Brussels Sprouts - New York Times

Brussels Sprouts - New York TimesMay 11, 2005
Brussels Sprouts
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

In his book "The Ideas That Conquered the World," Michael Mandelbaum tells a story about a young girl who is eating dinner at a friend's house and her friend's mother asks her if she likes brussels sprouts. "Yes, of course," the girl says. "I like brussels sprouts." After dinner, though, the mother notices that the girl hasn't eaten a single sprout. "I thought you liked brussels sprouts," the mother said. "I do," answered the girl, "but not enough to actually eat them."

Mr. Mandelbaum, who teaches foreign policy at Johns Hopkins, related that story to me during a conversation about the two greatest nuclear proliferation threats we face today: North Korea and Iran. Readers of this column know that I rarely write about nuclear proliferation. It is not because I am not interested. I am. It is not because I think it isn't a grave danger. It is. The reason I don't write about it much is because the solution is so ridiculously obvious there isn't much to say. Here's what I mean:

North Korea's nuclear program could be stopped tomorrow by the country that provides roughly half of North Korea's energy and one-third of its food supplies - and that is China.

All China has to say to Kim Jong Il is: "You will shut down your nuclear weapons program and put all your reactors under international inspection, or we will turn off your lights, cut off your heat and put your whole country on a diet. Have we made ourselves clear?" One thing we know about China - it knows how to play hardball when it wants to, and if China played hardball that way with North Korea, the proliferation threat from Pyongyang would be over.

Ditto Europe vis-à-vis Iran. If the European Union said to the Iranians: "You will shut down your nuclear weapons program and put all your reactors and related facilities under international inspection or you will face a total economic boycott from Europe. Which part of this sentence don't you understand?" Trust me, that is the kind of explicit threat that would get Tehran's attention. Short of that, the Iranians will dicker over their nuclear carpets forever.

So why haven't China and the E.U. said these things? "Like that girl with the brussels sprouts," Mr. Mandelbaum said, "the Chinese and the Europeans are all for combating nuclear proliferation - just not enough actually to do something about it."

At the end of the day, the Chinese would rather live with a nuclear North Korea than risk a collapsed nonnuclear North Korea, and the Europeans would rather live with a nuclear Iran - that Europe can make all kinds of money off of - rather than risk losing Iran's business to prevent it from going nuclear. The Chinese and the Europeans "each assume that in the end, the U.S. will deter both the North Koreans and the Iranians anyway, so why worry," Mr. Mandelbaum said.

Are the Europeans and Chinese behaving cynically? Of course, these are the very countries constantly complaining about U.S. "hegemony," and calling for a "multipolar world." Yet the only thing they are really interested in being a pole for is to oppose the U.S. - not to actually do something hard themselves to stabilize the global system.

The prevailing assumption in Washington is that if something really big is going wrong - like North Korea and Iran going nuclear - it must be because America messed up. Yes, the Bush nonproliferation policy has been pretty dysfunctional, but the real problem is that those parties with the leverage to make a diplomatic difference refuse to use it. (We have already largely isolated Iran and North Korea. There is nothing much more America can threaten, short of using force.)

This is not a joke. If North Korea and Iran both go nuclear, that step may trigger a major realignment of geopolitics - the likes of which has not been seen since the end of the cold war. If North Korea sets off a nuclear test, how long will Japan continue relying on the U.S. for its nuclear shield? And what will South Korea and Taiwan do? And if Japan or South Korea goes nuclear, how may an anxious China react? And if Shiite Iran becomes a nuclear power - in tandem with Iraq's being run by Shiites - the Sunni Arab world will go nuts, not to mention the Israelis. Will Saudi Arabia then feel compelled to acquire a nuclear deterrent? Will Egypt?

We're talking nuclear dominoes.

So there you have it - my annual nonproliferation column. Unless China and Europe get serious about the problem, it's not going to get fixed. And for now, neither one seems to be ready or willing to eat its brussels sprouts.

Tuning in to Jon Stewart, and Britney Schmidt - New York Times

Tuning in to Jon Stewart, and Britney Schmidt - New York TimesMay 6, 2005
Tuning in to Jon Stewart, and Britney Schmidt
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Many authors hate to go on grinding book tours. But I've always found it a useful way to be a foreign correspondent in America and take the pulse of the country. Here are the two most important things I learned from a recent book tour:

First, many educated people seem to be getting their news from Comedy Central. Say what? As any author will tell you, the best TV book shows to be on have long been Don Imus, Charlie Rose, C-Span, Tim Russert on CNBC, "Today," Oprah and selected programs on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. They are all still huge. But what was new for me on this tour was the number of people who also mentioned getting their news from Jon Stewart's truly funny news satire, "The Daily Show." And I am not just talking about college kids. I am talking about grandmas. Just how many people are now getting their only TV news from Comedy Central is not clear to me - but it is a lot, lot more than you think.

