Author Archives: Robert E Kelly

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About Robert E Kelly

I am a professor of political science at Pusan National University. I write mostly on international relations in East Asia.

Korean Political Science Association 2009 Biannual Meeting: “American Dual Containment in Asia”

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The KPSA had its biannual meeting from August 20 to 22. Unlike the APSA, the KPSA meets only every two years, because of its size. It was a pretty good conference, but the papers generally feel short of APSA standards. This is the first one I attended. A few thoughts:

1. Just about all the attendees – Korean and foreign – got their PhD in the US. The elite universities in Korea are filled with people who got their PhDs in the US. I rarely meet people who attended those schools, only people who work at them. This speaks volumes about the very high quality of US education vis-a-vis the rest of the world. It also suggests graduate education is a major export sector of the US economy, but no one ever seems to conceptualize it that way.

2. Most of the papers were heavily focused on policy analysis and the day-to-day of Korean and regional politics. In this way, it didn’t feel like political science often to me, but like public policy. I guess this is ok, but it allows a lot of room for sheer opinionating and bloviating. But then again, many have complained that US political science is so theoretical and methodological that regular people can’t access it, it has become irrelevant to politics, and it is just another academic world unto itself. That’s true too. My feelings on this are mixed.

3. IR was vastly overrepresented among the political science subfields (theory, comparative, domestic [Korean], IR). At APSA, US politics’ seminars outweigh all the other sections combined. Not here. I think IR was a majority of the panels. I bet this reflects, 1. the general stasis of Korean domestic politics (interrupted by outbursts of violence on the streets or in the National Assembly), and 2. the immense international pressures on a small country like Korea, especially one surrounded by such large powers. It is a luxury of US politics that our internal politics feels so autonomous. As a superpower with good geography, we don’t have to pay attention to foreign opinion much. (Obama’s use of external anti-Americanism as a campaign tool was quite extraordinary.) Korea does not have that luxury, and the PS reflects that.

4. The geographic focus was solely on NE Asia. I didn’t see a single paper about another area. I find this a growing and disturbing trend here, especially when the state slogans are Global Korea, Dynamic Korea, Korea Rising, etc. I almost never meet anyone who knows anything about the ME, Africa, Latin America, or South Asia. In the context of topics like terrorism, religion, or development, one would need some exposure to these areas. But then again, I almost never see work by Korean academics on topics that are not immediately germane to NE Asia. I suppose this East Asiacentrism is forgivable given how small Korea is, but it speaks poorly of Korea and Korean political science that it seems so disinterested in the rest of the world (US excepted). I have met Korean IR political scientists who didn’t know the capital of Canada or that Iran is Shiite. Yikes!

5. About 40% of the participants were foreign – mostly Chinese and Americans, plus a few Japanese and Europeans. This tells me two things. One, there just aren’t that many political scientists in Korea. Two, they believe in recruiting foreign participation, even if the work proffered is pretty poor, because it serves the larger goal of Korea promotion.

6. The Biannual Meeting was used as another venue to, well, propagandize the Korean miracle. Speaker after speaker, both in the panels and in the general sessions like the dinner speakers, told us again and again how Korea grew from nothing to become the world’s 13th largest economy and a global ‘player.’ (I am so sick of hearing that last word.) There were a few government officials invited to speak as well, and they too went through this. It almost feels like a requirement from any serious personage in Korea, particularly when they speak to foreigners. The English language press here is filled with this story too. This incessant Koreaphoria suggests two things to me. a) They are nervous that their gains are tenuous, because they were so rapid. So perhaps telling the tale again and again, and telling foreigners too, and then expecting the foreigners to echo back the same story (and we are expected to repeat this party line), psychologically reinforces the solidity of the miracle on the Han. b) Koreans are extreme nationalists. Such constant self-celebration eventual begins to suggest arrogance and egomania. I try to be tolerant and simply smile as I hear the story told a million different ways. I try to understand why the story is so often repeated (because it feels so unreal, especially after the first 3/4 of the 20th C was so hard on Korea). But at some point, you just have to give in and say it is an example of the intense nationalism so many scholars have noted to exist outside the West. I am unaccustomed to this. My own feelings about the US hardly mirror the intensity of Korean feelings for Korea. It makes me uncomfortable.

7. The panels were far too short and too crowded. I am not sure how to interpret this. A very cynical friend said the answer is the image-consciousness of Korea. It is more important to list the panel and be able to mention it on your CV or in an TV interview, than to actually have it be a substantive process. So you cram as many people into as many panels as possible. Inevitably the panels are too short (75 minutes) and too crowded (1 panel leader, 4 presenters, 2 discussants). This is certainly what happened to my panel. A 20 minute presentation was chopped in half, and I got no meaningful feedback or discussion.

