Policy Forum

Daniel A. Pinkston, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Monterey Institute of International Studies, writes, “Kim Jong Il and the National Defense Commission will weigh domestic and international factors in deciding whether to conduct the flight test. Kim knows his domestic audience better than anyone else, and he’ll order the launch if the domestic benefits outweigh the international costs.”

Wonhyuk Lim, CNAPS Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Fellow at the Korea Development Institute (www.kdi.re.kr) and Korea National Strategy Institute (www.knsi.org), writes, “negotiations for the KORUS FTA actually run the risk of fueling anti-American sentiment in Korea and anti-Korean sentiment in the U.S.-exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended. This would be a shame, especially in light of the fact that bilateral trade and investment have been the saving grace of the ROK-US relations in recent years.”

Alexander V. Vorontsov, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brooking Institution, writes, “Songun should not be automatically dismissed as an ideological dead-end. As the experience of South Korea under Park Chung-hee demonstrates, military rule can have positive effects on society under certain conditions.”

Read the discussion.

Hiromichi Umebayashi, Founder and President of Peace Depot, a non-profit organization for peace research and education in Japan, writes that US Navy missile defense patrols in the Japan Sea are “a crucial component in exercises to develop the core of the whole integrated system US National Missile Defense system”. Moreover, he argues, they mean that “something new has been born within the US-Japan alliance.”

Donald S. Zagoria, a trustee of the NCAFP, a private American think tank dedicated to resolving conflicts that threaten U.S. national interests, writes, “In sum, the conditions for equilibrium in the Taiwan Strait are now at least visible. It is possible but unlikely that President Chen, in his remaining two years in office, can or will challenge this equilibrium– China, for its part, is unlikely in the short run to abandon its ‘hearts and minds’ strategy and will probably resume an official dialog with whichever party wins the Taiwan presidency in 2008.”

James Goodby, former U.S. ambassador to Finland, and Markku Heiskanen, an Associate Senior Fellow at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Copenhagen, write, “Europeans can make a unique contribution to peace in Northeast Asia: they have shown that multi-national cooperation really works. Its example complements the American emphasis on power relationships, which is also a reality in today’s international system.”

Masaru Tamamoto, editor of JIIA Commentary, an information service from the Japan Institute of International Affairs, writes, “Japan is in the midst of searching for a post-economic identity in the international world, especially in Asia. The search is for a new hierarchy in which Japan can claim leadership status Organizing the world in terms of a hierarchy of democratic evolution is another way of awarding Japan leadership status in Asia. But, in the end, the real question of Japanese national identity is whether Japan in Asia can develop a sense of equality.”

Mark J. Valencia, a Maritime Policy Analyst in Kaneohe, Hawaii and Nautilus Institute Senior Associate, writes, “the maritime boundary cannot be resolved until there is agreement on what to do about the sovereignty of the islands. One possibility would be to enclave the islands in a 12 nm territorial sea circle and to agree on a boundary equidistant between Ullung and Oki islands. This approach would ignore the islets and leave their sovereignty to be determined by a wiser generation.”

Leon V. Sigal, director of the Northeast Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council in New York, writes, “whatever leverage Washington may have, leverage without negotiations makes no sense. It is time for President Bush to make a strategic decision freeing Chris Hill to meet with the North Koreans and arming him with real leverage that comes from making conditional promises and keeping them, not spouting airy threats.”

Nigel Cowie, General Manager of Daedong Credit Bank, writes, “the result of these actions against banks doing business with the DPRK being that criminal activities go underground and harder to trace, and legitimate businesses either give up, or end up appearing suspicious by being forced to use clandestine methods.”