BWS Capital Partners, LLC

August 18, 2010

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, are also vital to contain.  If all Muslims are extremists, then we should have to say that all Christians are crusaders and all Protestants are Christian fundamentalists.

To understand the complexity and cope with different challenges, it is especially important that our leaders avoid demagoguery and embrace humanitarianism without exception. The few standouts can provide invaluable stand-up examples for many.

Recent, two of New York City’s most prominent public figures did just that. By rising promptly to the occasion, they offered us the opportunity for wider reflection on how we can best relate to the Muslims immediately among us — and across the globe at large. The standouts were Mayor Michael Bloomberg and United Nations Secretary Ban Ki-moon.

Beset with the raging controversy over the proposed establishment of a Muslim community center within throwing distance of the 9-11 site, New York Mayor Bloomberg has stuck to the high ground. The easy course for the mayor would have been to give way to the fierce opposition and rack up the populist ratings by opposing the facility. But on the principle of American tolerance for religious diversity, Bloomberg refused to alienate the city’s many Muslims by catering to emotion.

That mosque is no danger, and its existence would speak volumes about our strength as a truly tolerant society. Its distance from the former Twin Towers site is but a few blocks, but in Manhattan a few blocks is a dense impossible forest of concrete and steel. In no way would the center overshadow or impinge on the tragic ground.

The other notable move last week for sensitivity on issues Muslim came from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. This workaholic, often-traveling world diplomat is something else again: he is practically a one-man refutation for allegations of UN inefficiency!

Last week was classic: As reports came in from Muslim Pakistan that the cataclysmic flooding has not waned but was worsening, Ban abruptly scotched long-settled weekend plans to fly to the scene of the devastation. It was no easy trip: The decision was made late in the week and neatly-linking commercial flights were hard to find (unlike the U.S. President and many other heads of state, the UNSG, astonishingly, is not provided a private plane).

But there in Pakistan by the weekend was the doughty former South Korean foreign minister, rain hat in hand, boots in mud and water, aides at his side, showing the UN flag, and letting the country’s 170 million Muslims know that people all over the world truly did care and in fact was there to help.

The UNSG’s trip was of course hugely appreciated not only in the region but also beyond. Observed Nimmi Gowrinathan, director of South Asia Programs for Operation USA, a privately funded disaster relief group, “I think the hope is that the Secretary-General’s humanitarian trip to Pakistan raised awareness about human suffering, which helps the public move beyond political prejudices.”

In fact, the tireless Ban had not even returned to New York when several donor countries upped their contribution to Pakistan, most notably the Japanese, who so often are ready with the money. Suddenly private U.S. aid organizations shifted into higher gear. And the UNSG’s trip garnered an extra jolt of major international news-media attention, notably from the BBC and Al-Jazeera.

The use of the UN Secretary General’s office to highlight humanitarian crises is hardly new with Ban. But no Secretary General has started out in his first term doing more of this. He was one of the first in Haiti after the horrendous hurricane, and was one of the first to Chile after the earthquake. This is not political grandstanding but humanitarian flag planting. Ban’s message is clear and admirable: if we do not care about others when they are hurting badly, we forfeit a part of our humanity.

It may be that the Muslim community center in the end may not get built on that site near the 9-11 tragedy, and Pakistan’s recovery from these epic floods will prove slow.  But Bloomberg and Ban last week gave it their best. In this time of great worry about our relations with the Muslim world, their efforts need to be more widely noted, applauded — and emulated.

Veteran U.S. journalist and syndicated Asia columnist Tom Plate – the newly appointed Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles — is currently writing volume two in the “Giants of Asia” series, on former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad. The first volume – “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew” – is a runaway bestseller in Asia. © 2010, Pacific Perspective Media Center, Beverly Hills, California.

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 vessel 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 time. It is not ready to run its own show. It still needs the U.S. there helping call the shots.

