His wife, Lhamo Tso, has recently come to the United States to lobby for someone to take up her cause of getting her husband released.
According to her, he has been diagnosed with hepatitis B and is being denied medical treatment.
Leaving Fear Behind is a straightforward man-on-the-street kind of documentary.
Some Tibetans didn’t want their faces shown in the film for fear of reprisals. Most, however, were courageous and spoke their minds freely while being recorded.

From what typical Tibetans say, China has been forcing them to resettle in areas where they cannot make a living, especially the nomads and their herds of cattle.
And, it appears the Chinese government is attempting to assimilate Tibetan culture by allowing ethnic Han to move to Tibet. It’s the same tactic they use with Uygurs in Xinjiang Uygur.
It appears that what Dhondup Wangchen wanted to do was to shed light on the Tibetans’ situation as the world looked to China in 2008.

Many of those interviewed have an abiding devotion to the Dalai Lama and are frustrated by the fact that he must live in exile and that they are not allowed to display photos of him.
It is important to watch this film to get a sense of what typical Tibetans face every day under Chinese rule. See it.
Leaving Fear Behind can be found online here.
Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net

Screenshot from TEPCO website showing 24-hour livefeed of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant.

Taking lessons from the Fukushima nuclear incident in March 2011, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will review standard evacuation procedures in the event of a threat to a US nuclear plant, an NRC official said at a think tank event Thursday (March 22nd).

Although current NRC standards require a 10-mile evacuation buffer and a 50-mile water/food contamination area around reactors, the agency is “going to evaluate this,” NRC Commissioner William Magwood said at a CSIS event today on “Fukushima’s Impact on Global Energy.”

He also confirmed more attention will be paid to the effects of possible nuclear incidents on commerce and food security.

“Our regulatory regime in the United States is based on the idea that we protect the public. We protect human safety…But it doesn’t look at socioeconomic impacts, long-term land contamination.”

This shift of emphasis may seem like a small development, but Magwood said, “I consider this to be a game change.”

The US 10-mile buffer zone is within the standards set out by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Also, control is given to state and local authorities if they believe the 10-mile zone should be extended in the event of a nuclear incident, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said in his April 2011 testimony in a Senate hearing a month after Fukushima.

But some US lawmakers are still unconvinced of the safety of Americans living near plants.

During the Fukushima incident, the IAEA found radiation had contaminated areas up to 25-miles from the reactor site.

Last week, the American Nuclear Society issued a 40-page report on the anniversary of Fukushima, urging the NRC to customize emergency plans for each of the US’s 65 nuclear power plants and to expand some of the 10-mile evacuation zones.

This was followed by a remark from Jaczko’s at the annual NRC conference confirming the agency had to look more closely at what the public wanted as related to long-term evacuation procedures.

“We somehow have to incorporate what the public is willing to tolerate,” he said March 15th, seeming to imply a more “individual” approach to evacuation procedures should be developed.

Jaczko was alluding to the more than 90,000 Japanese that are being kept from returning to their homes a year after the accident, something he said was “clearly” not acceptable in the US.

But the next day, Senator Bob Casey [D-PA] echoed the calls by the ANS, calling for “the NRC [to] consider whether individually determined distances at each location might better serve the needs of Pennsylvanians in an emergency,” a demand also in line with another report released by the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“One year after Japan’s disaster, it is time that millions of Pennsylvanians living in close proximity to nuclear power plants know that the unique characteristics of each plant have been taken into account in the development of evacuation plans,” Casey said his March 16th letter to the NRC.

The statements made today by Commissioner Magwood confirm the NRC is looking into the demands made by the senator and others.

But, Magwood ended his presentation by saying although the US is planning for all disaster contingencies, “US power plants are very safe…Similar events [to Fukushima] are very unlikely to occur in the United States.”

To watch the livefeed of footage from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, click here.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao speaks to press after the 11th National People's Congress in Beijing.

Update 03/15/2012 9:00AM: Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported Thursday Bo Xilai would be replaced as Chongqing Communist Party leader by Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang. [end update]

It appears Chongqing chief Bo Xilai’s political aspirations have been irrevocably scuppered by China’s head of government after attempts to distance himself from a recent scandal failed.

Addressing press after his closing address to the annual National People’s Congress in Beijing, Premier Wen Jiabao issued what analysts are calling a vague rebuke to Chongqing Communist Party Committee Secretary Bo Xilai.

Bo’s rising political star has fallen in recent months after his long-time police chief and Vice Mayor Wang Lijun showed up at the American consulate in Chengdu, allegedly seeking to asylum. He only left after Chinese authorities ensured he would be transported to Beijing out of harm’s (i.e. Bo’s) way.

Last week, the resilient politician and enemy to organized-crime tried to distance himself from the Wang scandal, saying he was surprised by Wang’s actions and that he trusted the wrong man.

But the episode seems to have permanently damaged Bo’s political image, especially among senior CCP leaders already critical of Bo’s Maoist leanings.