8. My presentation, what there was of it, argued that the US will ally with India in the near future. India is the only country that is also facing China and Islamism, and is democratic too. Here is my abstract, and the relevant graph on US alliance picks:

US grand strategy after 9/11 has turned from post-containment drift to preemption. But the costs are high – suspicion of American power, hedging by traditional allies, expensive, go-it-alone ventures like Iraq. Tried-and-true containment better reflects American values. While forward in the world, containment is also defensive. It reassures skittish partners and reflects liberal, anti-imperial US preferences. In Asia, containment could hold the line against radical Islam and Chinese nationalism without encouraging a global backlash. Democratic India shares these same two challengers with the US; it is the likely pivot in a US-backed neo-containment architecture in Asia.

Thoughts on Miguk-land after 1 Year

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I went back to the US this summer to see my family. The culture shock was, predictably, deeper than when I returned to the US while I lived in Europe in the 1990s. The cultural gap between Korea and the US is deeper than that between Europe and the US. So I feel like I noticed more this time. So here are a couple of thoughts.

1. Americans are really fat. I struggle with junk food as much as anyone, but my fellows citizens seem to be just giving up. Koreans are the slimmest people in the OECD (or at least, that’s what they tell me, and they look it), and the difference with Americans is really apparent. My girlfriend came home with me, and she was routinely shocked by the sheer girth of so many of us. We both picked up on it almost immediately as we entered the airport. A news report I saw said that 40% of Americans are obese now, not just overweight. A doctor friend said this is evolving into a ticking time bomb. In about 30 years, when all these people hit 60, the public health burden will be staggering – on top of all the other entitlement/health care problems already. The IR scholar in my can’t help but think this is bad in the long term for US power. As hegemons age they are supposed to become more sluggish and complacent, and they US population is certainly showing that. How can you lead when half your people struggle to get off the sofa? My only consolation is that Europeans and Asians especially smoke a lot. That is their own public health drain. Is it macabre to suggest that US tobacco exports to China aid long-term US power?

2. Fox News and the American Right is even more insane now than I have read about. I made a point to watch Glenn Beck, O’Reilly and Hannity while I have was home. One of the most important consequences of the GOP’s defeat last year is the opportunity for a post-Bush reconstruction. When parties suffer from major defeats like the GOP in 2006 and 2008, or the Labour Party from 1979 to 1997, it calls for a serious philosophical rethink. Labor did this and successfully modernized itself (i.e., dropped socialism after Thatcher and the end of the Cold War) under Blair. But the GOP seems to want to drive itself further and further into the wilderness. The lesson the GOP has drawn from the defeat of Bushism is that it was not pure and conservative enough. Instead of tracking to the center, the GOP is vearing even further to the right to purify itself. Instead of coming to terms with the major social changes brought on by Obama, his postracial challenge, and the Great Recession, the GOP would rather recite dated, toxic bromides. So Glenn Beck is saying Obama is a racist; Palin calls ObamaCare ‘evil’ and says it includes ‘Death Panels’ (i.e., end-of-life consultations); and the bloggers are claiming he is not a US citizen. Are you serious? This is the state of conservative commentary at a time of massive government expansion? Even the WSJ’s op-ed page is staggeringly uncreative. If this persists, serious middle class professional people will abandon the GOP. These kind of people voted for for Bush because they thought Clinton was sleazy and then to fight the GWoT. But if the GOP becomes regularly indentified with managerial ineptitude in government (Iraq, Katrina, ‘evil’ healthcare), then serious professionals will vote for Democrats. I consider myself in this group. I voted and worked consistently for Republicans in the 90s, since W’s election, I have drifted further and further. And if Fox News and talk radio become the ideological organs of the post-Bush right, then I will never go back.

3. The Great Recession is far more noticeable in the US than Korea. First, it is in the news a lot more at home. Second, people talk about it a lot more in the US. My parents and friends at home made regular reference to it in conversation, but friends and colleagues here rarely do. Third, one can see all those ‘house for sale’ signs all over the place. The real estate market in Korea does not work this way, so this very obvious and public marker of the GR is not evident. Koreans mostly live in high-rises, as I do. In general the GR has been lighter and shorter out here than at home. No one talks about 10% unemployment here; they’d be rioting in the streets (be sure to look at the picture).

4. American food is not that bad after all. Food is an important part of Korean identity, and Koreans occasionally cite as healthier and tastier than US food when they need something to throwback at an American in a conversation. And indeed, the American food in Korea is awful; its almost universally junk food chains like Burger King. So I had forgotten how good some American food is – deli sandwiches, microbrews, summer BBQ chicken. Korean food is certainly healthier on average than US food. I accept that, and I don’t care much. (Koreans do; they are nationalist about food, along with almost everything else). Unfortunately the American food that is exported is almost always the worst fast food, like KFC or McDonald’s. My sister laughed out loud when I told her that even Popeye’s Chicken is in Korea. This is unfortunate, because it gives the impression that most US cuisine is that sort of greasy, salty junk. But my family, friends, and colleagues in the US rarely ate fast food; most Americans seem to be aware of how bad it is for you; and there are a lot of non-fast food restaurants in the US. So the Cheesecake Factory, e.g., is unfortunately not in Korea, and I have never seen a proper (Jewish) deli here either. I always thought one could make a fortune in Korea if one opened a good western restaurant.