Second, and this may be related to the first, there's a huge undertow of worry out in the country about how our kids are being educated and whether they'll be able to find jobs in an increasingly flat world, where more Chinese, Indians and Russians than ever can connect, collaborate and compete with us. In three different cities I had parents ask me some version of: "My daughter [or son] is studying Chinese in high school. That's the right thing to do, isn't it?"

Not being an educator, I can't give any such advice. But my own research has taught me that the most important thing you can learn in this era of heightened global competition is how to learn. Being really good at "learning how to learn," as President Bill Brody of Johns Hopkins put it, will be an enormous asset in an era of rapid change and innovation, when new jobs will be phased in and old ones phased out faster than ever.

O.K., one ninth grader in St. Paul asked me, then "what courses should I take?" How do you learn how to learn? Hmm. Maybe, I said, the best way to learn how to learn is to go ask your friends: "Who are the best teachers?" Then - no matter the subject - take their courses. When I think back on my favorite teachers, I don't remember anymore much of what they taught me, but I sure remember being excited about learning it.

What has stayed with me are not the facts they imparted, but the excitement about learning they inspired. To learn how to learn, you have to love learning - while some people are born with that gene, many others can develop it with the right teacher (or parent).

There was a great piece in the April 24 Education Life section of The New York Times that described Britney Schmidt, a student at the University of Arizona who was utterly bored with her courses, mostly because her professors seemed interested only in giving lectures and leaving. "I was getting A's in all my classes, but I wasn't being challenged, and I wasn't thinking about new things," she said.

She had to take a natural science course, though, and it turned out to have a great professor and teaching assistants, who inspired her. "I was lucky," she said. "I took a class from somebody who really cared." The result: a scientist was born. Ms. Schmidt has since been accepted to graduate school at U.C.L.A. in planetary physics and the University of Chicago in cosmo-chemistry.

I just interviewed Craig Barrett, the chief executive of Intel, which has invested millions of dollars in trying to improve the way science is taught in U.S. schools. (The Wall Street Journal noted yesterday that China is graduating four times the number of engineers as the U.S.; Japan, with less than half our population, graduates double the number.)

In today's flat world, Mr. Barrett said, Intel can be a totally successful company without ever hiring another American. That is not its desire or intention, he said, but the fact is that it can now hire the best brain talent "wherever it resides."

If you look at where Intel is making its new engineering investments today, he said, it is in China, India, Russia, Poland and, to a lesser extent, Malaysia and Israel. While cutting-edge talent is still being grown in America, he added, it's not enough for Intel's needs, and not enough is being done in U.S. public schools - not just to leave no child behind, but to make sure that the best students and teachers are nurtured and rewarded.

Look at the attention Congress has focused on steroids in Major League Baseball, Mr. Barrett mused. And then look at the attention it has focused on science education in minor-league American schools.

That's the real news out there, folks. And it's not funny.

New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Stanley Crouch: A new kind of cross-racial dating

New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Stanley Crouch: A new kind of cross-racial datingA new kind of
cross-racial dating

The ethnic provincials among us might be disturbed to see a growing number of black women dating white men. One sees them at sporting events, at museums, at movie houses, restaurants and walking along seemingly swept up in the luminous net of romance.

Lord, Lord, Lord: the black woman and the white man.

Some will bitterly recall that terrorist period in Southern history when white men had all the money, all the power and could join a mob intent on killing a Negro for the forbidden act of "recklessly eyeballing" a white woman.

Now, as the song goes, things ain't what they used to be.

For a number of decades, black men in the urban North have crossed the romantic color line for a variety of reasons. Yet black women have almost always remained inside of the group.

Why are these women now coupling up with white men? Are they rejecting black men? Have they been caught worshiping whiteness out of a feeling of inferiority? Do they think they become white women by proxy if they date white men?

Given the nature of the human species, I assume there are some black women who are with white men for all the "wrong" reasons. But I think what we now see is the inevitable result of a problem that has been growing for years: a man shortage.

There are 2 million more adult black women than black men. Black men live far shorter lives and have greater health problems than black women, and far more black women than men graduate from college.