After highlighting the need for widespread “economic structural reform and political structural reform,” Wen warned that if the changes were not made, “the gains we have made in these areas may be lost, and new problems that popped up in the Chinese society will not be fundamentally resolved, and such historical tragedies as the Cultural Revolution may happen again in China.”

This was an apparent reference to Bo’s “red” rhetoric that has come to define his political style. Academics and analysts agree this rebuke probably signalled the end of Bo’s aspirations to become the next member of the Politburo Standing Committee.

“I think there is now little or no chance of [Bo's] being promoted to the Politburo Standing Committee this year. At the very least, his egoistic showmanship has caused other top leaders to resent him,” China specialist, author, and long-time UCLA Professor Richard Baum told this reporter.

“Has Bo’s position been hurt? Almost certainly,” China specialist at Heritage Foundation Dean Cheng agreed.

“Having campaigned for a position on the Politburo Standing Committee (again, unprecedented, and almost certainly not something everyone in the leadership circle is comfortable with), having [Wang's defection attempt] happen raises real questions of ‘Just what are you doing?’”

At the presser, Wen also discussed the Wang episode itself, saying the present Chongqing municipal party committee and government (implicitly referring to Bo) must learn from the incident. He added progress had been made in the investigation into the apparent February defection attempt.

The Chongqing Municipal Information Office stated in February that Wang is taking a long-overdue vacation after suffering a mental breakdown. It is thought he is being held in Beijing for the investigation.

MacArthur Foundation President Robert Gallucci

Speaking at a Brookings Institution panel discussion in Washington, DC on Friday (March 2nd), ex-nuclear envoy Dr. Robert Gallucci startled audiences with the admission that he believes use of force may be the only method to ensure Iran‘s nuclear program is irrevocably halted.

“I have no confidence that any degree of sanctions will actually stop the Iranian nuclear program…I think of the use of force – repeated use of force – as the only way in which we can be confident of stopping the weapons program [in Iran],” Gallucci, now President of the MacArthur Foundation, said during his remarks.

Tempering this statement, he said he was unsure of the feasibility of such strikes, taking into account military capabilities on the US side.

“I actually don’t know the degree of military effectiveness we could have with a strike. It’s just that I don’t think there’s another course that is open to us, as an outsider looking in, that I would be confident in really slowing the program down,” he said during Q+A.

But when asked which nation would be best positioned to undertake such strikes, the US or Israel, Gallucci remarked that the US is militarily much stronger than its ally in the Middle East.

“I read a lot and I have read that we are more capable than Israel of putting aircraft over target,” he said as the audience chuckled.

“But I am very concerned about the consequences – the people who would be involved, who would die in the course of that act, the reprisals from the Iranians on every place they have assets,” he concluded.

On North Korea, Dr. Gallucci, a former official who undertook talks with the Asian pariah in the mid-1990s, broke from his use-of-force stance with regards Iran and said he believes the Obama administration’s policy of engagement is the right one, although time is a factor we must keep in mind.

“I see the North Korean case as substantially ‘easier’ than the Iranian case…Containment is not a good strategy. This issue does not age well. It does not become fine wine.”

After the event, Gallucci clarified his remarks with this reporter, calling forth an example from history of when engagement on nonproliferation worked.

“A partial model is South Africa…Now they did not give up the fissile materiel, but they did disassemble, as I understand it, the nuclear weapons and subject the fissile materiel to international inspections. thats not a bad starting model for North Korea,” he said.

He also added since the DPRK views this time – between the December death of Kim Jong-Il and the 2012 South Korean elections – and an time when they have “real incentives to be on their good behavior,” any deal that paints them in a good light in the eyes of the international community is positive.

“I think the deal right now for the North is to get what they could in terms of economic help of all kinds from us,” Gallucci said, referring to the recent talks between the US and DPRK in Beijing that saw agreements by the North to stop motile testing and uranium enrichment.

“If they really would like to influence the South Korean elections and be clear they’re not now posing a threat, then they might as well get rewarded for this.”

Asked if this agreement was a calculated win on the part of the North Koreans or a loss, Gallucci said, “I’m guessing from what I’ve heard of the discussions that [the North Koreans] went in hoping for more, but they go something out of this. And of course, they’ve given up not so much, right? It’s another freeze. So in my view, it’s fine. It’s a good first step.”

And now we have this, via today’s Yomiuri Shimbun:

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has indicated the plan for an “East Asian community” envisioned by former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will not be a priority of his administration, in an essay to be published in a monthly magazine.

Referring to the nation’s immediate diplomatic tasks, Noda wrote, “We do not have to set out a grand vision, such as [the creation of] an East Asian community, for now.”

Apparently referring to territorial disputes with countries such as China and South Korea, Noda emphasized the need for Japan to be prepared for emergencies involving its territories and territorial waters. Simulation exercises should be conducted to determine what course of action Japan should take in such situations, Noda wrote.