Movie Review: Transfomers 2 – Michael Bay Misses the Cold War

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A traditional review of this film is redundant. By now you already now how ridiculous it is. (If you don’t, read this laugh-out-loud link.) It includes racist, gansta rapper robots reminiscent of Jar-Jar Binks. The women in the film are either idiots (the mother) or supermodels shamelessly exploited by the camera. Its treatment of college life is moronic, even by the standards of a film this bad. And the story is such a convoluted mess, its hard to know what is going on. Instead I want to focus on the politics of the film, especially its outdated understanding of military conflict. If this sounds unnecessary, its worth noting that Bay has better relations with the US military than any other director working. His films frequently showcase US hardware and show its use in ways flattering to, and approved by, the US military. Particularly, his relationship with the Air Force is strong, so you always know his films will treat you to kinetic displays of our coolest tools.

1. Bay fetishizes military hardware, and he has been rewarded with unparalleled access. Transformers 1 was the first movie in which the F-22 Raptor and the Predator drone were shown in a film. The second has even more real-life hardware on loan, including the M1 tank, B-1, F-22, F-117, and Predators. Across Bay’s ouevre (Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, T1 & T2), he has stressed big airforce hardware in such a glorifying way, that they feel like commercials for the military-industrial complex.

2. Bay’s particular interest in the airforce is comic given the slow erosion of the airforce’ actual role in America’s combat operations. Specifically, no power in the world is really ready to take on the US, and in the air least of all. The macho, fighter pilot cult of the airforce makes for cool movies like Top Gun and Stealth, but this does not actually fit what the airforce has done in US conflicts since Korea (the last air war with frequent, serious dogfights). The airforce is a victim of its own success. US air dominance is greater than on the ground or the seas, so the actual use of US airpower against other airpower is minimal. Instead, the US uses the airforce as a part of combined arms for ground support. This irks the AF brass, so Bay’s films are a nice chance to pitch the US public on the continued, but bogus, need for fighter jets. On the actual role of the US airforce in combat try here; compare that with the image you see in film.

3. Another obvious clash between the film and reality is the straightforward, good guy-bad guy action of the film, vs. the reality of US counterinsurgency & third world operations since Vietnam. This is another way in which Bay channels the military’s preferred view of itself. In Bayworld, the airforce is the dominant branch of the military. Also, the bad guys are easy to identify, so difficult questions surrounding the use of American force for the last two generations don’t exist. The Decepticons are just evil so the Autobots can, yes, behead them, and it is ok. There is no sorting between VietCong and local farmers, no accidental killings, no torture, no intercultural misunderstandings.

4. The final delusion of military conflict in Bayworld is the requirement of massive firepower. This is another US preoccupation. Part of the traditional American way of war is to use overwhelming force. The Decepticons are large, metal, hardened, military-only targets – exactly the sort of Cold War-era targets the airforce prefers to attack and which scarcely exist anymore. But the reality of US micro-operations in mixed, combatant/civilian third world environments is quite the opposite. The Decepticons are the Soviets or the Chinese. The Americans need to use all their super-cool advanced firepower to bring them down. This is the way the US military wants to fight wars. But the reality is different, and has been since Korea. We scarcely use huge, indiscriminant firepower anymore (that failed terribly, with awful civilian consequences, under Westmoreland in Vietnam). Instead everything today is geared around micro-bursts of extreme precision – the Kosovo air campaign of 1999 or the Predator strikes in Pakistan since 2008. Our most recent Iraqi dalliance with the Michael Bay, ‘blow-‘em-all-to-hell,’ approach to conflicts ended in a ‘fiasco.’

5. The film includes a cheap shot at the Obama administration. His national security advisor tries to kick the Autobots off earth, and after the Decepticon attack, Obama goes into hiding. I guess this means that Bay is a Republican. I wonder if he believes he is channeling US military discontent about Obama as C-in-C. Either way this was poor taste.

Bay’s film is silly but it tells us some important things nonetheless, as bad US action movies usually do.

A. Bay is clearly the foremost advertising vehicle of the US airforce and the US military in general. When people complain about the socially corrosive effects of the military-industrial compex, movies like this are exactly what they mean. Bay channels the US flirtation with militarism and celebrates jingoism. I find it a pleasing irony, that for all Bay’s military technology porn (long, loving shots of military metal), SecDef Robert Gates recently ended the wasteful and unnecessary F-22. Outside of Bayworld delusions of asteroids and robots from space, real US military needs are far more mundane – more soldiers, more cultural experts, better veterans care, better body armor, etc.

B. Bay also reflects the way the US military wants to fight wars and the way it wants to be perceived by the public. He avoids the messy reality of the small wars that have characterized US military conflict since Korea. The bulk of these costs are carried by the army; they involve small operations and targeted force; they require cultural sensitivity and good intelligence; there is rarely ‘moral clarity.’ Instead Bay presents simplistic good/bad moral clarity and super-sleek airshows. Awful.