So there will be a delay for at least a few years in the planned handover of command of forces in the South from the U.S. to the national government of the Republic of Korea (ROK). That development dismays Beijing, greatly preferring a reduced American regional profile. But since the Chinese apparently can’t keep their North Korean allies out of trouble, there’s not much they can do about it except complain.

At the same time, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has quietly promised that Beijing will not protect the guilty party, though it claims not to be convinced that the North is the perpetrator (who else could it be?

Space invaders!). But so far that is exactly what they have done, watering down a proposed United Nations Security Council resolution that would otherwise have condemned North Korea for aggression. In return, though, Beijing has arranged for the immediate resumption of the on-again, off-again Six Party Talks.

China is probably more upset about the U.S. naval ships rolling around in the South China Sea, however.  This is the second theater where the Obama Administration has staged a show.  Earlier in the year Beijing issued a decree, which could be read to suggest that it viewed those seas as virtually its personal pond. The idea sent shudders throughout Asia, especially in Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, with their tinier “fleets.” (It irritated Japan, too, but it has a serious fleet, and so that’s a whole different kettle of piranhas.) These Asian nations have quarrels with China over island territories in these waters and regard the South China Sea as an international commercial highway.

So does the United States, which has made that point of view plain.

Nobody in the region wants a fight with China, so none of those worried Asian nations are waving American flags to thank President Obama for ordering more ships into that area. But in fact they are pleased by the move – and by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s firm resolve at a big regional meeting last month in Hanoi.

The American expression of solidarity strengthens their hand so that the resolution of these island-ownership disputes can be settled through negotiation, not fear – at least as long as the U.S. keeps its ships bobbing over the horizon.  Because the South China Sea represents waters territorially adjacent to the mainland, China might well go ballistic if it sees U.S. interference.  But that would tarnish its image and raise questions about whether its economic rise will be so peaceful, as Beijing has often claimed.

At least now the U.S. is being viewed as helpfully standing up to the Chinese giant that has of late occasionally seemed bullying in manner.

East Asia clearly is at a tipping point. But the proper role of the United States is not to provoke China or violate its true sovereignty but to balance its rising military power. In recent years China’s naval buildup has been extraordinary and muscles are being flexed. The American balancing on both fronts is an effort to remind the Chinese that they are not the only muscle man on the block.

Handled carefully, the U.S. effort could actually serve everyone’s interest, including Beijing’s. For China is not ready to rule the Pacific unilaterally. That day may come, but it is off onto the far horizon – or at least as long as the U.S. Navy is bobbing around in a friendly and polite manner. Speak softly, someone once famously advised, but carry a big stick.

Syndicated U.S. columnist Tom Plate’s new book “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew” is on bestseller lists in Asia. He is working on the next book in the series “Giants of Asia” — about former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, due out from Marshall Cavendish Ltd. early next year.  © 2010, Pacific Perspectives Media Center.

Journalist and professor Tom Plate, a board member of the Pacific Century Institute, a senio fellow at the USC Center for the Digital Future, and a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, is the author of the series, GIANTS OF ASIA. © 2010, Tom Plate. Distributed by the Pacific Perspectives Media Center.

BY TOM PLATE

Los Angeles – Different societies allow their news media different roles. In most countries the media is subordinated to power, whether of the government or the ruling class. Surprisingly or not, the American model is not widely emulated globally.

Unfortunately, these days, it is not even widely admired within the United States. This is beyond sad.

A recent column expressed my view that the feverous coverage of Tiger Woods’ private life was beyond all good taste and professional reserve. Actually, I thought it was totally disgusting. This view appeared to be widely shared.

Here is one email from a reader in Southeast Asia that more or less spoke for many others received: “I full-heartedly agree with you. This kind of prurient media circus nauseates me no end. Tiger Wood’s affairs should remain between him and his wife, or between him and the women who agreed to have affairs with him, unless a crime has been committed. Bravo.”  A reader in South Korea emailed: “I agree with your article 100%. The media knows no bounds and their recycles often run stories into the ground.”