The numerical gap between black men and black women is the result of murder, AIDS, diseases like high blood pressure, heart failure and poor health care. Part of the medical care burden is imposed by backward attitudes toward doctors.

Illnesses that could be treated are much worse by the time most Negro men show up to find out about their health. I even know a country Negro from Florida who lives in Harlem, is 63 and fears going to the doctor for a checkup.

All this means that, when incarceration is factored in, there are far from enough men to go around. But even if murder, prison and irresponsible attitudes about health did not reduce the pool of men, negative attitudes toward schooling and higher education would mean all these educated black women would still find themselves roving in pursuit of partners equal to them in intellectual development.

That is a big change. In the past, it was not uncommon for black men to explain their white lovers by claiming they could not find black women sufficiently sophisticated to "understand" them. Now the black goose is catching up to the ebony gander.

I am not opposed to interracial relationships or marriages. What bothers me is that we have a tragic set of circumstances imposed by violent environments, poor attitudes toward education and perhaps the worst problem of all: a lack of intellectual engagement and a fear of doctors.

These problems are far from intractable. But the time for new strategies and new attitudes is not tomorrow; it is right now.

Originally published on May 8, 2005

When It Comes to Replacing Oil Imports, Nuclear Is No Easy Option, Experts Say - New York Times

May 9, 2005
When It Comes to Replacing Oil Imports, Nuclear Is No Easy Option, Experts Say
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, May 8 - President Bush has proposed reducing oil imports by increasing the use of nuclear power, which he said in a recent speech was "one of the most promising sources of energy."

There is a problem, though: reactors make electricity, not oil. And oil does not make much electricity.

Nuclear reactors produce about 20 percent of the electricity used in the United States and about 8 percent of the total energy consumed. Oil accounts for 41 percent of energy consumption.

Could a few dozen more reactors, in addition to the 103 running now, cut into oil's share of the energy market?

"Indirectly, but very indirectly," said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, a nonprofit group that studies the economics of oil. People who think nuclear power is a way to reduce oil imports are "confusing several issues," he said.

Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, added, "No one knowledgeable about energy policy would link nuclear power and gasoline prices."

In the puzzle of energy consumption and production, however, experts point to three intersections of oil and nuclear power that would offer opportunities to cut demand for oil, pushing down its price and strategic significance. But all are limited, clumsy, expensive or dependent on new technologies whose success is not guaranteed, the experts say.

The first option is to replace the oil used to make electricity with new nuclear reactors. But most of the oil in the electric sector has already been replaced, by coal.

According to the Energy Department, last year the electric utilities used about 207 million barrels of oil, or less than 600,000 barrels a day. (Total American consumption of oil is about 20.5 million barrels a day.)

Even the 600,000-barrel figure is higher than what nuclear reactors could replace, because some of that oil is used in generators that run only a few hundred hours a year. Reactors must run continuously, so they could not replace the oil-fired plants that are used only intermittently.

The electric system consumes another fuel that nuclear power could replace: natural gas. Last year, American utilities burned just under 5.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, out of total consumption of 22.3 trillion cubic feet.

"You can get a scenario where nuclear would free the gas to go to other things," replacing oil and gasoline, said Thomas Capps, the chairman of Dominion, one of several electric companies that have expressed interest in building new nuclear reactors. "You can run cars on natural gas," he said.

The technology for that is available, but not many people use it. According to the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, a lobbying group, about 130,000 such vehicles are on American roads today, out of more than 200 million. After decades of promoting natural gas, federal and state governments have made some headway in persuading commercial fleets to switch. But they have essentially given up on selling natural gas to ordinary consumers, who have been unwilling to convert their vehicles to use it.

There is also little economic incentive behind using natural gas. Mr. Goldstein noted that the current wholesale price of gas, about $7 per million B.T.U. (the standard unit by which gas is sold), is the equivalent of $42 per barrel for oil. But oil now sells for about $50 a barrel, which means the price difference is not enough to induce a switch.

Gas must also be pressurized for a car to hold enough to travel more than a few miles; pressurizing it and distributing it to service stations would add expense.

But there is another way that nuclear reactors could influence the oil supply, one that bypasses electricity completely. Nuclear engineers are working on designs and materials for a new class of reactors - which could be ready in about 20 years - whose main product would be heat.

The Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, which is owned by the Department of Energy, is working on ways to take very hot steam from a nuclear reactor, then run a small electric current through it to separate the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. If that can be done more cheaply than the current method of producing hydrogen, which uses natural gas, the hydrogen could be used at refineries to make components of gasoline.