Not to read too much into an article that I haven’t fully examined, but these statements, if acted upon, set exactly the wrong tone for Japan’s diplomacy. More than simply marking a step back from the lofty “grand vision” put forward by former PM Yukio Hatoyama (and to a lesser extent Katsuya Okada and Ichiro Ozawa), this break with the Asianist project would do much to isolate Japan during a time when it needs nothing more than regional engagement. Such a reversal would only work to Japan’s detriment.

While a case could be made that this vision marks a re-affirmation of the US-Japan Alliance, this reading fails to grasp the realities and opportunities of the Asia-Pacific, and the US position within it. East Asian engagement is not a zero-sum game: Japan can and should strive to work with all of its regional partners. Alliance aside, to publicly step back from the East Asian community achieves nothing. It is the diplomatic equivalent of Kanye West’s VMA moment.

If anything, this position only serves to draw further attention to the regional frictions that were brought to the fore by Mr. Noda’s views of history. Its one thing to quietly dismantle the architecture of this initiative within the Foreign Ministry and other co-operating agencies. It is another altogether to publish it for all to see.

There is no denying the gravity of the domestic tasks sitting before Mr. Noda. He and his cabinet have much to do, and must get to work fast. But turning inwards during this process as Mr. Noda’s comments suggest will only add to this load. Japan needs technology swaps and academic exchange programs. It needs high level dialogues and transparent military communications. It needs access to new revenue streams and markets. To go it alone during a time of difficulty is natural. It is also short-sighted and potentially damaging.

If, as Mr. Noda writes, “in the course of power shifts, discord and strife is likely to emerge,” it is in Japan’s best interests to at least be actively engaged with all of the regional stakeholders. Stepping back from East Asia will only make managing this strife and discord all the more difficult.

Perhaps Mr. Noda’s arguments are more nuanced than the Yomiuri piece paints them. I certainly hope so.

(H/T Toshugu)

This week, the Pakistani secret services and the Frontier Corps (FC) acted only when the American intelligence sources urged Islamabad to take action against a key Al-Qaeda leader Younis al- Mauritani whom the organization’s slain chief Osama bin Laden had entrusted the responsibility of targeting the economic interests of the United States, Europe and Australia.

Al- Mauritani was incarcerated from Quetta, the capital of the largest Balochistan province, with two other associates.  For many years, the Afghan and American governments had been urging the Pakistanis to take action against  the rogue Quetta Shura which is headed by Taliban’s spiritual leader Mullah Omar. The Shura presumably moved to Quetta soon after the exit of Taliban from power in 2002. Since then, Pakistan has denied the presence of key Taliban or Al-Qaeda leaders in Quetta. When the US administration became impatient with Pakistan’s lack of cooperation, it threatened to extend the drone strikes to Balochistan.

The recent developments have come at a time when the Pakistani army is still striving to recover from the embarrassment caused by the killing of bin Laden from its backyard. At the moment, the Pakistanis are in a weak position. Instead of provoking the United States to ask the tough question as to why Al-Qaeda leaders still find Pakistan a safe heaven, they prefer to comply with demands to take action against some of the leaders to remind that they have not fully unsubscribed to the war on terror.

Many in Pakistan call the war on terror as “America’s war”.

The recent arrests of three Al-Qaeda operatives is a delayed move to restore trust and repair almost broken ties between Islamabad and Washington. The United States and Pakistan will require a lot to restore mutual confidence and trust to continue to cooperate as partners. The Americans are still clung with the hope that Pakistan will one day provide a truthful and honest account about  Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. On their part, the Pakistanis strongly feel unappreciated by the Americans for whatever cooperation they offer to fight extremism. There is extraordinary resentment toward the drone strikes which the Americans argue target Al-Qaeda terrorists while  the Pakistanis criticize for civilian causalities.

What we don’t know with certainty,  at this point, how many more Al-Qaeda leaders are still hiding in Pakistan.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani version of  Taliban connected to Al-Qaeda, avenged Monday’s arrests of three Al-Qaeda leaders with two massive suicide bomb blasts in Quetta. A twenty-one year old young Afghan national, as reported by the Pakistani officials, attacked the residence of a senior officer of the Frontier Corps (FC), which carried out the raid to detain Younis al- Mauritani, killing more than twenty people.

“The attack [which killed a top colonel of the FC and the wife of a senior officer] was intended to punish the FC for taking action against “our Mujahid brothers,” said a TTP spokesman.

The battle against Al-Qaeda continues as we prepare to mark the one decade anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11. While the Afghans were almost prepared to face the heat of the post-Taliban era, Pakistanis, on the other hand, had never predicated such a deadly fallout of the war on their land. They are very well-versed in providing statistics about the number of murdered civilians; drone strikes and the description of major terrorist events which rocked their country since 9/11. The Pakistani military, after ten years of deliberations, is still not fully convinced if there is a world without  ‘good Taliban” .

