WhirledView

On Dealing with the Hermit Kingdom

By Patricia H Kushlis

Does North Korea’s leadership belong in the madhouse or Alcatraz as so many of our right wing politicians, militarists and some journalists seem to suggest?  Or are they behaving as sanely – at least from their perspective - as their accusers?  Is there something important going on in Pyongyang that is overlooked here that should be considered?

I attended an excellent two-day Santa Fe World Affairs Forum symposium on US-East Asian relations at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico early last week:  The North Korean nuclear threat, China’s capabilities and future intentions, reasons for Myanmar’s immense political changes and the overall ramifications of the changing face of Asia for US interests were at the top of the agenda.

Several years ago, then President George W Bush labeled North Korea – as well as Iran – as the Axis of Evil. This reversed Bill Clinton’s softer line that may or may not have been making progress towards some kind of normalization of relations with the Hermit Kingdom.  If such a sea change were to happen, our military presence in North Asia could and should be reduced substantially. This in itself is likely a flashing yellow light for those in the defense industry who profit from a continued state of high military readiness in the region not just those in Pyongyang but also our own in Washington.

No one, however, has ever satisfactorily explained to me the reasons for Pyongyang’s peculiar actions or what might induce its secretive leaders to change course.  In essence, the Hermit Kingdom has been brushed off as the proverbial enigma wrapped in a mystery - without further thought or examination.

Political Science 101

But put away the swords and the blinders for the moment and go back to the basics:  The first axiom of politics is a leader’s (or collective leadership’s) determination to remain in power.  That’s lesson one, political science 101.   In Pyongyang, the transfer of power is dynastic.  The country may call itself socialist, workers or communist but in reality it is governed through an age old form of familial leadership based on an historic Asian dynastic model.  Moreover, over the years, the North Korean dynasty has been propped up by the country’s military with China’s acquiesce and sometimes more.

I once had a Burmese cat named Cleo who spent the first two weeks of our assignment to Athens with her nose pointed into a back corner of a shelf in our bedroom closet.  I suppose she must have come out when no one was looking because she clearly used the litter box and ate her favorite food.  She ultimately resurfaced but only after we moved to a garden apartment which allowed her to explore the garden at will sitting for hours soaking up the Greek sun.

Fear of the unknown had much to do with Cleo’s behavior in that temporary apartment just as it’s plausible that fear of being dethroned (or possibly worse – think Ceaceşcu in December 1989) has been a likely motivating factor for North Korea’s seemingly irrational behavior since the country was established in the wake of the Korean War.  This flashed through my brain when one of the experts at the conference in describing the unique characteristics of the North Korean propaganda barrage pointed out that the country’s threats always concluded with the phrase: “if the Americans attack.”  But the speaker added that these four final words are not reported in the media or government statements we see in the West. 

The Householder’s Purse, a Legend of the Fall

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent 

10 April 2013.   As all the world already knows, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is dead.  Today, the Speaker recalled the House of Commons to special session to pay tribute to the late Prime Minister.  

It was in-of-itself a befittingly and ironically controversial decision. Each MP is now able to claim £3,750 in expenses they would not have been able to claim had the House of Commons only waited until Monday. The funeral isn’t until the 17th. Reputedly the Speaker balked at the idea.

Memories of a Legend  

As reflected in news coverage, the parties reportedly celebrating her death and the discussion in the Commons today, memories of the late Prime Minister’s career are as vivid and divisive today as Mrs. Thatcher was during her tenure as Prime Minister. Critics think Cameron seeks to milk Mother Margaret for all she's worth but if that's the idea it is a risky strategy.  Mother Margaret's fans don't always see Cameron as her heir, enemies do. Resurfacing the cult of Margaret Thatcher may well benefit UKIP and Labour far more than Cameron.

Margaret Thatcher the person will be missed by those who loved her.  But, some who claim to miss her now shunned her for years. As one friend, Lord Tebbit said today in the House of Lords that he regretted leaving his friend to her friends. She was swept from office not by the electorate but by her colleagues.  

Another Tory politician this week claimed Thatcher “had to break a few eggs” in reference to the shutting down or privatization of whole industries at a severe cost to those the industries employed. Presumably, this was “necessary” in order to make omelets for her friends. For me, I count relatives among the eggs she cracked for their omelet. But I don't want to be a hypocrite. I've broken eggs too.

Prime Minister Cameron says Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher saved the nation and made it "great" again.  One wonders about his definitions of save and great, but the verdict on the late Prime Minister now belongs to history and historians not politicians. Her legacy may well be written by China.  