Gasoline is made of molecules with a certain ratio of carbon to hydrogen. Part of each barrel of oil consists of molecules with too much carbon to be useful in gasoline; instead, those molecules are used only in low-value products like asphalt and tar.

The technology exists for refineries to break up those molecules and add hydrogen, until the hydrogen-carbon ratio is suitable for making gasoline or diesel.

David Lifschultz, chief executive of Genoil, a company that makes systems for using hydrogen at refineries, says the oil supply being exhausted first is light oil, which has many components that can be used in gasoline. Heavy oil, with components high in carbon, is far more abundant and often sells at a discount of $20 or $25 a barrel, he said.

Available technology could convert 16 million barrels a day of heavy oil, about a sixth of the world supply, into gasoline components, Mr. Lifschultz said, driving down the price of light oil.

J. Stephen Herring, a consulting engineer at the Idaho lab, explained two other ways for reactors to make motor fuel.

Canada has vast reserves of shale oil, now being converted to ingredients of motor fuel by using natural gas. The gas is used to heat the shale to make its oil flow more easily, and hydrogen, also obtained from the natural gas, is incorporated into the oil to make it suitable for use in gasoline. But a nuclear reactor could do those jobs, delivering both hydrogen and steam for cooking the oil out of the rock, Mr. Herring said.

Another strategy, he said, would be to break down coal, shale oil or other hydrogen fuels into a gas comprising hydrogen and carbon monoxide. At high pressure, these materials could form molecules suitable for making gasoline or diesel. A reactor could provide the energy required.

But using a reactor to make the ingredients of gasoline is many years away; the new reactors being considered by utilities are similar to the ones running now. The experts say that only after several of those have been built and have run for a few years is a private company likely to try something more adventurous.

Mr. Herring did not fault that strategy. "If I were responsible for spending the billion dollars," he said, "I'd be conservative, too."

Despite Tension, Bush-Putin Meeting Is Called a Success - New York Times

May 9, 2005
Despite Tension, Bush-Putin Meeting Is Called a Success
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

MOSCOW, May 8 - President Bush met Sunday night with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in what was widely expected to be a tense encounter after days of recriminations over Russian rollbacks of democracy and the Soviet Union's actions in the World War II era, but the top foreign policy advisers to both men swiftly pronounced the meeting a success.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, appeared in an unusual joint briefing at a guest house on the grounds of Mr. Putin's presidential dacha outside Moscow to say the two leaders had talked extensively about nuclear proliferation and Israel's plan to withdraw from Gaza this summer.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin even took a brief spin on the dacha grounds in a gleaming 1956 Volga, with Mr. Bush at the wheel. In a photograph that is likely to become a symbol of the good will that the White House and Kremlin sought to portray here on a damp spring evening, the two presidents waved from the windows as the car, purchased by Mr. Putin last year, emerged from a forest of birches.

"I'm having so much fun, we're going for another lap," Mr. Bush told reporters.

But the two sides announced no formal agreements or breakthroughs, and the meeting seemed more of a place holder until Russia holds a summit meeting of the world's major industrial democracies, the Group of 8, in St. Petersburg next summer.

The session also appeared to be a public relations corrective after the awkward news conference that Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin held in Bratislava, Slovakia, in February, when Mr. Putin was reported to have lectured Mr. Bush for 40 minutes in a meeting beforehand about what he considered America's imperfect democracy.

Before leaving for Moscow, senior Bush administration officials said they expected that Mr. Putin would express his unhappiness about Mr. Bush's five-day itinerary in Europe, which is centered on the celebration planned for Monday in Red Square for the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Mr. Bush has tried to temper the spectacle of his planned attendance at a military parade in the shadow of the Kremlin with stops to promote democracy in Latvia and Georgia, two former Soviet republics that are now independent nations with contentious relationships with Russia.

Mr. Bush - who had said only the day before in a speech in Latvia that the Nazi defeat gave the Soviet Union the opportunity to occupy much of Eastern and Central Europe, including Latvia - struck a new emphasis on Sunday with Mr. Putin at his side.

"I am looking forward to the celebration tomorrow," Mr. Bush said. "It is a moment where the world will recognize the great bravery and sacrifice the Russian people made in the defeat of Nazism."

"I'm glad you invited me and Laura to dinner tonight," he added. "Having had one of your meals before, I'm looking forward to this one a lot."