But a contradictory salvo from a serious professional (whom I greatly respect, so I wish to keep his identity private) completely shook me up. “I have never read such complete ____ [well-known four-letter word] in my life.”

That ribald response bothered me not because it was critical of my column (big deal!) but because it reflected what I fear is an attitude of widespread denial in the established U.S. commercial news media. They may not know what has hit them; worse yet, they may not realize what is going to hit them.

Let me explain.

The current crisis in the U.S. news media is usually attributed to technological or financial factors. But my view is that the crisis is largely spiritual. When the heart and soul of something is lost, darkness and disintegration are not far behind.

Journalists all over the world used to admire the U.S. news media; some still do. The power of our journalists to set the agenda, topple presidents and in general scare the living daylights out of political and public figures used to trigger an envious drool from journalists in other lands. But to see the U.S. media fall over itself in the race to the bottom of propriety has been sobering indeed. The sordid specter even raises doubts about the quality of our democracy.

Not too many American journalists are aware of their role-model status. Few perhaps care one way or the other. Except for the U.S. foreign correspondents, after all, the world view of the average journalist here does not extend much beyond Washington, as if that provincial city were the center of the political universe—which of course it once used to be.

But that was then, and this is now. Like our melting ice caps, the American news media is shrinking in size — and significance – and much more precipitously. Today, loud-mouthed, know-nothing bloggers vie for influence and effect with heretofore famous New York Times columnists. Network-news divisions downsize while new Web news sites spring up like springtime weeds in an abandoned lot. Seasoned journalists willingly defect from established news organizations to start up or join existing web sites. In ten years the American news-media landscape will be barely recognizable.

America’s iconic media institutions are receding so dramatically that new jobs are scarce and existing ones are evaporating. The ultra-premier publications – TIME Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post – once led the professional pack triumphantly and proudly. At TIME, all the stupid if tantalizing gossip was rightly ghettoized into one page of the magazine: PEOPLE. No more. Now PEOPLE is not only its own magazine but TIME is more like PEOPLE today than the TIME of yesterday.

I feel sorry about what’s happening. Now an issue of a news magazine comes to your home that looks so anorexic and so feeble that you feel bad for it.  I don’t even consider myself a subscriber any more; the decline is so pathetic, I view my subscription check as a sort of a charitable contribution, as if saving the imperiled jobs of an endangered species: the traditional American journalist.

All of this may well be somewhat exaggerated, to be sure. TIME and The Washington Post and ABC News still have significant clout. Some of my students would still drown their two little pet Pomeranians in a bathtub to land a job there. A major American newspaper columnist probably still has more pull than the average U.S. congressman (though that’s perhaps not saying much).

But the trend lines are near-catastrophic, and, if you believe they will proceed apace, they contain evil seeds to transform American democracy in ways we surely cannot predict.  The insistence of the quality news media on joining the race to the slimy bottom will only hasten its irrelevance. The tragedy is that I do not believe it really understands that.

Veteran U.S. journalist Tom Plate, a former university professor, has just written “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew: Citizen Singapore,” to be published in May by Marshall Cavendish Ltd. Hi 2007 book on the American media “Confessions of an American Media Man” will be reissued in May in a second edition. © 2010, Pacific Perspectives Media Center, Beverly Hills, California.

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WILL TIGER NEVER ESCAPE THE WOODS UNLESS HE CONVERTS TO CHRISTIANITY?

January 8, 2010

BY TOM PLATE

Los Angeles – Buddhism is one of the historic religions of Asia and today its influence remains strongly felt throughout the world. One has only to scratch the surface of this philosophical religion that originated in India in the 5th or 6th century B.C. to know that it has much to say about suffering. Suffering emerged as a primary focus of the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama because the true Buddhist understands suffering to be a constant of existence. And don’t we all know how true this is!