Her least debatable impact may be as the person who most framed political and economic debate ever since. Perhaps the mark of her impact is, no opposition leader since has managed to escape that framework.  It is that framework that concerns me now.  

The Householder’s Handbag 

Margaret Thatcher famously "handbagged" Europe. She also handbags us today. George Osborne and David Cameron remain constrained by one PR gimmick in particular we owe to the late Prime Minister-- the Householder’s Purse analogy. “Any householder knows,” so the analogy goes, “you can’t spend money when there’s no money in the purse.”  It was the government’s mantra as it first sought to sell austerity to the public.

Social Security, a growing problem

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent 

5 April 2013. Politics often seems to come in two phrases. The first is, “Me, I want.” The second is, “Mine, you can’t have.”  They are the alligators in all the swamps the dedicated hope to drain. They infest every public policy issue. They handicap every effort to face facts and effectively respond. Social Security is one such public policy issue where fundamental facts present difficult questions for every side in the debate. 

Is it Social Security or is it Welfare 

It is “Black April” in the UK.  The Coalition implements several “reforms.”  Some argue these reforms dismantle social security rather than reform it, penalizing the poorest and most vulnerable for the reckless gambling of the richest and most protected.  Others argue the reforms improve the system, making it fairer.  They call the system “welfare” not “social security.”  They describe the system as a safety net not social insurance and its benefits as "dole." They say the dole entraps. It undercuts the self confident, self reliance essential to earn one's way in the world.   

But the language of unbridled hate undergirds many proponents' arguments. Many, especially the Chancellor, divide the UK into “aspirational strivers” -- the good guys --- and “work shy shirkers” -- the bad guys -- who hide “with the blinds drawn” while the good guys go to work to not only “earn their way in the world” but also support the shirker.   It should not be that one can do better on benefits than in work, an argument made by comparing the extreme end of benefits in London to the lowest wage earners throughout the country. The Coalition argues they still provide for the "deserving" poor but in so arguing create yet another divisive distinction separating countrymen.  

While they say they provide for the most vulnerable, what they actually do is cut both the eligibility and the support the eligible receive. They give little. They more than take that away with a multitude of cuts.  They argue they make work pay, but they have done nothing to increase individual wages, benefits or hours of employment. They only made benefits hurt more severely than the lowest paid work.   

In rhetoric and design it is a naked appeal to “Mine, you can’t have.”  

I am on the other side of this argument. I am committed to social security as an expression of the social responsibility fundamental to a functioning society.   But I, like others who hold my view, struggle with the question, how are you going to pay for it.  

Living in Challenging Times: the US and East Asia

 

LIVING IN CHALLENGING TIMES: THE UNITED STATES & EAST ASIA
a two-day symposium

April 8-9, 2013
St. John’s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico

sponsored by

SANTA FE WORLD AFFAIRS FORUM
Co-sponsors: U.N.M. Center for Science, Technology & Policy
Albuquerque Committee on Foreign Relations, American Foreign Service Association & St. John’s College

DAY ONE:  2-6 pm: Registration; “East Asia and the Pacific:  Issues and Challenges,” Ambassador Will Itoh, Director, Washington International Programs, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Senior Advisor, McLarty Associates ; “North Asia and the Korea Conundrum,” Dr. Chris Nelson, Vice President of Samuels International, Washington, D.C.; Cocktail reception for speakers and Symposium participants.

DAY TWO: 9:15 am -4:00 pm: Registration; “China as a Rising Power Seeking its Rightful Place,” Dr. Suisheng Zhao, Director of the Center for U.S.-China Cooperation, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver; “The Chinese Military Machine,” Dennis Blasko, author “The Chinese Army Today: Tradition and Transformation” (Routledge 2012) and former US military attaché Beijing; talk on “Is the Myanmar Exuberance Irrational -- and whatever happened to Vietnam?,” Ms. Frances Zwenig, President, U.S.-ASEAN Business Council Institute, Inc.; wind-up panel.  Full buffet luncheon for speakers and Symposium participants.

All sessions will be followed by generous discussion periods.

PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS:  Friendship Force, Albuquerque Council on International Visitors, Public Diplomacy Alumni Association, University of New Mexico’s International Studies Institute, University of New Mexico’s National Security Studies Program, Public Diplomacy Council, Women’s Voices, American Association of University Women – Santa Fe Branch, & Fulbright Association of New Mexico.  