Mr. Bush's itinerary has angered the Russians, as has his criticism of Mr. Putin's rollbacks of democracy. In the speech in Latvia, Mr. Bush warned Mr. Putin not to interfere with the young democracies on his borders.

Moscow has furiously responded that the Soviet Union was invited to march into Latvia and other Baltic nations and that it is Mr. Bush who is meddling in the affairs of the former Soviet republics. In an interview with the CBS News program "60 Minutes" for broadcast in the United States on Sunday night, Mr. Putin said the United States had no business lecturing him about democracy after the contested American presidential election of 2000.

"Four years ago, your presidential election was decided by the court," Mr. Putin told the correspondent Mike Wallace. "But we're not going to poke our noses into your democratic system, because that's up to the American people."

But Ms. Rice and Mr. Lavrov, as well as Stephen J. Hadley, the United States national security adviser, played down the rancor that appeared to build as Mr. Bush made his way toward Russia. They repeatedly said the meeting between the presidents - 40 minutes with just the two leaders and interpreters, followed by 45 minutes when they were joined by aides - was "open" and "constructive."

"These two men have developed a relationship in which they can talk about any subject, and talk about it in a constructive and friendly manner," Mr. Lavrov said.

Ms. Rice said: "I would characterize the relationship as absolutely straightforward. They say what they think, they say what they mean, and then they act on that."

Ms. Rice, Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Hadley, who briefed reporters after a two-hour dinner with Mr. Bush, Mr. Putin, their wives and aides, said that the most extensive discussions centered on the Middle East and a meeting in Moscow on Monday of representatives from the United States, Europe, the United Nations and Russia to discuss Israel's plan to withdraw from Gaza.

On Monday in Moscow, Mr. Bush is to attend the parade in Red Square, have his picture taken with about 50 other world leaders and attend a lunch at the Kremlin before leaving for Georgia to visit President Mikhail Saakashvili, who rose to power in the 2003 "Rose Revolution," a street uprising against Russian domination.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Bush spoke before the sweeping arcs of white crosses and Stars of David at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, where he said the 8,301 Americans buried there in World War II "underscore the terrible price we pay for that victory."

In a speech on a cold, windy morning, Mr. Bush sought to tie the Allied victory over Hitler six decades ago to his call for the spread of democracy now.

"At the outset of the war, there were those who believed that democracy was too soft to survive, especially against a Nazi Germany that boasted the most professional, well-equipped and highly trained military forces in the world," Mr. Bush said. "Yet, this military would be brought down by a coalition of armies from our democratic allies and freedom fighters from occupied lands and underground resistance leaders. They fought side by side with American G.I.'s, who, only months before, had been farmers and bank clerks and factory hands."

The "world's tyrants" learned a lesson, he said: "There is no power like the power of freedom, and no soldier as strong as a soldier who fights for that freedom."

The cemetery, the third largest of the American war cemeteries in Europe, lies in the lush farmland of the southeastern Netherlands, where in 1944 and 1945 the Allies liberated the country. Prime Minister Jan Pieter Balkenende, in a speech that preceded Mr. Bush's, told the crowd of 10,000 that "our gratitude is too great to express in words."

Mr. Balkenende opened his speech with a tribute to two Americans: "Sixty years ago today, Jack B. Blackett and Max E. Good died. They came from California and Georgia. They fought for freedom and peace in Europe. And they were laid to rest here, in Margraten."

Mr. Bush in turned thanked the Dutch for bringing flowers to the cemetery's graves every Memorial Day, a tradition of six decades. "Your kindness has brought comfort to thousands of American families separated from their loved ones here by an ocean," the president said. "And on behalf of a grateful America, I thank you for treating our men and women as your sons and daughters."

The Japan Times Online

The Japan Times Online: Bush just can't get the hang of diplomacy

By RALPH COSSA

YANGPYUNG, South Korea -- "It makes sense to put somebody who's skilled and who is not afraid to speak his mind at the United Nations." So said U.S. President George W. Bush during his spirited defense of his nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. With all due respect, Mr. President, I think you missed the point.

The biggest problem with Bolton is that he does just that, he speaks his mind. As an under secretary of state these past four years, Bolton was supposed to be speaking the mind of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and his department's -- not his own. Yet the tales of him openly disagreeing with, and on more than one occasion attempting to undermine, State Department policy are legend. This is the real reason that his nomination should be opposed, not his egregious bedside manner.