They await for the US forces to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014. Afterwards, Pakistan seems confident that at least the “good Taliban” from these Islamic groups will eventually become its friends and agree to cooperate to counter any direct Indian influence in Afghanistan.

On the incident itself:

“the mood at the game the following evening with the Bayi Rockets, a professional basketball team sponsored by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), was tense, and the game was very physical from the start. The PLA sent a spectator section of soldiers who chanted loud, disciplined cheers every time the Rockets scored. There was some scuffling among players during the game, prompting several technical fouls, and a bizarre moment when one of the Bayi players approached and started yelling at Georgetown Coach John Thompson III for some unknown reason (Thompson ignored it, but Georgetown players became very upset at this). The foul count was imbalanced (at one point 28 against Georgetown and 11 against Bayi), but other NCAA teams playing in China like Duke experienced similar problems.”

And on the media coverage,

“One press report described the incident as the antithesis to ping-pong diplomacy, marking the increasingly competitive nature of US-China relations. I do not think this is correct. In the end, this was a scrap between youthful athletes, not between countries.”

Read the whole thing here.

“Chinese analysts point out that the prime minister has not renounced his comments to the effect that Class-A Japanese wartime leaders should no longer be considered criminals nor has he committed not to visit the Yasukuni Shrine. He also has made reference to China’s rising nationalism and naval activities as posing a risk to regional stability. To top it all off, the new prime minister has been a strong supporter of the U.S.-Japan defense alliance.”

Her assessment is worth a read, if for no other reason than its consolidation of Chinese commentary on the election.

I would simply like to add to this that a very similar account could be written regarding South Korean reactions to the election. While Lee Myung-Bak, like Wen Jiabao, was quick to offer his congratulations, the South Korean Foreign Ministry, and a number of high ranking diplomats, were hard at work to express their reservations over Noda’s historical insensitivity.

“We expect to continue to forge mature and future-oriented relationships with the new Japanese government led by Prime Minister Noda as it looks squarely at its past,” said Seoul foreign ministry spokesman Cho Byung-Jae at a recent press conference. This coming just a week after the same ministry noted that Mr. Noda’s previous historical comments were “inappropriate remarks that deny Japan’s imperialist invasive past and fail to conform with the Japanese government’s official position.”

The Korean press has been predictably less restrained. The Chosun Ilbo, for example, recently editorialized that: “Noda has a far-right and militaristic view of history. He says there are no war criminals in Japan in the first place. It is very likely he will pay a visit to worship at Yasukuni Shrine.”

It remains to be seen what will actually come of this. There is a distinct possibility that, as the reality and gravity of his responsibilities as PM sink in, Mr. Noda will bury these historical issues, much as his DPJ predecessors did. Anything but that, however, and East Asian diplomacy will become messy business indeed.

Before unpacking this baggage, a caveat. Any discussion of the future course of DPJ foreign policy under Noda should, in my opinion, begin with the proviso that diplomatic initiatives will sit on the backburner for PM Noda as he and his cabinet grapple with the far more pressing challenges of re-construction and containment in the wake of March 11, domestic economic reform, and fiscal policy and re-financing. Mr. Noda’s domestic load is indeed a weighty one, and, though much of these issues are no doubt tied to foreign policy (as will be discussed below), Mr. Noda will and should train his gaze on the political and economic challenges that dominated the debates leading up to his election.

That being said, a number of foreign policy questions are raised by his election.

Among the most obvious (and potentially pernicious) diplomatic question marks that comes with the selection of Mr. Noda as PM is his stance on the status of Japanese war criminals enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine — a group he has repeatedly suggested aren’t, in fact, war criminals at all. (Armchair Asia makes a tangential but nevertheless important point in noting that this comment, while historically insensitive, probably helped him get elected by proving his “conservative bona fides.”)

Although Mr. Noda’s position on the issue can be traced back half a decade, the most recent iteration of this line of thinking came this past August 15th — a day on which Koreans everywhere celebrate their liberation from Japanese colonial rule — when, in response to a reporters question regarding his stance on war criminals, Noda stated that “there is no fundamental change in my thinking.”  Mr. Noda first staked out his position on the issue in 2005 when he aligned himself with a group of right-wing revisionist scholars who argue, based on legal-hairsplitting and tortuous logic, that, due to the limitations of international law and the illegitimacy of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, the classification of Class A criminals is bogus. “The honor of all ‘war criminals’ has been recovered in a legal sense,” he once wrote in 2005, suggesting “those people who have been referred to as ‘Class-A war criminals’ are not war criminals.”

Of course, as a recent Economist report rightly notes, no one was really listening to Noda at the time, as he was then a relatively obscure political figure. But, as Mr. Noda’s written record makes clear, he has not dropped the issue. Far from it, in fact. Even a cursory glance at his his online writings reveals that he has engaged publicly with the issue for some years now.