FEES & REGISTRATION: Both days: $70 members; $85 non-members; $30 students; 4/8 only: $40; 4/9 only: $50.  To reserve a place please e-mail waforum@gmail.com.  Symposium fees may be paid with your credit card using our Paypal account. You may access Paypal directly by clicking on this link or you may send your check to The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum, PO Box 31965, Santa Fe. NM, 87594, with your name and contact information, if you are not a member.  Checks should be made out to The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum.  Please note on your check that payment is for the April 2013 symposium.  Your payment guarantees you a place, but it is non-refundable after Wednesday, April 4, if you are unable to attend.

 

Channeling My Father for Easter

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

30 March 2013. Lytham St Annes, Lancashire.

Easter was one of my two favourite days once upon a very long time ago in a place now 7,500 miles far, far away.  Contemplating Easter as it approaches, I can hear my father turning cartwheels in my head, but not in a good way. He's not happy. Not happy at all. 

Easter

Easter Sunday churches across the United Kingdom and the United States heave with families feeling their way around a sometimes unaccustomed environment. Young women in fine hats join the regulars, the older women wearing Lavender. Men sport polished shoes & pressed suits, stretching necks discomforted by the tightness of neckties last worn Christmas service.  The old regulars wear no tie at all. Both the regulars and the Christmas and Easter crowd eye each other maybe with just a little judgment (kept to themselves of course).

The faithful gather in plain wooden structures or in remarkable, richly adorned palaces called Cathedrals. They sway, singing the old hymns, performing the old, corporate rituals. Some smile those utterly vacuous, vacant smiles which more accurately imitate a drug ecstasy than a religious experience. Some plumb the depth of Easter's meaning with earnest contemplation. All churches smell of abundant flowers & orris root perfume. The social halls echo to the sounds of children eagerly anticipating Easter egg hunts & Chocolate bunnies.

All is joy & warm fuzzies ... except ...

... except for the poor, the disabled, the vulnerable, the widow, the “demobbed” (newly separated) soldier, the debtor, the redundant (laid off), the homeless, the mother without a husband and the children who would be without any food this Easter but for overworked food banks.  These languish willfully unseen by officialdom, disconsolate and feeling abandoned by their neighbours, many of whom, this Easter, stuff the pews. 

A host of draconian new measures go into affect in the United Kingdom the day after Easter. In the past benefits recipients were relieved from Council tax (a local property tax paid by the resident not necessarily the owner). Not as of April 1. As of April 1 they will also pay a penalty if they have a "spare" room, dubbed the bedroom tax. While inflation rises their grants are now capped below inflation. They are forced to accept any work that presents itself including without further compensation or suffer draconian sanctions. 680,000 thus far have been. The list goes on and on of the changes to welfare that grow the food banks, children on the streets, suicides and hate crimes against the disabled, but not the promised way out of "the welfare trap" to almost any.

Please tell the RNC - It’s the message, not the media

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Two weeks ago Friday, David Brooks – upon learning that the U.S. unemployment rate had fallen to 7.7% in February with over 200,000 new jobs added – told Judy Woodward on the Newshour that if one combined the good jobs news with the bad sequestration news the US was experiencing the norm:  because the business cycle works independently from politics – and there is little, if anything, politicians can do to make the economy grow.  Essentially, Brooks argued that the economic growth of this country was out of its politicians’ hands.

This is certainly not the first time I’ve heard the politics/economics disconnect argument, but I wonder about its’ accuracy.  I also wonder if a Republican, not a Democrat, had been in the White House whether we would have heard Brooks’ pontification in such reverentially canonic terms.

The deep economic recession this country entered in 2007 as a result of poorly regulated banks and financial institutions that brought about the housing bubble, Lehman’s demise and the stock market collapse might well have been avoided had those pesky government regulations and regulators remained in place.  Furthermore, had this country not been spending zillions of dollars (something like $8 trillion and counting) to fight two wars in the Middle East simultaneously – one entered into on spurious grounds and the other which could have been handled more smartly, efficiently and cheaply from the outset through far more limited and targeted action – the US government would have had an easier time applying Keynesian economic principles when (and if) the economic seas became rough because the Treasury would not have had to borrow so deeply or the Federal Reserve go through such contortions to keep the economy from total collapse.

Keynes

British economist John Maynard Keynes, the right-wing’s bête noir and guru of the left, argued in the 1930s that governments needed to run deficits to keep the unemployed from starving or freezing to death so as to get through the rough patches when a country’s economy tanked.  Whereas governments needed to recoup, regroup and run a budgetary surplus when the private sector economy hummed along on all four cylinders.   Unfortunately, George W Bush, the most recent of America’s over-spenders, forgot – or never knew - the second part of Keynes’ prescription as he operated the US economy on a war footing for most of his two year term that ended in the “Great Recession” debacle.

