tom Plate

Democracy and UK election

By Tom Plate Former Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, Director of Asia Pacific Media Network LOS ANGELES ― Democracy is not always decisive, and even when it is it doesn't invariably produce results that optimize the public good. We all know that, right? And elections are certainly no panacea. They can even be a disaster. Or produce a debilitating muddle at a time of economic nerve-shaking uncertainty. Trot such cynical thoughts by British voters right now and you will find them to be a rather easy sell. By producing one of the higher voter turnouts in the history of the United Kingdom, the residents of the planet's oldest functioning democracy clearly wanted change, of some kind ― and now. But the lock-jawed result ― with no one party winning a parliamentary majority ― appears not to have cleared the air but fogged it further. Perhaps the only clear winners from last week's British national election are those of us who have refused to be cheerleaders for democracy ― of the British and American kind ― for every place and for every situation. We

May 9, 2010By Tom Plate
Tom Plate

So, Ready for War With North Korea?

By Tom Plate LOS ANGELES ― Sometimes less is more ― a lot more. It is true that there is not much that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak could reasonably do, one way or the other, in response to the sinking of a South Korean navy patrol vessel in the Yellow Sea. But what little the president of that country has done, he has done near perfectly. This needs to be noted. A penchant for caution around the Korean Peninsula is no little blessing. North Korea is a miserable economy of a country but it is nonetheless a military force with which to be reckoned. It is one that includes, everyone assumes, some small speck of nuclear weaponry. Was the ship named Cheonan attacked by the North Korean navy as it bobbed around the unofficial line on the high sea dividing Northern from Southern coastal waters? Or did the 1,200-ton, corvette-style, anti-submarine patrol ship stumble on a Korean War era mine? Or perhaps faulty maintenance problems aboard the ship were responsible for the blast and the South Korean Navy may be covering up? But just the other day, Defense Mini

Apr 28, 2010By Tom Plate
Tom Plate

Hacked by China

By Tom Plate Former Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, Director of Asia Pacific Media Network Caring about China can be hard to do. Many Chinese, for starters, resent the caring of others as an intrusion, especially when the outside care-givers don't agree with something China has done. That happens more than occasionally. Recently I wrote about the China versus Google fight in a way that sort of tilted in favor of supporting Google's decision not to accept Chinese hacking into the email accounts of some of its customers. But it hardly nominated the Google people for the Nobel Peace Prize. Even so, soon after this column, syndicated in such major world papers as The Korea Times and The Japan Times, I was told my email account had been hacked. The hacking, said Google Gmail security, originated with some computers or computer networks on the mainland of China. One can only speculate as to the cause of the hack. But it must have had something to do with the column asking China's leadership to exercise a bit more tender care when it tries to roll over peo

Apr 25, 2010By Tom Plate
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