As U.N. ambassador, Bolton will again be expected to speak for his boss, in this case Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and, through her, the president. Should Bolton get confirmed, Rice will have her hands full trying to keep him on message.

This having been said, however, I feel I owe Bolton an apology. Several years ago, I described him as "America's most undiplomatic diplomat." I was wrong! That title must go to the diplomat-in-chief, Bush. He earned it, once again, during the same April 28 press conference in which he defended the Bolton nomination.

During this internationally televised event, Bush expressed his commitment to a diplomatic solution to the North Korea nuclear crisis, citing in particular the need for consensus among the other five participants in order to bring Pyongyang to the table. But he could not resist throwing in a gratuitous personal attack against North Korea's leader, calling him "a dangerous person . . . who starves his people" and "a tyrant."

All told, he mentioned the reclusive North Korean leader by name 12 times. While this falls far short of Bolton's record -- he once castigated the "Dear Leader" by name more than 40 times in a speech that many South Koreans still cite as a principle cause for the breakdown in the dialogue process -- it was sufficient for North Korea to call Bush a "hooligan bereft of any personality . . . and a Philistine whom we can never deal with."

Bush no doubt believes all the nasty things he says about Kim Jong Il (and they have the added benefit of being true). But to repeatedly say them publicly does not help the diplomatic process, especially at a time when his chief negotiator, newly appointed Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, was visiting China, Japan and the Republic of Korea to build the consensus that the president himself acknowledged was critical for his diplomatic approach to succeed.

The primary concern here is not what North Korea thinks. At the end of the day, it has more to gain from cooperating than from not cooperating and will likely allow itself to be bribed back to the negotiating table. The real concern is the impact that Bush's statements are having on other six-party participants: China, Japan, Russia and, most importantly, South Korea.

As the president has repeatedly stressed, the other members need to stick together and speak with one voice in pressuring Pyongyang to come back to the table. For this to happen, they have to believe that Washington is seriously committed to achieving a negotiated solution.

I have spent the last week traveling through five South Korean cities, speaking to college students and professors, security specialists, and nongovernmental organization representatives. I have met few people who believe that the Bush administration is serious when it says it is prepared to cut a deal with the current leadership in Pyongyang. I was not surprised.

At a recent Pacific Forum conference on U.S.-ROK relations, I asked how many, in a group of about 40 American, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese regional specialists, believed that the Bush administration was actually pursuing regime change and would not negotiate with Kim under any circumstances. More than 90 percent raised their hands, despite the fact it is the stated position of the Bush administration, as reiterated by Bush, Rice and even Bolton, that it does not seek regime change in North Korea.

The repeated personal attacks lead both the man on the street (especially in Korea) and the seasoned security analyst alike to the same conclusion: Washington's aim is to drive North Korea away from the negotiating table. This makes gaining an international consensus (and building the public support needed in democracies such as South Korea to sustain a bilateral relationship) increasingly difficult to achieve. How this serves America's immediate, much less long-term, national security interest is perplexing.

If the president truly wants a diplomatic solution, he must surround himself with true diplomats . . . and he must speak and act diplomatically. Otherwise he will not only lose the diplomatic standoff with North Korea but will lose the hearts and minds of the South Korean people as well.

P.S.: I was among the 10 percent who did not raise his hand. I still believe that the Bush administration is prepared to "hold its nose and deal with Pyongyang," as many are advising it to do. But I am finding it increasingly difficult to convince even myself, much less anyone else, that this is really true.

Ralph A. Cossa is president of the Pacific Forum CSIS (pacforum@hawaii.rr.com], a Honolulu-based nonprofit research institute affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The Japan Times: May 8, 2005

The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > China Raises Hurdle to Taiwan Negotiations

The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > May 4, 2005
China Raises Hurdle to Taiwan Negotiations
By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, May 3 - Chinese officials said Tuesday that Taiwan's governing party must scrap its party platform and stop its "separatist activities" before Beijing would talk with President Chen Shui-bian, dashing hopes that the recent thaw in relations would lead to two-way negotiations soon.

The conditions, spelled out by Wang Zaixi, deputy head of the Communist Party's Taiwan affairs office, may signal that China is content for now to talk with Taiwan's opposition parties, which favor closer ties with the mainland, while isolating the governing party.

If that position sticks, it could come as a blow to Mr. Chen. The Taiwan president has struggled to develop his own strategy to communicate with Beijing after his archrival, Lien Chan, head of the opposition Nationalist Party, generated enormous publicity during his eight-day visit to the mainland, which ended Tuesday.