(For anyone interested in his policy record and general political activities over the past five years, the kawaraban attached to his website is worth a close look. Though it is predictable that foreign policy is a secondary theme explored by Noda — whose interest lie squarely with the ins and outs of the financial world — his scant commentary on foreign policy is indeed fascinating. His detailed account of the DPJ’s seiken kotai is telling too, especially in light of the now discernible shifts in the internal political landscape of the party. When is the last time we had as rich a written record for a PM, by the way?)

There is no doubt in my mind that Noda’s position on the status of Japanese war criminals will prove a setback in Japan’s relations with South Korea and China. If recent conflicts over history in East Asia have demonstrated anything it is the speed and power with which internet forums, interest groups, and new social media can mobilize and channel nationalist energies. No holds are barred when history is at stake in East Asia — a point made all too clear by the persistent rows over the Dokdo/Takeshima islets and the Senkaku dispute. Although Noda is far from a Toshio Tamogami, the nuances and restraint of his argument really don’t matter all that much — as PM of Japan his words, though far from as twisted as Tamogami’s, will arouse the same ire among populations, especially young, internet saavy netizens, who really don’t care all that much about rhetoric and evidence to begin with. Michael Cucek’s recent question of whether or not “the blogtariat writers and the Twitterati of China and South Korea pressure their governments into cutting off high-level meetings between a Noda government and their counterparts over his comments on the Class A war criminals” is a good one. The Korean blogosphere’s response to Mr. Noda’s recent comments was certainly sharp and swift, as was the Korean Foreign Ministry’s response. If this serves as any indication, there will be little patience for and tolerance of further comments down the road.

The fact is that the last thing Noda needs on his plate right now is a high-level diplomatic dispute. That Noda will start his tenure under particularly close scrutiny by observers throughout the region adds still greater pressure to a policy load that it is already formidable. His comments on regional relations will hereafter be analyzed under a microscope in Seoul and Beijing, likely in a way that his DPJ predecessors were not. As I have argued elsewhere, the DPJ has done a comparatively good job managing historical contretemps as a part of its New Asianist policy project. Although the recent run-off has cast aspersions on any sense of party unity — let alone an over-arching consensus on lofty foreign policy goals — the DPJ’s willingness to rein in historical issues in order to build ties with its regional neighbors is nevertheless impressive, at least when compared with historical brazenness of LDP leaders. Which is precisely why Noda’s management of these issues (or, better yet, his avoidance of these questions altogether) will do much to elucidate the presence of New Asianist sensibilities within the party leadership. Perhaps more concretely, his decision regarding visitation to the Yasukuni Shrine will also reveal a great deal about his commitment to Asianism — a doctrine most attribute more to Okada and Ozawa than to Noda and his circle.

There are of course a number of other foreign policy issues that have been overshadowed by the commentary on historical matters. One such issue is what Mr. Noda’s election means for the debates surrounding the future course of Japan’s energy policy — an issue with powerful foreign policy reverberations. As Sheila Smith has recently noted, there are indeed deep divisions within DPJ ranks on energy policy, particularly as it relates to nuclear power generation on the peninsula and what a re-structuring of energy policy might do to economic growth. Although the contours of this debate haven’t really left the Japanese archipelago, Japan’s access to and exploration of energy sources throughout East Asia is an important confounding variable in the debate. This is also a likely source of consternation between Japan’s neighbors, energy-hungry China foremost among them.  Noda’s leadership on the energy question will shed some light on the potential friction in the Asia-Pacific’s waters for the resources that lie beneath it. His time in the Ministry of Finance suggests that he will likely frame this debate in larger terms of re-financing and re-structuring the Japanese economy — which is perhaps a good thing. But it does not necessarily translate to a regionally engaged and diplomatically informed approach to regional politics.

Another major question is the US-Japan Alliance. While Noda’s Alliance credentials are strong, it remains to be seen where he draws the lines on the base relocation issue in particular. His position on the matter is yet to be strongly articulated one way or another, at least as far as I can tell. This is, importantly an issue that might actually see some movement in the next few months as US budgetary constraints and an approaching deadline will force action with regards to Futenma.

Lastly, on North Korea, if history is any indicator Mr. Noda will do very little to rock the boat here. He will in all likelihood sit comfortably alongside his predecessors by continuing to condemn the regime, express reservations and regret over the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by the regime in the past, and re-affirm the importance of engagement with the regime without offering any concrete vision of how to move things forward. Of course, Mr. Noda is yet to articulate a firm stance on the issue, but if his diplomatic disposition is anything like his DPJ predecessors, he will tow the line. Recent rumblings of a re-invigoration of the six-party framework will be still another interesting litmus test in Noda’s foreign policy vision and how it aligns with and departs from the foundations of the party, particularly as they are laid out in the 2009 Manifesto, the pertinence of which to today’s political landscape remains questionable at best.