In effect, Buddhism tells you that there is no easy escape from the reality of existence, other than coping with present reality through Buddha’s consistent (if rather severe) teachings. With this as a necessary preface, let us now examine the strange case of an American news-television personality who made a splash the other day by advising Tiger Woods, with all his troubles, to forswear Buddhism and turn to Christianity.

Yes, Tiger received that unsolicited advice from one of the mainstays on the Fox News cable network. The golfer Woods, by his own testimony, inherited the gift of Buddhism from his mother, a Buddhist born in Thailand. He has said it has been invaluable as a corrective for his faults. It’s been said that some of his faults include stubbornness and impatience, but the whole world now knows he has a few others as well. What’s so interesting about Buddhism, in this context, is its unwavering emphasis on desire as a prime cause of suffering, and thus the need to escape the imprisonment of desire in order to achieve the transcendent state of Nirvana.

The TV personality in question is Brit Hume, a proud and avowed Christian. But wearing his Christian cross on his sleeve by inviting Mr. Woods to convert to Christianity seemed to move this TV journalist very far away from the Walter Cronkite model and uncomfortably close to a televangelical Billy Graham.

Hume, a star Fox staffer, made his pitch on “Fox News Sunday” about the superiority of Christianity to Buddhism. Believe it or not, this is what this American TV journalist said on the air:

“Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think is a very open question, and it’s a tragic situation for him. He’s lost his family. It’s not clear to me whether he’ll be able to have a relationship with his children. But the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal, the extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith, so my message to Tiger would be ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world’.”

We need to repeat a few facts here. One, this little sermon was offered in the course of a cable news television show. As such, the same U.S. Constitution that requires separation of church and faith from government also protects its content from government censorship. That’s a tremendous privilege we American journalists are given. Not many countries offer it. We American journalists should thank whatever God we worship at night for this great gift.

Not every U.S. journalist or news outlet merits this protection, however. Both print and video/TV at times abuse the privilege. The U.S. news media is awash with gossip, innuendo, bad information and outright slander – and now starting to reek with religious preferment.

What’s more, even as it greatly pains this print journalist to admit, the fact of the matter is that, on the whole, the TV news media is terribly influential. And thus the responsibility of the TV journalist not to abuse his or her position is great. Woods, who remains in hiding, has had no public reaction to Brit Hume’s bid that he convert to the “better” religion.

But the non-Christian world sometimes looks at the U.S. with great wariness on the religious issue. It imagines that some wars (like Iraq) are but Christian crusades, the crusaders always ready to mount offensives against infidels. And there are plenty of those infidels out there, aren’t there? You have many millions of Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus and Taoists and so on. A lot of Christians don’t like that and wish everyone would convert to the one “true religion,” as some proselytizing or evangelical Christians rather aggressively define Christianity.

Then you have the world’s atheists who believe all these religions are for crazy people. Those ruling Chinese atheists in Beijing, for example, would sure love to snuff out resurgent Tibetan Buddhism. That’s why the Brit Humes of the world and the Communists play, in a sense, in the same league: The league of religious intolerance. Rather than live and let live, they want everyone to be more like them. This is very dangerous – and the mere thought of it utterly depressing.

A HALF DOZEN OPTIMISMS FOR THE COMING YEAR

BY TOM PLATE

December 31, 2009

Los Angeles – It is said that the optimist peers at the glass and assesses it as half full, 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 UN 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 the 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 illusion across the globe requires 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 is a half 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 multi-billion-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 award. 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 in 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 or some-such full-time.

India’s ‘Odd Couple’ Named TIME Magazine’s Next Man and Woman of the Year: Hey, you white 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 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 China 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 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 with 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.

Check out this link http://www.pacificperspectives.blogspot.com/

Another good one

Los Angeles – Some necessary context for President Barack Hussein Obama’s long-awaited Afghanistan policy speech:

Foreign-policy performance is anything but the total measure of a President’s worth. America’s domestic politics, not to mention its elections, are more often than not driven by the forces, and failures, of economics.  But get foreign policy matters seriously wrong and the President of the world’s only superpower walks around looking like a three-legged dog. Just recall Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam failure, which more or less wound up defining his tragic Presidency.