The United States, Taiwan's sole major ally, has urged Beijing to open direct talks with Mr. Chen. The State Department has argued that government-to-government dialogue is the only way to reduce cross-strait tensions and mitigate the threat of armed conflict, which could involve American forces.

Last week, Hu Jintao, the Chinese Communist Party chief, held talks with Mr. Lien, the first meeting between a Communist and a Nationalist leader in 60 years. Mr. Hu also plans to meet James Soong, who heads the opposition People First Party, in Beijing early next week.

Mr. Lien's visit was the highest-level exchange between Taiwanese and mainland politicians since the Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war. The meeting between Mr. Lien and Mr. Hu on Friday fueled hopes that a broader rapprochement might be in the offing.

In giving the government's first detailed briefing on Taiwan since Mr. Lien's visit, Mr. Wang, the Chinese official, reiterated longstanding demands that Mr. Chen accept the "one China" principle under which Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan, as well as the so-called 1992 consensus, under which China and Taiwan held talks in the past.

Then he added a new condition, specifying that Mr. Chen's ruling Democratic Progressive Party must first rewrite the party's constitution to strip out endorsements of what the party refers to as the island's independent, sovereign status. "For the time being, we have no party-to-party exchanges with the Democratic Progressive Party, for the key reason that its party constitution advocates Taiwan independence," Mr. Wang said. "If the D.P.P. recognizes the 1992 consensus, gives up its party constitution and stops its separatist activities, we would welcome its visit to the mainland, and we can have a dialogue and exchanges."

To meet those conditions, Mr. Chen would need to jettison political positions that formed the basis of his winning campaigns for Taiwan's presidency in 2000 and 2004. If he were to take such a step, his party and its independence-leaning allies in the legislature could be plunged into crisis, analysts said.

"My impression is that Beijing basically has no intention of opening a dialogue with Chen or the D.P.P.," said Andrew Yang, secretary general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, a research center in Taipei.

Mr. Yang said that Chinese officials may feel they have some political momentum and are under no pressure to initiate talks with Mr. Chen immediately, perhaps not at all during his three remaining years as president.

Beijing has long viewed Mr. Chen as determined to lead Taiwan toward formal, legal independence from mainland China, which Beijing says it would use force to prevent. Officials have dismissed Mr. Chen's calls to improve relations as empty gestures, a situation that may be worsened by Mr. Chen's frequent shifts in tactics in dealing with Beijing. "They are laying out crystal clear conditions for Chen to meet," Mr. Yang said. "They can just wait and see if he comes around."

Despite the tough conditions, Beijing has carried on with its Taiwan détente. On Tuesday, officials announced that they would give a pair of giant pandas to Taiwan, a gift reminiscent of China's courtship of the United States in the 1970's.

Beijing said it would unilaterally reduce import taxes on Taiwanese fruit, an effort to cultivate good relations with farmers in Taiwan's southern heartland. Officials also said they would ease restrictions on mainland tourists to Taiwan.

Visiting the small Pacific island of Kiribati on Tuesday, Mr. Chen invited Mr. Hu to visit Taiwan and said he hoped to open talks with Beijing under the principle of "peace, democracy and parity."

Mr. Chen also said that he had entrusted Mr. Soong, with whom he has a political alliance despite widely differing views about cross-strait relations, to relay a "secret message" to Beijing leaders during his trip later this week. But Beijing's latest statement may diminish the prospects that it will use Mr. Soong as a conduit for dialogue with Mr. Chen.

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Politicizing Public Broadcasting

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Politicizing Public Broadcasting:May 4, 2005
EDITORIAL
Politicizing Public Broadcasting

The last thing Americans need is public broadcasting where the politics of the moment limits the news of the day. Yet that could be where the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is heading if Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman, keeps pushing for partisan Republicans in the management of public television and radio.

Mr. Tomlinson, a former editor in chief of Reader's Digest, has repeatedly criticized PBS as too liberal over all and has said that his goal is to satisfy a broader constituency. Satisfying more people with public television and radio is a worthy aim, but several recent surveys for public broadcasting have shown that most viewers and listeners admire what's on now. More than half of PBS's viewers say they find its news more "trustworthy" than the commercial stations'. Public television and radio programs like "Frontline," "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and "All Things Considered" have even higher "favorable" ratings.