Hackneyed though it might sound, the legacies of the Korean War are many and various, not unlike the actors behind them. While one need not strain to find conspicuous examples in the present day⎯ the DMZ foremost among them⎯a number of less readily discernible legacies lie buried deep beneath the surface of the peninsula. The toxic cocktail of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, better known as Agent Orange, is one such legacy.

Although most widely known for its widespread deployment in the Vietnam War, unclassified documents, testimony, and an upsurge of recent activism in Korea have begun to shed light on the use of Agent Orange in Korea — a toxic defoliant deployed near the DMZ to reduce dense foliage thereby enhancing the ability to monitor enemy positions. Although papers have arrived at different figures (both in terms of volume and area) it is generally thought that the US military in the late 1960′s sprayed 21,000 gal. (79,000 L) of agent orange across approx. 6,840 hectares.

This, however, is not the figure that captivates the public attention. Rather, it is the estimated 50,000 Korean soldiers who sprayed the chemical by hand, many of whom now suffer from a wide range of maladies, that looms large in the public consciousness. While these veterans continue to wage a campaign for recognition and treatment, they have consistently struggled to find a voice capable of rallying public support behind their cause. Despite a steady stream of articles in Korean dailies in recent months and the creation of committee charged to investigate the incident, little has been done to seek redress for the Korean handlers of the toxin nor to candidly address where, and to what extent, these toxins remain in the Korean ecosystem.

Further stoking public resentment is increasing evidence that the US buried 250 55 gallon drums of barrels in Camp Carroll. Although the military has insisted that they removed all of the barrels in the 1990’s, a Korean Government’s investigation committee is presently working its way through former sites in order to assess the existence of toxic particulates in and around the watersheds of these former sites. No conclusive results have been reached.

An appropriate coda to this story is perhaps to draw attention to yet another  (albeit markedly different) ecological battleground being staked out on Korean soil – the island of Jeju-do where the Korean Navy has, according to Christine Ahn in a recent FPIF piece, torn a local community apart with its slated plan to construct a naval base on the coastline, thereby endangering an already delicate ecosystem, to say nothing of the community of Ganjeong itself. She writes: ”…The base’s impact isn’t limited to land. Off the coast of Jeju is the absolutely stunning Tiger Island and its sparkling surrounding waters, a UNESCO ecological reserve. According to Koh Yoo-Ki, an environmental policy analyst from Jeju, the planned naval base construction would destroy 98 acres of ocean floor inhabited by soft coral reef and nine endangered species.” (For a more strategically-minded, but equally sobering take on the base construction see Todd Crowell’s take here.)

This is, in fact, a story that is far from unique to Jeju-do. Although things are relatively quiet in Okinawa (and Guam) these days, a similar conflict between military installations and environmental protection, economic incentive and preservationism is playing out in a handful of other communities across Asia — many of which, a case could be made, are inextricably linked to the geopolitical order carved out by the Korean War. Which is precisely why, looking-forward, it is important to dwell not only on the obvious geopolitical legacies of this conflict but also the less-readily-apparent ecological and human-health costs that remain largely untold.

Early in the morning of August 6th, 1945 — 66 years ago today — the Enola Gay, ordered on a non-stop, release-and-return mission to Hiroshima, took off from Tinian in the Marianas. Released at approximately 8:15 am, the atomic bomb Little Boy exploded 1,800 feet directly over the city with a blinding flash and a force equal to twenty thousand tons of TNT — the flash-boom (or pikadon) that punctuated the inception of the nuclear age. Everything for 3000 meters in all directions from the hypocenter was totally destroyed. In an instant, the citizens and soldiers below were transformed into victims of the world’s first nuclear holocaust. (I use the term holocaust here, with Mark Seldon, to connote the literal definition provided by Oxford English Dictionary: “Complete consumption by fire; complete destruction, especially of a large number of persons; a great slaughter or massacre.”)

As fires and radiation enveloped the city, those who survived the immediate explosion were left with a profound sense of having experienced a frightening, surreal event, incomprehensible to anyone but the victims. As doctors struggled to make sense of the chilling effects of radiation sickness, with apparent survivors suddenly perishing, and the estimated death toll doubling in a mere two weeks, the Japanese press could only describe an “evil spirit” possessing Hiroshima. Understanding the impact of this “evil spirit” became a central part of the Japanese people’s attempt to come to terms with the war’s meaning. The most compelling voice in this quest for understanding was that of the bomb survivors themselves. It was in fact the hibakusha (literally, bomb survivor), perhaps the most pitiable of Japan’s war victims, who emerged to bear witness to the unimaginable horror. Their testimonies merit careful meditation on this solemn anniversary.

