The Trans-Pacific Partnership: What We Know and When We’ll Know It

It’s been a long road.  After eight years of negotiations 12 countries finally agreed on something.  That alone is a pretty big deal.  Getting 12 people to agree on one thing is hard enough.  Unfortunately, I think much of the story about the TPP so far has been distorted by misinformation and anxiety on the part of the general public.  It has been hard to debunk the myths, scaremongering, and misconceptions about the TPP thus far because there is not enough information to present in response.  We had that problem because until last week, there was nothing.  We had statements of priorities from various trade representatives, but no actual deal.  A statement of your priorities has all the standing of a grocery list.  You need your partners to agree to the same things for them to have any meaning. 

I'm back!

Hey there, fellow Asia-philes!  It's your old Uncle Alex.  After a very long hiatus, I'm finally ready to return to blogging.  A lot happened in the last year, and I just needed fewer things to deal with for a time.  I'm settled in at a new job, new digs, new city and eager to return to my old interests.  So I'm planning to revive the blog and commit to a regular schedule of a writing.  I intend to do at least one major post a month; a nice long analytical piece.  In between those, whenever my muse inspires me I will post something, shorter.

There is plenty to talk about out of Asia.  For instance, Japan's new defense policies, the Trans Pacific Partnership, economic temblors in China, and of course, a mainstay in this space: North Korea!

Christmas Traditions

Everyone has a pet peeve about Christmas.  Mine is a little unusual.  See, about this time of year, people write articles about the “Christmas Truce” of World War I.  It is especially bad this year, as it’s the centennial.  This tradition annoys me because as a historian I see things very differently.  Remembering Christmas 1914 as the day everyone called time-out on the worst war the world has ever seen is a comforting story, but that’s all it is.  A story.  The Christmas Truce is mythical.  Of course, like many myths, it has some true stories at its core.

Sony Panics and North Korea Tries to Avenge an Insult

I want to say right off the bat, that seeing a freakin’ movie is not standing up for your freedom.  Sitting down for it, maybe.  I have been trying to write about the Sony/North Korea/hack/panic fiasco since the story broke, but it evolves so quickly I felt compelled to re-write everything.  I think we’ve about reached the endgame.  Sony staff may be scared out of their wits, but now that The Interview has been released, one would think Sony Pictures could not have asked for better publicity.  All of this panic was unnecessary.  North Korean violence tends to come without prior warning, but vocal threats from Pyongyang are mere bluster.  I discussed this tendency last Spring.  We in the biz call it calculated madness.  North Korea effects the appearance of irrationality in order to scare the rest of us.  ‘They are unpredictable!’ we say, ‘who knows what they can do!’  And then the rest of us give North Korea something they want out of fear.  You see that in the initial response to “the Guardians of Peace” threats. 

Back to Yasukuni

              Last week the New York Times ran an interesting article about Yasukuni Shrine and the War Bereaved Families Association (Izokukai), one of the Shrine’s bigger patrons.  Abe visited Yasukuni again this past August to the typical responses from the world at large.  The NYT tells us that Izokukai has an interesting request for the shrine: remove the Class-A war criminals.  Izokukai has joined other people in protesting the presence of the class-As since they were enshrined in 1974.  But Izokukai also calls on the Prime Minister and the Emperor to pay homage at Yasukuni.  The Emperors have boycotted Yasukuni over the class-As investiture.  It is interesting to see this nuance from Japan about the controversial shrine, but removing the Class-As would not make a difference to other people around Asia.

F-35 Does Something It's Supposed To

Normally when the troubled F-35 Lightning II makes the news, it's because something went wrong.  On Sunday, a Navy test pilot successfully landed his F-35C on USS Nimitz.  The F-35C is a variant of the stock F-35 model designed to operate from US Navy aircraft carriers.  So, good news for the plane and Lockheed Martin.  The US Navy may get it's stealth plane after all.  For a while, it looked like the STOVL and carrier F-35 variants were going to be cancelled due to delays and cost overruns.  Plenty of people probably still want to cancel the project.  If Lockheed Martin and the US Department of Defense have more successful tests and exercises with the plane, then it will succeed.  I wrote last year that South Korea had committed to buy F-35As, and Japan is planning to as well.  So, I think we should expect to see them flying in Asia sooner or later.  Unfortunately, that will only encourage China to develop counter-measures, such as it's own stealth planes (remember the mysterious J-20?) 

The Expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe

Book Review: Orderly and Humane by R.M. Douglas

            Full disclosure, Ray Douglas was one of my history professors at Colgate University.  

            That said, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War delves into a history many people have forgotten, even those who lived it.  After World War II ended, millions of German-speakers remained in Eastern Europe.  Some of them were settlers sent East by the Nazis, to Germanize the conquered territories, but most of them came from families that had been there since the Middle Ages.  The governments of the newly liberated countries, especially Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia, considered the “ethnic Germans,” called Volksdeutsche in the book, as guilty as the Nazis for the war and all the suffering visited upon the peoples of Europe.  Furthermore, the continued presence of Volksdeutsche outside of Germany would be a threat to Europe’s future peace.  Eastern Europe, with support from the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, began forcing the Volksdeutsche to leave for Germany in mass expulsions that lasted from the end of the war to the early fifties.