Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, compares the recent six-party talks in Beijing over the DPRK nuclear issue with “Conference Diplomacy” in the 1930s. Eberstadt writes that “Conference Diplomacy” only came to an end when the escalating provocations of dictators awakened the sleepers, and shredded the last remaining illusions of the would-be appeasers.

The following is a paper presented by B. C. Koh, Director of the Institute for Far-Eastern Studies. In this paper Mr. Koh argues that the change in both the US and the DPRK?s position at the workshop was a repositioning, not a softening, of each countries stance. The United States is still looking for CVID (complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantling) even if it is not using that specific term. The DPRK is likewise still unwilling to acknowledge the existence of a HEU or compromise on the distinction between a peaceful and a military nuclear program.

This is an except from a paper by Hideki Yamaji, 2003-2004 Japan Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. Mr. Yamaji writes: Japan will need the U.S. military presence for a long time in order to build a lasting trust with the ROK, but definitely not forever. Some day in the future, Japan and the ROK will be able to form an axis of freedom and democracy in East Asia.

The following paper by Mark Selden closely examines the American occupation of Japan following the Second World War. He compares it to the current US role in Afghanistan and Iraq. Selden argues that post-war reconstruction in both cases takes a similar form, especially in regards to the use of US military bases and assets. But, he suggests, the dependency built into the Afghani and Iraqi governments by the United States leaves them lacking in legitimacy. It has also weakened the very institutions in Iraq and Afghanistan that bolstered and supported the US occupation of Japan decades ago.

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