Toshiko Saeki:

“I thought it was strange to see an airplane flying that time all by itself. I looked at it and it was a B-29. It seemed very strange since there were on anti aircraft guns firing at it. I watched it for a while, then it disappeared. As soon as it disappeared, another airplane appeared from the same direction. It seemed very, very strange. I was still wondering what would happen. Then, suddenly there came a flash of light. I can’t describe what it was like. And then, I felt some hot mask attacking me all of a sudden. I felt hot. I lay flat on the ground, trying to escape from the heat. I forgot all about my children for a moment. Then, there came a big sound, sliding wooden doors and window were blown off into the air.”

Akira Onogi:

“The water of the river we looking at now is very clean and clear, but on the day of bombing, all the houses along this river were blown by the blast with their pillars, beams and pieces of furniture blown into the river or hanging off the bridges. The river was also filled with dead people blown by the blast and with survivors who came here to seek water. Anyway I could not see the surface of the water at all. Many injured people with peeled skin were crying out for help. Obviously they were looking at us and we could hardly turn our eyes toward the river.”

Isao Kita:

“Looking at the injured, I realized how seriously the town had been damaged. The fire was its peak at around that time. It thundered 10 times between 10 and 11 o’clock. The sound of thunder itself was not so great but still I could see the lightning over the fire. When I looked down on the town from the top of that hill, I could see that the city was completely lost. The city turned into a yellow sand. It turned yellow, the color of the yellow desert.”

I offer these remembrances on a blog geared towards foreign policy for two reasons. The first is that the tragic events of the disaster-in-installments of March 11th has thrown into sharp focus the human health costs of nuclear energy on the Japanese archipelago. Not surprisingly, as policymakers and citizens embark on a contentious debate over the future course of Japanese nuclear energy policy and nuclear experts continue their efforts to contain the fallout from the stricken nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan’s distinction as the only nation to experience the horror’s of nuclear bombing has emerged as prominent trope in framing the stakes of this debate. In this way, the national trauma of August 1945 continues to be marshaled as evidence of an acute awareness of and aversion to the adverse effects of nuclear radiation. This experience thus frames the terms of the public policy debate unfolding in Tokyo.

What is lost in this narrative, however, is the decades-long struggle of the hibakusha — their protracted fight for medical treatment, awareness, and a voice. Which is precisely why those engaged in this debate would do well to meditate on the events of August 6 and 9, and the ways in which the legacies (be they political, intellectual, biological, or otherwise) continue to color the present. Western media outlets are quick to highlight the resonances between this Chernobyl-like event and those of 1945. But, in my opinion, a far more salient point is the fact that the legacy of 1945 never truly disappeared: it has run throughout Japan’s postwar history in the activism, writing, and testimony of the hibakusha and their efforts to both describe the incommunicable and prevent it from ever happening again to anyone. That some Japanese citizens have taken matters into their own hands in addressing and monitoring the nuclear radiation fallout in Fukushima demonstrates the importance of grassroots alternatives to government oversight that has proved itself far from adequate. We are only beginning to make sense of the human and ecological tolls of this nuclear catastrophe, but, as was the case with Hiroshima, grassroots activism will no doubt figure prominently into our understanding the accident and the movement for redress.

Which brings me to my second point. Today’s anniversary also marks an occasion to step back from the Gordian knot of non-proliferation policy in order to dwell on the humanity that hangs in the balance. Grandiose though this statement might seem, it is a point all-too-often drowned out by the din of nuclear policy debate. Framed in the wonkish terms of international diplomacy, nuclear non-proliferation becomes a realm of multi-lateral talks, the alphabet soup of institutional acronyms, carrots-and-sticks, containment strategies, and policy agendas. As such, it can often feel, at least to me, so far detached from lived reality as to be something of a chess-match or grand strategy. This is a potentially dangerous mindset — one that can erode the terms and stakes of the debate. This is not to say that policymakers, commentators, and diplomats, myopically focused as they are on the nitty-gritty abstractions of policy, live in an alternate universe. Far from it, in fact: the details and heavy-lifting of non-proliferation policy is essential to ensuring peace.

Nevertheless, August 6, 1945 was an epoch-shifting moment. The pikadon of 8:15 am reverberates into the present. It resonates in the boring detail of six-party talks and IAEA reports. But also, just as importantly, in the bodies and stories of the Japanese inhabitants of Hiroshima. It is absolutely critical that we, at least for today, draw the linkages between the two so as to ensure that John Hersey’s observation — “what has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945… is the memory of Hiroshima” –continues to ring true.

I’ll leave you with two videos to fuel thinking of your own:

I can’t help but wonder what a current rendering of this sketch might look like. Surely, The National Bank of China would be included somewhere. “Cut down on those things and we’ll do business,” seems to me like a line one would expect from a CCP mouthpiece. And Uncle Sam, should he take on the role of his European counterpart, would be bearing a much heavier and more diversified load.

Any other ideas?