Barack Hussein Obama’s address at West Point was remarkably clear and direct. This relatively young, amazingly articulate man was pretty much at his best. He was (a) the college professor lecturing on the historical background, (b) the First Strategist pointing out the trade-offs and options, and (c) the Cheerleader in Chief trying to pump up the troops and the American public to rally round the urgent cause.

Obama made a good case that the cause was indeed just, reminding everyone of the retaliation’s origins and of the unforgivable atrocities in New York eight years ago. But whether the cause is in fact doable is the harder case to make. In this century alone both the British and the Russians tried, and failed. Are we that much better than our predecessors? A recent column here argued that no quicksand is quicker than Afghan sand.

The Obama Presidency perforce is eight years late to the issue. That was when, overwhelmingly, momentum, world opinion and domestic opinion were all united in our favor. In life, it is said, timing is everything. But then is not now – and only a mystical time machine can wind us back to when it might all have worked for us in the land of the elusive Afghans.

The President will be criticized for proposing a time frame that gets American troops out of there in 18 months. But he should be congratulated instead, especially for calling attention to the limits of our patience and treasure. Here the President seemed to be more level-headed than his much-older predecessor. He repeatedly emphasizes that American power has its limits and that the piggy bank is (especially today) far from overflowing these days.

His recent trip to Asia underscored this new reality – and stuck a welcome knife in the old myth of American omnipotence. It was good that he bowed graciously to the Japanese emperor (just maybe now the Japanese will begin to forgive him for sending a poorly qualified new ambassador there). It was good that his public conduct in China reflected the reality that Beijing has become America’s banker-in-chief. And the mutual warmth paraded publicly in Seoul with South Korea’s heretofore crusty President Lee Myung-bak was a tonic for sore eyes, especially after watching years of snarls and barks and threats between Seoul and Washington.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy looks to be much closer to the reality of the world today. Yes, sorry—America needs to be less preachy and unilateral. What’s amazing, then, is that, critics who should know better are calling the Obama approach a bust after but 10 months in office. A recent article in Foreign Affairs, the Koran (usually we just say “Bible”) of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, carried a blistering critique of Obama’s recent Asia trip. Its basic point was that our President parted no seas and changed no water to wine. Well….

Americans generally admire our free and open criticism of big-shots and of the Presidents.  And there’s no reason for any President not to get his fair share of hard hits and lumps. But the operative word has to be fair.  To say that the results of the Asia trip were so bad that “Mr. Obama should have taken a well-deserved vacation in Hawaii” is not fair criticism but contemptuous commentary.

The respected author, Leslie H. Gelb, is a former government official and New York Times columnist. Of all people he should know better.  Some Presidential trips are indeed result-oriented.  But others are simply fancy versions of meet-and-greet sessions– a wholly appropriate trek for a first-year President.

Normally we columnists – former or otherwise – tend to stick together. Few people like us and no one in power generally cares whether we live or die unless we suck up to them. But if even America’s otherwise well-regarded mainstream commentators are prepared to declare this Presidency null and void before its first anniversary, let me part company with them now.

Obama needs fair criticism (the best of it could, after all, help him). But he could also use a fair and justified degree of support, especially at this early stage. The world economy is still shaky, the Middle East increasingly seems like a tinderbox (why hasn’t Obama solved this thing overnight? Geesh!), and high levels of unemployment, always-dangerous, look to be headed further skyward.

At this time of national emergency, why escalate the criticism irrationally? Why would anyone want this President to fail?

TWO SMART GUYS TRYING TO FIGURE IT ALL OUT

BY TOM PLATE

November 18, 2009

LOS ANGELES – They’re up against it now, the two of them.

They looked over the precipice and gasped at the steepness of the drop. They looked down at a desert of dashed hopes and old skeletons, scraping the bottom of the canyon.  Yes, this is where a failed U.S.-China relationship might wind up.

