Dive into the archives.


  • Quality versus quantity

    How do you prevent your interests from being hijacked when in an unequal partnership? This is a question I have been thinking about recently.

    For example, America will often pressure smaller and weaker allies to increase their defence spending. It does this to offset its own responsibility for the defence of those allies, but also hopes [...]

  • Canada stirring it up in Japan

    Remember that confusing security debate happening in Japan?

    Well, things are looking to get a little more complicated as more international voices join in. Next week eleven envoys will be speaking up to Japanese lawmakers in support of the refueling mission. So far only three countries — United States, Britain, Pakistan — have been named, but [...]

  • The rise of the Pacific alliance

    This weekend a NATO committee of 26 generals are meeting in Victoria, BC Canada to discuss the future of the mature Atlantic alliance. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean the leaders of America, Australia and Japan met to discuss the future of their young alliance.

    Earlier this year Japan forged a joint security declaration [...]

  • Curzon right two years early

    HT to Joe. Would you believe the post below is two years old? Turns out it’s now finally on the verge of becoming true.

    • * *

    House Speaker Denny Hastert has been named as a possible successor to Howard Baker John Schieffer as US Ambassador to Japan. But what does Hastert know about Japan? [...]

  • Chavez meets Gadhafi

    “Use the conquered foe to augment one’s own strength” – Sun Tzu

    Two longtime members of the anti-American camp met Wednesday for talks about the oil market: Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, who’s coming from the cold after the U.S. restored relations, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who’s going deeper into the freeze after being hit with a [...]

  • Mapping the Gap IV: Canada, Germany, UK

    [Prelude | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3]

    Thomas Barnett says that the map from The Pentagon’s New Map came from drawing a line around America’s past military deployments which created the natural demand pattern for the exporting of US security. But what does that same demand pattern look like for our allies? Here’s [...]

  • Hostile Maneuvers, Reloaded

    In a followup to this post from November of last year,

    107 Alerts on Chinese Spy Planes

    Japan has scrambled fighter jets 107 times this year to intercept suspected Chinese spy planes, a top general said Thursday, amid growing concern in Tokyo over China’s arms buildup. The 107 alerts in the first three months of 2006 [...]

  • Painted into a corner

    Some adroit national security analysis from South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo:

    Around this time last year, when the island country’s Shimane Prefecture instituted a “Takeshima Day” even as the increasingly prominent right wing in Japan put out textbooks whitewashing the country’s wartime atrocities, the president said, “We can no longer sit idle before fresh attempts at hegemony. [...]

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