The British government under the Coalition has also forgotten – or actually it has intentionally thumbed its nose at Keynes despite his British origins.  Most recently the British economy took a hit from the debt rating agencies because, in essence, its austerity programs have failed.  Why?  Sometimes it’s necessary to pump prime to get an economy moving again so that a country can grow its way out of recession.  It’s not all that counter-intuitive. Really.

Is the UK economy in transient Recession or indefinite decline?

 By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent 

20 March 2013 Chancellor George Osborne announced his 2013 Budget to Parliament. He also announced the economic forecasts that affected it.  As aptly characterized by the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, estimates of economic growth and government revenues are down, borrowing is up and there is precious little in the budget to address the ailing economy.  On the contrary, the Chancellor argued that the failure of the plan proves its necessity. He even argued it is beginning to work. 

Subsequently the independent Office for Budget Responsibility held a press conference to elaborate on the detail of those forecasts. The forecasts are dismal, but one should remember, the forecasts have proven in the past to be over optimistic. Their announcement proved a cannon shot in an echo chamber.   

Others in the days ahead will examine these forecasts and the budget in detail. I expect it will be some time before analysts have dissected the fine print. I want to focus on one set of figures that I believe may not only undercut the Chancellor’s few more optimistic assertions but raise a fundamental question about the UK economy.  

Is the UK economy experiencing a transient Recession or is it in indefinite decline?  

Shortly after the Chancellor’s presentation the Office of National Statistics replied to my latest Freedom of Information Request.   

One set of figures leapt out.  Comparing the last quarter of 2008 to the last quarter of 2012, ONS estimates employment among people aged 16 or older increased only 402,000 from 29,328,000 to 29,730,000.  

This figure certainly seems to be out of synch with the Chancellor’s claim that the private sector alone had created 1,25 million new jobs since the election.  I have in at least 4 previous articles addressed how misleading were the government’s often repeated prior claims that the private sector had created 1 million new jobs since the election. I won’t repeat all that here. Suffice it to say that ONS could not and would not confirm 1 million “new” private sector “jobs.” Moreover, even a brief review of the detail readily available through ONS shows wishful thinking the hopes of those who suggest - as the Chancellor repeated today- increased “in employment” stats are signs the economy is healing and the government on the right track.  

Of more fundamental importance is an associated statistic.  The percentage of people over aged 16 in employment fell between the last quarter of 2008 and the last quarter of 2012, from 59.6 percent of the population to 58.7 percent.  The economy provides employment to a smaller percentage of the working age population. 

Leveson the Final Chapter (until the next one)

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

18 March 2013. Today Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Leader Nick Clegg, Labour Leader Ed Milliband and the House of Commons passed the test of democracy in a way  the US Congress could perhaps find instructive.   At 2:30 AM, after intensive negotiations, all parties came to an agreement on a method to implement Judge Leveson’s recommendations with regard to the regulation of press ethics and excesses. 

The specifics of the agreement were nobody’s first choice. Yet the the specifics do represent real progress.  Especially in light of a breakdown in those very talks the previous Friday, the compromise those specifics represent was a welcome surprise.  

Cynics will argue it came about only because the Prime Minister faced a severe defeat in a vote set for the evening of 18 March. In the days ahead the compromise will be dissected and analyzed. The Press Barons will squeal. Unintended consequences will emerge. We will find reasons to be disappointed.   It is by no means a certainty that today's deal will hold up over the days ahead. The Press Barons can not be expected to stop their full court press.  Some knees may weaken.

But the bottom line is, the Prime Minister compromised. The Deputy Prime Minister compromised. The Labour Leader compromised.  The House of Commons compromised. This is critical because compromise -- not my way or the highway -- is the essence of democratic governance.   

It is important -- especially for those of us who so often feel free to criticise the Prime Minister -- to recognize, support and encourage the Members and the Leaders for doing so even though it is not yet a final done deal. In reality rarely is anything ever a final done deal in politics.

In the days ahead one only hopes the Members and the Leaders have the courage to hold to their decision. The hard reality of politics is one can do much good if one is willing to accept its fundamental cost - one will make enemies by doing and one or more of those enemies will one day get one. To compromise on a very difficult subject like press regulation, affecting arguably one of the United Kingdom’s historically strongest interest groups is an exemplary act of political courage.

Congratulations to all involved.