At first it does look like a very long way down. But gravity would make a fast trip of it. All it would take is a cliff-edge miscalculation or a losing of the balance by one or the other — then there could be a huge geopolitical slip. China and the United States, the odd couple of the first half of the 21^st century, would be at the bottom of the canyon of international stability.

It was that breathtaking possibility – that arid abyss — that caught the attention of the two leaders of China and American in Beijing earlier this week.

U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama was on the third leg of his Asia tour, after first hitting Tokyo (long-time Asian ally) and then Singapore for an international meeting.

All smiles, but little evident warmth, China President Hu Jintao greeted him for a two-day stay in Beijing.

Afterwards, many media assessments were gloomy about the summit. They said the two leaders of the world’s two giant countries were talking past one another, not looking at one another — not, in effect, communicating.

That’s hard to believe. Both Hu and Obama are smart – and they are smart to be wary. The modern-day China-U.S. relationship is in its early chapters: Remember the international skies over the 1989 Tiananmen Square implosion?  They were so ugly that they kept American Presidents away from even summiting in Beijing until Bill Clinton was able to break the ice in 1998.

And today all of the issues are quite tough. They’ve got to figure out the national mess of North Korea, which has scraped together a handful of nuclear bombs. And they’ve got to figure out the national ego of Iran, which wants to them too. Beijing itself has Muslim agitations on its western edge and a tense Tibet that somehow touches nerves and hearts all over the world. Washington has Iraq to get out of, Pakistan to get more involved in, and Afghanistan to make a major decision about. Doing the same-old-same-old hasn’t been working.

But overhanging these issues is the question of the Chinese and American economies. Both have serious problems – and in many respects are quite different.  Their currencies are intertwined, almost like the famous DNA double helix.

Fundamentally factors underlying the economic tensions are political. And the main one is this: Both Presidents understand their system’s vulnerabilities should unemployment continue to rise. They would be edging toward the cliff of catastrophe.

I put the matter this way to two of my very favorite international economists. I asked Professor Michael Intriligator of UCLA whether he agreed with this idea: “America doesn’t work, if people are out of work. The Chinese need to know that.” To which American Economist Mike replied: “I absolutely agree with this and the Chinese need to know it. People seem to have lost sight of the economic commitment of the U.S. government to full employment. This is in the Full Employment Act of 1946 and it is still on the books.”

Unemployment in the U.S. now hovers around ten percent. Should it rise much more, it will become the most explosive political issue on Obama’s White House desk.

True enough, but for another perspective I ran the proposition (that “America doesn’t work if people are out of work”) by Asia-based Economist Kenneth Courtis. The former Managing Director and Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia is based in Tokyo, now runs his own firm called Courtis Intergalatic, and probably deserves the distinction of predicting (better than almost anyone) Japan’s economic slide together with China’s rise.

His reaction was different than Mike’s and extremely interesting. He rewrote the proposition to take the focus off the U.S. He came back with this: “China doesn’t work, if people are out of work.”

The point these two sharp economists make is simple but vital: The key issue in the U.S.-China economic and indeed strategic relationship is unemployment. Translated politically, it is “too many angry and frustrated people with no jobs, a lot of grudges and too much time on their hands.

Thus, the Sino-U.S. understanding, for the immediate future, needs to adhere to this rock-bottom principle: Neither side will do anything significant to exacerbate the unemployment problems for the other guy. Sure, this is easier to say than to do.  It will mean achieving a tense trans-Pacific balancing act, trying to avoid getting too close to the edge and falling over. It will take constant communication, easing off and signing on, ignoring minor irritants. Because if the most important bilateral relationship in the world falls off the cliff, the probability is that the rest of the world goes down with it.

Syndicated Columnist, former long-time university professor and author Tom Plate is writing a trilogy of books on Asia. © 2009, Pacific Perspectives Media Center.