There was a time when a passionate conservative might have looked at PBS programming and called it too liberal. But those days seem long past. And in any case, as an article in The Times this week showed, Mr. Tomlinson's goal of expanding the audience for PBS does not include bolstering PBS's balance with centrist programming. It involves pushing public broadcasting over the ideological line to the Republican side, with blatantly partisan programming and the hiring of more Republican partisans to control the corporation.

Mr. Tomlinson seems to have aimed primarily at the program "Now With Bill Moyers," which he found too liberal and "populist." As a result, he pushed for a new conservative talk show featuring right-leaning editorialists from The Wall Street Journal as "balance." Many stations now take both shows, even though Mr. Moyers has left "Now," which features investigative journalism, and The Journal's show is not too different from many offerings on cable news.

Mr. Tomlinson has hired a staff member from the Bush White House to set up guidelines for the ombudsmen hired to critique shows on public broadcasting. And he is trying to hire a State Department official, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's president and chief executive.

Although he has insisted that he does not want to politicize PBS or cut any programs, Mr. Tomlinson has managed to spread the word throughout the PBS community that he does not like anything that he considers too anti-corporate, anti-White House or anti-Republican. For journalists whose basic code is to "speak truth to power," this is not good news: those are the main powers in the country.

Their real fear, an understandable one at this stage, is that Mr. Tomlinson and his supporters have a larger agenda - to "hollow out" public broadcasting and fill it with programming that suits their political agenda. And if public broadcasting becomes too political to suit all but the most loyal Republicans or too boring in the name of balance, that could mean the slow death of such broadcasting, which could have been the goal all along.

Unlike such organizations as the Voice of America, where Mr. Tomlinson once worked, public broadcasting is not supposed to be an arm of the government. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was designed to serve as a heat shield protecting the broadcasting wing from Washington's political friction. Instead of shielding PBS, Mr. Tomlinson's corporation is in danger of spreading today's political heat throughout every level of the network.

Xinhua - English

Xinhua - English: Experts call for dialogue to resolve Sino-Japanese disputes
www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-02 19:29:38

BEIJING, May 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Chinese experts said here Monday that China and Japan should resolve their disputes and narrow their differences through dialogue and consultation.

Dialogue and consultation are part of the five-point proposal Chinese President Hu Jintao made on developing Sino-Japanese relations when he met with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on the sideline of the Asian-African summit in Jakarta.

Hu stressed that "differences between the two nations need to be resolved through dialogues and negotiations. The two governments should actively work together to prevent the relationsfrom being hurt again."

Dialogue and consultation on an equal footing is one of the basic stands for China's foreign policy. It is also embodied in the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the United NationsCharter, said Ma Junwei, a researcher with the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, during an interview with Xinhua.

Ma said the history of Sino-Japanese relations proved that confrontation would be detrimental to bilateral ties and to the stability and development in Asia.

The spirit of dialogue and consultation was underlined in the three cornerstone political documents between China and Japan, namely the Sino-Japanese Joint Statement, the Peace and FriendshipTreaty and the Sino-Japanese Joint Declaration, said Ma, who mainly studies China-Japan relations.

The spirit of dialogue and consultation helped China and Japan normalize their diplomatic relations in 1972 and the ensuing development of bilateral ties, said Liu Jiangyong, a professor on international relations with the prestigious Tsinghua University.

Liu stressed that none of the issues between China and Japan should be resolved by the use or threat of force. He said there are good chances for the two nations to resolve the difficult issues through dialogue.

The two sides should start consultation and negotiation in a constructive and creative manner and in long-term perspectives on issues like the oil and gas exploration in the East China Sea as soon as possible, he said.

Liu said Japan's unilateral actions and breach of the principleof dialogue and consultation on an equal footing are mainly responsible for the recent difficulties in China-Japan relations.

The Japanese government began in April granting Japanese firms the right to conduct test drilling for potential gas and oil fields in disputed waters of the East China Sea which Japan unilaterally claimed as its own. China described the move as "a serious provocation."

Liu said China and Japan should pursue bilateral consultation and dialogue to resolve the current crisis.

Wu Jianmin, a senior Chinese diplomat, said dialogue and consultation are the key to resolving the thorny issues.

Wu, president of China Foreign Affairs University, quoted a Chinese saying that "while cooperation benefits both, confrontation will do good to none." He said the saying reflects the biggest wisdom in resolving conflicts and disputes between China and Japan.

"The future world is a world of coexistence," Wu said. "It is by no means abnormal that disagreement and disputes should arise between China and Japan. The two nations should earnestly conduct dialogue and consultation on the basis of the three joint political documents to help bilateral ties return to normal development."