Movie Review: Terminator Salvation, or What John Connor Learned in Iraq

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This is how franchises die. What a let down. In my review of T3, I said you would pumped for T4. I was wrong. This beast is heading into the sequelitis of the Matrix, Robocop or (old) Star Trek. What a shame. For a run-down of the ‘plot,’ try here. You don’t really need to see T1-3, as this one doesn’t use the backstory too much. Its basically an action movie, with none of the heart or interesting themes of the earlier ones.

I have always been a fan of the Terminator series as action movies. The first one was pretty clever. It had an offbeat time-travel idea (not the usual Star Trek time-travel silliness, once again on display this summer), and it smartly capitalized on the angst of the 80s about computers and war (Wargames), and postapolcalyptic life (Mad Max). The second one is probably the most intelligent action movie ever (granted, that’s not saying a lot), and continues to be the base of the popularity that eventually catapulted Schwarzenegger to the governorship of California. Even the third one was pretty good. Unfortunately this one walks away from most of the nifty and fun stuff of the series; its basically a mish-mash of every war war movie you’ve seen and videogame you played. A few thoughts:

1. On the up side, the action is pretty intense and serious. There is a grit and edginess to the shoot-outs that feels more battle-realistic than the first trilogy. It was also a nice touch that Linda Hamilton returned at least to provide the voice of John’s mother. I was always disappointed at how lamely her cool character was dispensed with in T3. I also thought the idea of putting the resistance HQ in a sub was a pretty intelligent move that flowed well from the narrative, but it prompts the obvious question (discussed below) about how the resistance to machines was able to get and maintain such fancy equipment when the whole planet was nuked. Finally, I didn’t mind that the film was set in the Skynet future. At some point the franchise had to catch up with that conflict, so I didn’t miss the time-travelling terminators that were becoming pretty repetitive by T3.

2. The acting is passable, and the sets are solid. Nothing looks ‘stagey.’ Thankfully too the CGI is good, although the Blu-ray release will be the real test of that. But wth has happened to C Bale? He was fantastic in American Psycho. The scene were has almost has a heart attack over another yuppie’s superior business card is hysterical. In T4, he basically yells all the time. And what’s up with a bald H B Carter showing up in a Terminator movie? That just didn’t work for me at all.

3. But the bad is, well, pretty bad.

a. the action scenes are so loud (as is the ear-splitting soundtrack) that they overwhelm the narrative. The story of T1 and T2 particularly were pretty compelling, and the action flowed from pretty well from narrative demand. That’s not the case here.

b. The movie pulls from all sorts of war films and video games. So, it doesn’t feel too original, and you aren’t really surprised much. The postwar future looks like – well you already know – Mad Max. The Road Warrior is a great film, and its influence just rolls on and on, even 30 years later. Battle scenes with Huey helicopters are straight from Vietnam pictures. The machines created slithery ‘hydrobots’ ripped straight from, of all possible sources, the videogame Resistance 2. The tall robot that attacks the resistance at the gas station could be a transformer. The penetration of Skynet central at the end feels like a videogame ending when you have to go after the big boss character to end the story.

c. I found the level of sophisticated military hardware and deployment wholly unconvincing after the awfulness of a nuclear exchange. The combat scenes frequently felt like a video game version of the Iraq war. So much of the hardware is taken directly from the contemporary US military that we see regularly on TV in Iraq: body armor, grenade launchers, M-60s, M-16s, A-10s, radar, rocket launchers, humvees. In the first film, the resistance is running around in basements with funky ray-guns. In this one, they have enormous above-ground installations that can support helicopters, subs, and aircraft. So its pretty much the US military versus the machines, and we’ve seen that already in Transformers. Wouldn’t the machines go after such facilities? And how could you possibly maintain such elaborate hardware in the postnuclear future? Where does the fuel come from, the spare parts, the dozens of mechanics necessary to keep the hi-tech, logistics-heavy US military in the field? And someone should tell the director that last Huey was built in 1976 and the last A-10 in 1986. It is unlikely these aging platforms would survive into 2018, through a nuclear war, and still be serviceable.

d. maybe I am too hard about the sophisticated technology, so here is some miscellaneous silliness:

i. The hot fighter pilot babe (how come they’re always super hot, btw?) falls in love with a cyborg after about 2 days. Nobody but reality TV show contestants fall in love in 2 days, and wth falls in love with a robot?! To quote the greatest line from the underappreciated comedy of Robocop 2: ‘ I don’t know anyone who wants to be a robot.’

ii. Two nuclear explosions occur in the film which the main character survives. In both, helicopters are close enough to feel the blast wave. Depending on the yield of course, you might survive the blast, but then there’s fallout too. Too unrealistic.

iii. At the end, John Connor gets a heart transplant in open air from that cyborg. Even more ridiculous, Connor had recently restarted that cyborg heart with – I am not lying – jumper cables. Hah! I am sure its ready for transplant.

iv. Why does Skynet have offices and hallways if it is a robot AI?

e. Finally, the director succumbed the easy patriotism of US action movies. In first two, the resistance was planet-wide and looked futuristic. In the third film, Schwarzenegger needed to get elected to the CA governorship, so suddenly the US military was at the heart of the resistance. And in this fourth installment, its basically the US military versus the Transformers. US military hardware now dominates the resistance; gone are the ray-guns. The resistance leaders are all Americans and the action all takes place in CA. The difference is subtle but clear. James Cameron (the director of the first two) was never a nationalist, but I guess now, after 6 years of the Iraq war, T4 had to look this way for an American audience. Too bad.