(H/T to reddit)

Second, a quick detour from the realm of foreign policy into that of East Asian historical research, my other hobbyhorse. Anyone looking for the cutting edge of historical research need look no further than the Hiroshima Archives Project. Pioneered by a group of GIS specialists, historians, and geographers from institutions across Japan, this project throws into sharp relief the potential of the digital humanities — and the importance of research that cuts across disciplines. Of course, it is one of many such projects. Nonetheless, it sets the bar for a new level of interaction with the past using the sharpest tools of the present.

See for yourself:

Expect much more of this type of research down the road…

(H/T to Colin Tyner)

The report includes, among other things, brief discussions of military spending in East Asia, military modernization in the DPRK and ROK, force estimates, asymmetric and paramilitary forces, terrorism and counter-terrorism, and missile/WMD forces.

My only reservation – and it is a small one – is that the report, focused as it is on the raw data of the last few years, makes a minimal effort to ground the present-day outlook in the historical forces that have shaped this security landscape. Coming in at a whopping 192 pages it is perhaps for the best that it limits its scope in this way, but a more concerted effort to address the historical and diplomatic textures of the present composition would do much to round out our understanding of the Korean conflict beyond its statistical composition.

Some key passages:

“the DPRK has steadily declined as an economic power and in every aspect of competitiveness with the ROK. While it is impossible to quantify the impact of the DPRK’s economic problems on its military capabilities and readiness, the fact remains that it has major problems in providing adequate stocks of the basic commodities like fuel.” (xi)

“the DPRK’s ideological hostility to the ROK and the US could lead Pyongyang to escalate in ways that are unpredictable and make a “rational bargainer” approach to scenario planning and predicting escalation highly uncertain because the perceptions of both sides can differ so much in any given scenario.” (xxi)

“the DPRK’s ideological extremism and reliance on the cult of the leader may interact with the fact it has not had any serious military experience since the cease-fire in the Korean War. Its complex mix of regular and internal security forces and massive bureaucracy may interact with ideology and reliance on the leader in ways that make its military operations both inefficient and unpredictable and help lead to unexpected levels of escalation or tactical and strategic behavior.” (18)

“Any major DPRK success on the ground, or escalation of a war, would almost certainly lead the US to escalate its forces and to expand its range of targets in the DPRK…China might, or might not, choose to intervene at any stage in such a conflict—either to limit or deter any action against the DPRK or to ensure that ROK and US forces did not “occupy” part of the DPRK.” (40)

So spoke Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a recent speech in Chennai, where she is participating in a strategic dialogue with her Indian counterparts before attending the upcoming APEC summit which will convene on July 23rd.

Two things in particular strike me about the above passage.

The first is that the one need look no further than the waterways of East Asia to find one of the most confounding variables of international security in the East Asia. As a slew of commentary on China’s increasingly vigorous presence in the seaways of the South China Sea have made clear, access to and management of sea lanes in this region in particular comprises one of the most pressing tensions in a region that is undergoing a multitude of considerable geopolitical shifts. Put another way, if there is a playing field for international politics in East Asia, it is its waterways. It has been this way for well over a century: control of the Pacific Ocean has long served as a linchpin issue for the rise and fall of great powers in the region. It remains to be seen how China’s rise (and the attendant changes to its maritime policies) will re-configure the logic and political geography of the Pacific, but it can be said with great certainty that these changes will not happen quietly.

It is far from surprising that American diplomats would take this opportunity to build solidarity behind this issue in particular, as it will likely consume tremendous diplomatic energy and resources in the future. Of course, the US will have to reach out well beyond its Indian partners to manage this issue and build the support it needs to remain “a steward of the waterways,” but India is doubtless a key stakeholder in this issue. I suspect that this will be a highly prioritized item on the docket of the trilateral US-Japan-India on the sidelines of APEC. The not-so-distant Senkaku Incident in particular and subsequent adjustments to Japan’s defense policy more generally seem to indicate a shift, if a slight one, towards a more nimble, forward-deploying naval posture in its surrounding seas.

The second point follows from the first. Much ink has been spilled about the existence and usefulness of the notion of the “arc of democracy” in the Asia-Pacific: that is, a set of shared values, political understandings, and historical partnerships between the US, Japan, and India (and, these days, other partners including Indonesia). The trilateral summit surely highlights the importance of this bloc to the region. But what concrete progress has been forged in recent years between these parties, especially after the shifts in the political winds of 2008 in the US and 2009 in Japan? Very little. Though diplomats continue to wax enthusiastic about the importance of these partnerships few concrete takeaways have been forged in the last three years — a point made powerfully by Michael Green and Daniel Twining in a recent op-ed. The crux of their assessment boils down to this:  ”mixed U.S. messaging about ‘strategic restraint’ and ‘strategic reassurance’ toward our competitors encourages India and Japan to pursue self-help strategies premised on a belief that Washington’s determination to defend common interests is wanting. The tone of our relationships is set in Washington as well as in Tokyo and New Delhi.”

Which is precisely why this upcoming trilateral should be closely scrutinized. Recent developments in the region call for a frank and lengthy discussion of the future of this strategic dialogue.

More on this later…