BY TOM PLATE

Los Angeles – Putting U.S. foreign policy into a proper strategic orientation in order to be useful in the 21^st century was never going to be a self-evident process.  Tough priorities would have to be sorted out. Try to do everything and little gets done. Choose the wrong goals and frustration results. Wise foreign policy requires deep reflection of the fundamentals.

Fifteen years ago, I faced a similar sorting-out problem – though, of course, on a dramatically tinier scale! That was when this foreign-policy column was born – hatched on the op-ed pages of The Los Angeles Times. Choosing to concentrate on America’s relationship with Asia from Los Angeles was a major first step in editorial prioritization (leave Europe and so on to the East Coast news media, etc.). But even that narrowing did not eliminate hard choices. What would be the column’s priorities regarding the vastness of Asia? What would be its purposes?  How might it (somehow) contribute to public good?

Back then, stumbling around in an un-chartered forest of options, I looked around for advice. I spoke to a lot of smart people. One of them was Lee Kuan Yew, then five years past his epochal three-decade run as Prime Minister of modern Singapore. I asked him, in his office on the government’s gorgeous Istana grounds, what was the wisest single message this column could convey to the American reader?

Not hesitating, Singapore’s internationally-known political sage looked at me straight and said: Please tell the American people that everyone, especially Asia, will greatly benefit if America is able to get its relationship with rising China right. But if it doesn’t, the result will be geopolitical instability and serious trouble for everyone.

Perhaps today such advice seems almost conventional wisdom. But remember that, back then, America and China were still locked in elemental frigidity. No U.S. President would even dare to visit China in the years that followed the 1989 Tiananmen Square shock. It got ridiculous: In 1997, a storm erupted over a simple deal that would permit China’s merchant ships to lease a dock in Long Beach, California. One of my first columns defended it: “The best advice is the simplest: Keep your powder dry. But keep a welcoming hand outstretched.”

That view touched off controversy, as many of those nineties’ columns on China did. Some readers accused me of actually being Communist. One Californian Congressman published letter to The Los Angeles Times stating that my views parroted the Beijing line.

But wise heads encouraged me to stay the sensible course despite everything. One was Lee Kuan Yew, who would offer an occasional encouraging message. Once noting my column’s worries about anti-China sentiment, the then-Senior Minister sent a fax from Singapore specifically about the port column: “Your ‘Protect Your Back and Extend a Hand’ is balanced and realistic. It is a necessary antidote to the hysteria building up among the anti-China groups.”

Lee, even now at 86, doesn’t stop offering the world his advice, thankfully. His latest effort to set the global table came in Washington recently while receiving the first Lifetime Achievement Award conferred by the US-ASEAN Business Council. His acceptance speech covered a wide expanse of policy territory, but his China remarks remained true to what he has been advocating for decades – and to what he told me at Istana in 1997.

“China,” he said, “faces enormous problems. No one knows their seriousness better than China’s own leaders….[Thankfully], successive American Presidents have moved relations with China closer toward the centre of  U.S. policies….U.S. policy kept a steady course to increase multinational trade, investments and mutual prosperity….Sino-U.S. relations are both cooperative and competitive. Competition between them is inevitable, but conflict is not….Unlike U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War, there is no bitter, irreconcilable ideological conflict between the U.S. and a China that has enthusiastically embraced the market….”

For Lee, now as then, a sensible China would not threaten America: “[The Chinese] will avoid any action that will sour relations with the U.S. To challenge a stronger and technologically superior power like the U.S. will abort their ‘peaceful rise’.”

What’s even more interesting about such a perspective is how many key Chinese leaders agree with it. This week, for example, China’s Central Military Commission finally agreed to upgrade the level of military exchanges between Beijing and Washington. A number of us, perhaps most notably and creditably Admiral Timothy Keating, former head of the U.S. Command in Hawaii (who just passed the torch to Admiral Robert F. Willard), have been urging Beijing to work harder to improve instant communications at high military levels. For some time those pleas seemed to be falling on deaf ears.  Now Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Xu Caihou seems to be paying attention. A quick trip to Washington for this purpose was suddenly announced.