Foreigners Should Not Intervene in Korea’s Multiculturalism Debate

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This an unpublished letter to the editor at the Korea Times.

The poor treatment of Bonojit Hussain (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/08/117_49537.html) is a sad commentary on race relations in Korea but is no crime and certainly not a ‘human rights’ violation. Mr. Hussain should do all us foreigners here a favor and drop his complaint:

1. Racism is not a crime, and neither is stupidity. Open societies like Korea do not criminalize thought, even repugnant foolishness. Mr. Hussain was not physically assaulted, and his Korean harasser is entitled to his beliefs and prejudices. It makes a mockery of the notion of ‘human rights’ to charge a drunk ajeossi on a bus for 60 seconds of vulgarity. Racism is overcome in the marketplace of ideas not by an orwellian ‘opinion police.’ The US went down this road into the political correctness wars of the 1990s, and Mr. Hussain’s home country, India, is balkanized by exactly such racialized law-making. We should hardly encourage that among our hosts.

2. We foreigners are guests in someone else’s house. The Korean harasser’s behavior was improper, but we foreigners do not have the moral standing to take legal action on our hosts’ opinion of our presence. As voluntary guests, there are limits to our claims against our hosts, and exaggerating racist vulgarity as a human rights violation certainly crosses them. Barring physical intimidation, we have no claim to an ‘appropriate’ Korean opinion. We have chosen to come to Korea. We are not a conquered or coerced population (like Canadian francophones or Native Americans) with a moral claim to special rules, much less a ‘human rights’ committee. It is part of our duty as willing guests to absorb Korean ambivalence, and occasional resentment, about our presence with aplomb and restraint.

3. Korea is scarcely a ‘multicultural’ society, and we have no right to demand or describe it as such. For all the talk of ‘globalizing’ Korea, Korea is still quite ethnically homogenous. Over 97% of the ROK population is Korean. Over 90% of the foreigners here are other East Asians who blend in more easily. Most others, such as the hagwon teachers or US military, are transients. Hence, Koreans expect us to either assimilate or leave at some point. There is no permanent, unassimilated minority here that demands a multicultural restructuring of Korean society (as there is, for example, in India or Switzerland). More importantly, it is not at all clear that Koreans want their country to be a multi-culture. And this we must respect. This is their country, and we must honor and abide by their choices. It is terrible bad faith for us to come voluntarily and then promptly demand multiculturalism as our due. It is not; the burden of obligation lies the other way. It is our responsibility to integrate, learn Korean (god help us), eat our kimchi, and otherwise behave well, including respect for our hosts’ ambivalence on the foreigner question.

As Koreans accustom themselves to non-Korean faces, attitudes will change. But we may not demand that change, nor try to shame our hosts into it. Polyethnicity is a change for them to make at their own pace and in their own way. As a democracy, any shift toward multiculturalism in Korea must have public opinion support. It cannot be the product of lawsuits by guests. Koreans may get there, but then again, they may not, and they may not want to. However the debate ends, it is not our place to intervene.

CNN International is Awful

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One of the great tragedies of living out of the US is the loss of quality TV news in English, as well as the TiVo system I used to cruise through it. If you want to see how yesterday’s luxuries become today’s needs, try TiVo withdrawal ! After a year in Korea, I still miss it terribly.

I always thought US TV journalism was pretty weak, but I realized when I moved to Korea how much I actually consumed at the end of the day when I relaxed. I miss PBS the most – particularly Lehrer, Frontline, and Charlie Rose. I also miss BBC News and C-Span’s Q & A and book/author shows. I miss less the Sunday talk shows. The greats (Russert and Brinkley) have passed. I always thought Stephanopolus was a free-rider on Clinton who made good afterwards in the worst ‘Washington system’ sorta way: handsome, connected, but somewhat empty and a lightweight, i.e., perfect for network news. I suppose your dork quotient skyrockets when you say that you miss C-Span. Hah!

Anyway, I have been thrown back on CNN International – which is another way of saying that I don’t watch the news much anymore. (I don’t understand Korean enough yet to consume local news.) CNN International has that vapid, shallow feel to it that is perfect for airport lounges when you are bored with your novel and your flight is delayed. But as a regular news source, its pretty awful.

