In The News

Chiang Mai Aviation: Outcry over Air-Hub Plan

Choosak Jirasakunthai January 9, 2003
Thailand's government is being criticized for even considering allowing Singapore Airlines to turn the Thai city of Chiang Mai into a regional aviation hub. Several Thai airline operators believe that the idea of a regional hub is sound, but that its development should not be handled by foreigners. One executive worries that "If Singapore Airlines is allowed to operate the regional...

Recognise China's Value in Defusing North Korea Crisis

Pei Min Xin January 8, 2003
Writing in Singapore's Straits Times, China scholar Pei Min Xin argues that the US is bungling its relationship with China in the current crisis with North Korea. As a major source of energy and food aid to North Korea, China could play a key role in convincing the reclusive communist country to cease its nuclear program again. Although the Bush administration claims it recognizes China...

Terrorism Fails to Halt Globalisation

Guy de Jonquiýres January 7, 2003
A study by A.T. Kearney and Foreign Policy Magazine has concluded that globalization has not been halted by terrorist attacks on the US and other countries. This summary in the Financial Times explains, "Rejecting suggestions that September 11 will halt globalisation, [the report] says terrorism has instead injected impetus by spurring closer international political co-operation, while...

Bush Plays Down Rift With Allies Over U.S. Stance on North Korea

David E. Sanger January 3, 2003
North Korea’s decision to re-start its nuclear program has much of Asia, the US, and others on edge. How to deal with the communist country’s ambitions is creating a degree of tension between the US and its allies. The US has been pursuing a diplomacy-centered route in handling the issue, a policy that has invited greater scrutiny of its attitude toward another “Axis of Evil” member, Iraq....

Northeast Asia in the Coming Decade

Immanuel Wallerstein January 1, 2003
Social theorist Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the situation in Northeast Asia – including the current US-North Korean conflict – must be evaluated with a long-term perspective. Each of the three main zones of northeast Asia, he says, is currently seeing only its own narrow concerns: Korea is focused almost solely on unification, Japan is paralyzed with uncertainty over how to re-establish its...

The Year After...

Tariq Rahman December 16, 2002
The global war on terrorism is creating less security on the local level and dimming the prospects for democracy in some areas of the world. That's the conclusion of Pakistani scholar Tariq Rahman in this year-end assessment of the violence and instability that characterized the world in 2002. "We in Pakistan have been affected very deeply," he writes. "Apart from the...

Bush and the Three Rogues

December 16, 2002
Iran, Iraq, and North Korea comprise the 'Axis of Evil' named by US President George Bush as the three most significant threats to world stability in general and the US in particular. With inspections of Iraq's weapons program not progressing in a clearly useful manner, pressure is building on the Bush administration. Now Washington must decide how to handle North Korea's...