Lee Kuan Yew is not the only voice that makes such points. But he continues to play a valuable role. This deserves to be properly noted.

Paranoid people tend to live longer, goes the old joke. And so it is in this spirit only – not out of a desire to engage in Cold War China-bashing – that we raise concerns about China. So here’s the paranoid’s question: Just what is China really up to?

The facts are as follows. In parallel with its astonishing and commendable economic rise, China has put together new military architecture that’s enough to give one shivers. Of course, the military-rise syndrome is hardly unique to China. By and large, economic growth and military-buildups go hand in hand. Consider that even India has been sharpening its sticks and buying all sorts of military stuff. And this is in the historic land of Gandhi, a.k.a. Mr. Non-Violence. It is rapidly lathering on layers of military muscle as its economy continues to upsurge. The U.S., of course, spends more money on arms than anyone, by far. But China’s buildup is today’s topic, not America’s, or India’s – that’s for another time.

China’s naval buildup is especially dramatic. It can’t just be waved off as a non-event. Even the most level-headed and serious Western experts, generally inclined to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt, are worried about what it might mean.

So is the government of Taiwan, of course. This bustling off-shore island, in the daunting shadow of the colossus of China’s mainland, is becoming more paranoid than American turkeys approaching Thanksgiving. It is particularly alarmed about the increase of short-range missiles pointed at them – now said to be close to 1,500. That’s roughly one Chinese missile for every nine square miles of tiny Taiwan’s turf –sort of ridiculous, don’t you think?

And while China’s missile count continues to mount, Taiwan’s territory does not. From a paranoid’s perspective, this is not restful-making. Thus, a recently released report from Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense claims that China’s buildup has even gotten to the point where it is capable of deterring the intervention of other foreign militaries (read: U.S. and Japan) were they to consider going to war against the island.

It must be noted that Beijing considers Taiwan an integral part of China, and from its perspective any use of force would be an internal political matter, not an outside act of aggression. But legal niceties aside, the overall regional balance of military power may in fact be at the tipping point.

That view has another recent assessment also capable of keeping paranoids awake at night. The RAND Corporation author-experts David A. Shlapak, David T. Orletsky, Toy I. Reid, Murray Scot Tanner and Barry Wilson reached comparable conclusions in “A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute.” In their considered view, the growing size and quality of China’s missile arsenal, along with other advances in Chinese military capabilities, call into question the basic ability of America and Taiwan to defend the island against a large-scale Chinese attack.

They also noted that China explicitly refuses to renounce the use of force against Taiwan, nor has it “withdrawn any missiles from the hundreds it points at Taiwan.” This, it seems to me, is a fair point. China’s government constantly proclaims a policy of “peaceful rising” even as it enlarges its international space economically and diplomatically. At the same time the Taiwan people have elected a government committed to peaceful negotiations with the mainland over the political future of Taiwan, specifically voting out the government that had been aggressively committed to Taiwan’s formal independence.

So the paranoid’s question is a simple one: If the mainland’s peaceful and bilateral relations with Taiwan are now so reasonable and promising, why is China barging ahead with its arms buildup like there’s no tomorrow?

As we say, this is the standard paranoid’s way of looking at reality. I am not there - yet. But to quote an ancient Chinese saying (reading in pinyin literation): xīng xīng zhī huǒ kě yǐ liáo yuán. This means something like this: a single spark can start a fire that winds up burning the entire prairie.

That is, a single spark of doubt about the sincerity of China’s peaceful intentions could ignite a wildfire of fear and suspicion that could unnecessarily complicate its life and return world politics to a binary state of neo-Cold War.

So, here’s my idea: How about for starters Beijing remove a few hundred of those missiles aimed at little Taiwan as a gesture of its true personal warmth (and aim them nowhere else)?

This at least could allow some of the world’s internationally-oriented paranoids to finally get some rest – until the next paranoid crisis, of course.