I never consumed a lot of cable news before. CNN struck me as infotainment, Fox as propaganda, and MSNBC as empty. Hence, John’s Stewart’s jokes about cable news seemed right to me, but I never really knew. Now, after being stuck with only CNN for a year, I do know how right his lampoons are. Why is CNN awful?

1. CNNI is terribly repetitive. It not only repeats the same show frequently, but it basically repeats the same story line throughout various broadcasts all day long. 15 minutes with CNN is enough to tell your their basic 5 points for the day. So unless you actually want the fluff side shows like Larry King or the movie shows, its lots of recycling interspersed with non-news like the weather or sports.

2. It is quite trendy and silly. Michael Jackson’s passing became a 24-hour pseudo-news-athon of idiot interviews, overhyped conspiracy theories, and family exploitation for air time. WHO CARES ?! Not only was it all fairly pointless, it also helped save the Iranian regime by taking away the spotlight from that almost revolution. Trading Iran for Jackson was a massive failure of journalistic integrity. No wonder TV news is in delcine. Also noticeable is that awful journalistic habit of extrapolating a trend or wave from a just few cases of something. For about two weeks in May, it was all swine flu, all the time – complete with lots of hyperventilating and lurid counterfactuals, when there was not much actual news to report. So we’d learn about the day’s swine flu events in a few minutes, and then get a burst of bust of commercials with creepy music and shaky images telling me to ‘stay with CNN’ in case it becomes a ‘global epidemic’! I can’t wait for this summer when a few shark attacks off South Africa or California are turned into a global shark bite pandemic! Ahhh!

3. The side shows really are fluff. Larry King strikes me as a pretty talented guy, but he interviews quite a lot of dull, conventional-wisdom-recycling guests. Who picks these people for him? How many more movie stars, preachers, or participants in high-profile court cases do we need to hear? And when did celebrity blather, and paid-for advertising masquerading as journalism like ‘Inside Africa,’ become news?

4. There are a lot of commercials of national or corporate brand promotion, and for soft ‘investigative’ shows. Usually some reporter tells me that if I watch the ‘Middle East Revealed,’ I will learn who the ‘movers and shakers’ of the Gulf are. Really? A series of sanitized interviews with bankers or government media liaisons uncritically citing optimistic FDI and export statistics? Yawn. The commercials are even worse. It all blurs an into undifferentiated fluff of advertising for tourism and investment; apparently I will discover my true heart gambling in Dubai or kayaking in Cambodia.

5. Anderson Cooper and Christiane Amanpour are egomaniacs whose faces are all over the network. Have the PR people at CCN found that viewers care more about seeing them than the actual news they speak of?

6. What is with relentless self-promotion? Most of CNN’s commercials are for the network itself. Its marketing is embarrassingly fluffy multiculturalism, stressing silliness like the ‘continuing human story,’ with trite juxtapositions of suffering children and joyous celebrants somewhere set to mawkish music. Insulting and stupid.

7. Who taught these journalists to speak in such dramatic language? It is never ‘a billion dollars,’ but always ‘a Billion Dollars,’ which great stress on the labial ‘B.’ Jobs are never ‘cut’ on CCNI; they are ‘slashed.’ Economies don’t ‘decline,’ they ‘collapse.’ I think this is the result of Fox News remaking of the news into a Michael Bay action movie.

In short, CCN International seems to pander to those who would like to see themselves as international or cosmopolitan, but not in a particular challenging way. CCNI is like the TV version of the International Herald Tribune – call it IR for undergrads. It makes you feel sorta international and jet-setty to be reading/watching it and be seen reading/watching it. Aren’t you cool when you look up when CCNI tells you the weather in Hong Kong or Bahrain? Preferably this occurs in the airport lounge with your Blackberry on the table so the cute business traveler babe next to you will see how cosmpolitan you are. But you’re probably not going to Hong Kong or Bahrain, because you’re not really a ‘player.’ You’re just in the airport because you are going on a vacation somewhere…

Koreanism of the Month – Food (2): Kimchi!

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Koreans have a special reverence for the premier national food item – kimchi. There is space kimchi and even a Kimchi Research Institute in Pusan.

Kimchi seems to have a acquired a curative power akin to the snake oil tonics of the Old West. Kimchi is good for just about every ailment – the common cold, depression, fatigue, whatever. But note that these are fairly generalized conditions for which some exercise or fresh air might help too.

More over-the-top are the assertions that kimchi will protect against specific diseases – including bird flu or SARS. At this point, it becomes increasingly silly. A good friend recently told me that kimchi will protect me against swine flu! The obvious methodological problem of assertion without the slightest shred of evidence is less interesting (we do that all the time in conversation) than the knee-jerk reaction of Koreans to defend/promote kimchi regardless of circumstance. That clearly betrays a deep national affinity or cultural reflex. (This made me think of the GOP’s tax-cut reflex: no matter the state of the economy or budgets, tax cuts are always good for you.)

