Three Cheers For Kan

It surely won't win him many fans among right-of-center Japanese voters, but Prime Minister Naoto Kan's decision to issue a formal apology for the suffering inflicted by the Japanese military during World War II on the anniversary of Japan's surrender in lieu of visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine as have his predecessors is a step in the right direction towards improving relations between the country and its Asian neighbors. It's not exactly fair to say that the shrine glorifies the actions of the war criminals among the 2.4 million war dead to whom it is dedicated - in Shinto cosmology, death absolves a person of his or her sins, so honor is paid to the spirits of the dead regardless of their actions in life, and in my experience even moreso than in other cultures it is considered taboo to continue to nurse grudges against those who have left this world. (Incidentally, this seems to apply to foreigners as well - while the Japanese continue to commerorate August 6th and 9th, the dates of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings respectively, as days of national tragedy, I have met very few people in my time who blame Americans for dropping the bombs). But the fact that the shrine makes no distinction between the honorable and the dishonorable dead is a major sore spot for Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, and others who suffered under the rule of militarist Japan during the war years, and understandably so. They neither understand nor share the Shinto preference for letting bygones be bygones and view each visit made to the shrine by a Japanese leader as an added insult given that they have already so vociferously voiced their displeasure with the custom. Continuing to visit it is therefore a needless international provocation for a Japanese leader. It is an act of allegiance more-or-less demanded by the nationalist right, who have been a key component of what has been Japan's ruling coalition over most of the past sixty years, but it is foolish. There are other ways to honor the heroic among Japan's war dead, and as the years go by and Japan becomes ever more connected politically and economically to its neighbors, strained relations with them become a luxury it can less and less afford. Kan's party, the Democratic Party of Japan, realizes this and has made it a major plank of their platform, and hopefully the fact that they have managed to elect a Prime Minister willing to refrain from using internationally antagonistic appeals to nationalism to buy votes will make it easier for Japan's leaders to do the smart and sensitive thing in the future.

The Dragon Roars

Obviously it's still a ways from being proven effective, but the development of a Chinese anti-carrier missile is still troubling news. China of course has a right to defend itself, but in my view a credible American capability to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression has long been important to stable peace in the Pacific region and any development that threatens that capability has to be viewed as increasing the odds of a confrontation, if only slightly. I don't doubt that there are elements within the Chinese government that would invade Taiwan tomorrow if they thought they could get away with it, and while it's entirely possible that the Chinese government's economic and geopolitical interests in avoiding war with the United States would trump the nationalist dream of reabsorbing the erstwhile island province, a weapon that could effectively interfere with America's ability to intervene in the event of an invasion is unquestionably an ace in the hand of Taiwan hawks in Beijing. Let's hope the U.S. Navy has an effective counter-strategy in mind.

Next, We Light The Sears Tower With Iran's Colors To Honor The Ayatollah Khomenei's Birthday

I've got to agree with the protestors on this one - we should not be doing anything to honor the current government of China beyond what is demanded by the protocol of international diplomacy. We cannot help but deal with the CCP, as it rules arguably the world's second most important country and its cooperation is necessary in dealing with the global financial crisis, trade, North Korea, Iran, and almost every other pressing international issue. And as we cannot deal with it without respecting its power, we must respect its power. But lighting one of our iconic buildings with its colors on the anniversary of its takeover of the country does more than express respect for its power - it is a tacit endorsement of its legitimacy. Given that this is a regime which has imprisoned, killed, and tortured millions of its own citizens, forcibly occupies and oppresses the homelands of several non-Chinese peoples, conducts its foreign policy in a fashion determined solely by glaringly amoral self-interest, and continues to restrict the rights of its citizens to freedoms of speech, assembly, conscience, and religion, nobody ought to be endorsing its legitimacy.

Whoever made this decision - boo to you.

Margaret Thatcher, closet Machiavellian

So Margaret Thatcher, idealized as a champion of freedom by the neoconservatives, was actually a pretty cold-blood realist when it came to international affairs, even going so far as to oppose German reunification on the grounds that it would threaten Soviet security and de-stabilize the international balance of power. That's not to criticize Thatcher - it's easy to see from the vantage point of the year 2009 how wrong she was, hindsight being 20-20 and all that - but the story does underscore two key points about international affairs. Firstly, that nobody really knows ahead of the fact how history is going to play out, and that as we act in a fog of ignorance we should take a small-c conservative approach to making decisions and respond with skepticism to soothing visions of the sort offered by proponents of wild chimera-chasing adventures like the invasion of Iraq. And secondly, that no historical person, or movement, or idea, no matter how much true believers of whatever stripe may wish to embellish their memories of it in the aftermath, is ever "pure" or conforms to simplistic, ideological notions of how history works. For conservatives, this means acknowleding that their tendency to romanticize the past as a simpler time in which democratic leaders were stronger and less afraid to take courageously unequivocal moral stands is problematic, and their tendency to equate circumspection with cowardice in our current generation of leaders, even moreso.