Does that reflex mean anything serious beyond cute stories of kimchi refrigerators? Honestly, probably not. I find it vaguely uncomfortable when Koreans tell me kimchi defines them. I always respond that actually your long battle for democracy and prosperity since 1953 does, or at least should. Kimchi is simply a food. Perhaps that is the response of a citizen from a polyglot immigrant culture like the US. There is no ‘national food’ in the US with the clout of kimchi here. I geuss if you are from a more traditionalist, ancient communitarianism, all sorts of everyday things like food, clothes, or even hairstyles have a national symbol status.

I am also a bit surprised. Kimchi, basically fermented cabbage or radish, is a curious choice for a national food. It is hardly the most tasty food in Korean cuisine. I can think of lots of other dishes I would promote first (Korean BBQ is excellent). And certainly, it is a very acquired taste that takes time to get used to. I have never seen kimchi in the West; my sense is that it would not travel well outside East Asia. Westerners in Korea generally greet kimchi with a shrug. Its ok, but not that different that any other vegetable side or salad. This generally miffs Koreans, who seem bewildered by Western indifference.

What Kim Jong Il can learn from Idi Amin

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If Idi Amin ever did anything useful for Africa or the world, I don’t know of it. But he did provide one good negative lesson – how to get a brutal tyrant out of the way, one who would like to abdicate but is terrified of meeting a Ceausescu-style end (running away in terror from a vengeful firing squad looking for blood). Those cell phone vids of Saddam’s execuction-turned-lynching are exactly why the world’s nasties like Mugabe or Castro won’t leave power even when their ‘revolutions’ are spent or corrupted and the whole world has turned on them.

Kim Jong Il has to be thinking the same. He knows his regime is falling apart, and that its already slim chance for a stable future is even more reduced by its extreme isolation. He is afraid of collapse and an ignominious end like Mussolini’s – hung from a lamppost by angry resistors. And indeed, this is likely, or a trial in postunification courts that will almost certainly convict him as a criminal against humanity and possibly a genocidaire. South Korea has the death penalty, and Kim would almost certainly face execution. This must not only deeply unnerve Kim, but also anger him. He is a sitting head of state with a Mandate from Heaven and nuclear weapons. Yet most of the world thinks he should be hanged by the SK government.

SK rarely uses the death penalty, and I suspect it is kept on the book primarily for the postunification trials. The NK elite is complicit in the worst man-made famine since the Great Leap Forward, and runs the most awful gulag system the world has ever known.

So here is where the man who said human flesh tastes too salty can ‘help.’ Amin basically gave up making trouble for Uganda when he received asylum in Saudi Arabia. He wasn’t executed, never repented, and lived reasonably well. Kim probably wants all these things too. And China could give them to him. This is far better end than the possible factional conflict brewing after his death. He must know that the regime will be terribly shaky without him; analysts still regularly argue that Kim must shore up his own power in the regime, some 15 years after his father’s death. If that is so, how long will Kim Jong-Un last before he is pushed aside or turned into a figurehead? At least from a comfortable exile Jong-Il can blame the Americans and condemn SK’s destruction of the utopia. He can enjoy the girls, movies and booze he loves; maybe China will give him a home theater and he can just slide away like Amin did. On the hand, if he hangs on to the bitter end, I predict factionalism.

Did Wolfowitz really just say that?!

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In a WSJ op-ed, Paul Wolfowitz wrote, that when Obama speaks in Cairo, “the president should make clear that the U.S. does not believe that democracy can be imposed by force.”

I find this stunning. Wolfowitz is the primary intellectual architect of George Bush’s endorsement of “regime change” through “pre-emption.” He has argued since a famous leaked memo in 1992 that the US should actively try to maintain unipolar dominance as a foreign policy goal.

This is a remarkable turnabout, and once again Wolfowitz reminds us of SecDef McNamara. After the Vietnam War, McNamara sought penance through the presidency of the World Bank, and lately now by advocating the total abolition of nuclear weapons. And Wolfowitz seems to sliding along the same way. He too was prez of the Bank, and now seems to also be be turning against the use of state power. Post-Iraq, he seems chastened – abandoning tough-minded neo-conservatism to say we should not impose democracy by force after all.

Is this a real conversion? Has he really drawn the lesson, presumably from Iraq, that democracy cannot be imposed by force? He would not be the first neoconservative or hawkish liberal internationalist (basically the same thing) to turn away from the war. Fukuyama’s apologia is the most eloquent of these so far.

Beyond astonishment at Wolfowitz’ volte face, I must say I am little disappointed. Wolfowitz was the best thinker, within the government, behind the neoconservative critique of the Middle East that, despite Iraq, I continue to find persuasive. The intellectual architecture behind the Iraq war was not an oil grab, US imperialism, or the workings of the military-industrial complex. Instead, the neo-con idea was that politics in the Middle East was frozen in time (1967), locked into a toxic, self-reinforcing cycle of easy, corrupting oil money, islamist and arabist ideology, predatory elites, corporatist economic stagnation, and dictatorship. This is essentially correct. Hence the Iraq war was necessary to break this immobilism. Only an external lightning or hammer strike could crack this terrorism- and jihadism-spawning stasis.

The disastrous course of the Iraq war does not invalidate this logic. Yes, the Bushies clearly underestimated how much work regime change would require. But that is a process argument. We badly prosecuted the necessary external strike. But process failure does not undermine the logic of the neo-con argument. To this day, I still find it persuasive, hence my deep ambivalence about the Iraq war, even as it was flying off the rails. That Wolfowitz would surrender this persuasive argument is disappointing; I would like to see a coherent, contrasting ‘liberal realist’ analysis of the Middle East’s problems. We are all chastened by Iraq, but the toxic, interlocking pathologies that brought the ME to this point were well analyzed by the neo-cons. We have to give them that.

Lessons from Iran

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Prediction in social science is d— difficult, but it is awfully easy to retrodict. Charles Kurzman makes the important point that when the outcome is clear in Iran in a few weeks or months, lots of ‘experts’ will say it was ‘inevitable.’ Excellent point against social science hubris. So, I will hazard my guess now, in advance:

1. These color revolutions, and their model, the Velvet Revolution, always seem to take us by surprise. Suddenly, previously apathetic populations explode and and waves of protestors hit the street. No one seems to be able to explain why quiescence so quickly collapses. This is terribly humiliating to the social sciences, because we strive to build theories that explain social action. Yet we seem to get it wrong time and again – particularly in identifying the social breakpoints which push populations from apathy into activism. The CIA has been criticized for years for wildly overestimating Soviet power in the 80s and having not even an inkling of the coming collapse. Even Paul Kennedy, one of the finest historians working today, assumed the USSR would survive into the 21st C. (And good prediction is why Nouriel Roubini is such a rock-star today.) We just don’t know nearly enough about the intersection of politics, psychology, and social mobilization. Nonetheless, the lesson I draw is that political apathy is ticking time-bomb. If you endlessly repress (and bore) your population, there will be a backlash. China and even, or perhaps especially, NK beware.

2. Stagnation and low growth seem to be a driver of these revolutions as much as freedom. Freedom is great, but so are mundane things like being able to travel or getting a cool, future-oriented job. Eastern Europeans didn’t just want liberalism, they wanted globalization – the fun hip, exciting lifestyle they saw filtering in on bootleg VHS or western TV shows. Who wants to work for some bland, grey, state-owned enterprise making soviet-model toasters? People would rather work for Yahoo or Intel and be connected the world and the future. That the China seems to be able to deliver this, where the Islamic Republic could not, is my guess why China seems more stable.

3. Autocracies are frequently terrible economic managers. East Asian states seem to be an exception to this, but even they have high levels of corruption and can become unexpectedly brittle (Indonesia during the Asian financial crisis). Ideologues who demand national, religious, or other principled ‘purity’ frequently must do so at the expense of cool, fun, modern global lifestyles. Who wants to be cut-off from the fun world of globalization, video games, HDTV, Starbucks, etc? Maybe the Amish or Haredim, but the vast majority of people hardly want to be constricted this way, or at the very least, they want to choose to be or not be so restricted. To the Amish’ credit, they at least allow their children a choice to stay or go. In these color revolutions, economic stagnation is usually combined with closed politics.

4. Foreign influence can energize these revolts, but not seriously participate. I think there was a W effect and an Obama effect that helped spur these movements. Both presidents spoke meaningfully about democracy (2005 & 2009), and both were followed by outburst of popular enthusiasm. That is a good correlation. Further outside attention can put the regime in the spotlight and so raise the costs a Tiananmen-style repression. But this hardly means it won’t happen. The best we can do is continue to talk about it in the press and keep attention on it. This will give the regime pause. But openly intervening is hard (these places are far way; what exactly would we do?). So part of the blame for the recent Iranian crackdown is the ADD-level attention span of cable news. Michael Jackson saved the mullahs. That’s globalization for ya’.

5. Islamic governance is not inevitable in the Middle East. The ME will always be the home of Islam. But Islamic politics is not the only way. Muslims clearly like more open politics, even if they do then vote for Islamists. Yes, Hamas got elected, and Turkey’s Islamists are reasonably successful. But then these parties must govern. Inevitably, they make mistakes, and in so far as they close politics to criticism, those mistakes will remain unaddressed, pile up, and exacerbate. When they screw up, there will be pressure from below for change. That Muslims vote for Islamist parties does not mean they want to never vote again, or live in an Islamist tyranny. The Iranian clerics confused the two. They saw the mundane rejection of the Shah as an apocalyptic endorsement for Islamic theocracy. So did Hamas. So to will the Islamist in Egypt if they ever tip Mubrarak. The trick is retain democracy while allowing Islamists to run. This is challenging. The US allows anti-systemic parties like nazis and communists to run. Germany, given it history of voting in the Nazis who then prohibited voting ever again, does not. Whether or not to allow parties who want to destroy democracies to run in deomcratic elections is tough question.