Global climate change is profoundly reshaping the Arctic region, not only physically but also in international politics. Yet Arctic development is of concern to more than the Circumpolar states. The issues are global, and East Asia is no exception. Japan, South Korea and China in particular have been increasingly deepening their involvement in Arctic affairs. The evolving situation of the Arctic region could also have significant impact on political relations and the regional security architecture in East Asia, providing new opportunities for cooperation and additional sources of conflict. This paper considers security implications of the Arctic thaw to East Asia, where the structure of the regional Cold War confrontation profoundly shapes the geopolitical order to this day.

A recent Bloomberg article and New York Times op-ed provide important and rarely reported historical perspectives on the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a maritime border drawn in the West (Yellow) Sea that has been disputed for decades by North and South Korea after it was imposed by the US following the end of the Korean War. As is now well known, on Nov. 23 North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong, one of five islands near the NLL controlled by South Korea. The shelling was in response to an artillery drill the South's military garrison on the island conducted earlier in the day, which saw shells land in waters claimed by North Korea under the 1953 Armistice Agreement and the UN law of the sea.

The nuclear test by the DPRK has led to a predictable deluge of hype and hypocrisy, amidst a dearth of informed and sensible comment. Politicians, and journalists, have reveled in the situation. North Korea is a convenient whipping boy, with few friends. It tends to be excoriated across the political spectrum. Since it is a small country targeted by the world's superpower, which, though hemorrhaging and perhaps in relative decline, still possesses such formidable political, economic and military power that no country, or international civil servant for that matter, dares openly speak up, even if they so desired. Politicians have hastened to express moral outrage even if, and perhaps especially if, they come from countries which have many nuclear weapons and have conducted tests. Journalists have been having a field day, many delighting in the opportunity to write lurid stories unencumbered by the need to check facts and qualify opinions. Under the circumstances, it is more necessary than ever before to keep a clear head and try to disentangle fact from fantasy, to unearth what has been going on, and what is likely to happen.

Contrary to the post-Cold War globalization discourse, which tends to posit a de-territorialized and borderless world, issues of border demarcation and territorial sovereignty, which are classical components of international relations, continue to provide sources of conflict and remain significant problems of international concern. Even though emphasis in international relations shifts from time to time, it does not necessarily diminish the residual sources of confrontation. Yet, while a source of confrontation remains unchanged, so does the possibility of its resurgence. With regional conflicts in many parts of the world as yet unresolved, there may be lessons to be learned from historical precedents of conflict resolution.

Recently, not only are countries in Latin America parting ways with the United States, so too is its northern neighbor, Canada. On February 24, 2005, Canada's Prime Minister, Paul Martin, announced that Canada would no longer participate in the Ballistic Missile Defense agreement (or the BMD, the antiballistic missile defense system organized by the United States for the defense of the U.S. and North America). This decision repudiates parts of the NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) agreement which Canada accepted in 2004.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is accused of censorship after the forced cancellation of a lecture by gender-rights advocate Ueno Chizuko.

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan this January, Tokyo University professor and well-known gender-rights advocate Chizuko Ueno accused the Tokyo Metropolitan Government of censorship.

Translator's Introduction: On 17 July, 2006, The Asahi Shinbun began a daily feature entitled Shashin ga Kataru Senso (The war as photos tell it) based on photos taken during World War II by the newspaper's cameramen. Stored in an Osaka warehouse during the Occupation, the photos are now being catalogued and stored digitally. Accompanying the introductory article was an explanatory statement: “The collection of 70,000 prints leaves behind an immediate (nama-namashiku nokosarete-iru) record of the lives of individuals at the front in China, in the colonies, and in areas occupied by the Imperial Army.” The first prints shown – soldiers and nurses at the front in China, anti-atrocity graffiti in Nanjing, kindergarten students in Jakarta raising Boys' Day carp banners, grass-skirted girls in a Yap Island primary school, a child laborer in a Korean silk factory wearing a “Rising Sun” headband among others –demonstrate the intended scope of the feature.

In March 2007 the Japanese Foreign Ministry began speaking of a “long-term and strategic partnership” between Japan and Iraq. The terminology was new: Japan had previously described its policy in post-Saddam Iraq in terms of “reconstruction activities” but not as a “strategic partnership.” What accounts for this shift in language? What does the new policy entail? What does it overlook?

On July 19, 2006, the final elements of the Ground Self-Defense Forces (GSDF) mission rolled across the border between Iraq and Kuwait. The 2 1/2 year mission in Samawa ended without the deaths of any GSDF member on Iraqi soil – although it was indirectly related to the deaths of several Japanese civilians. As this watershed event was taking place, the future policies of the Japanese government remained shrouded in uncertainty. Was this the effective end of Japanese support to the post-Saddam Iraqi government? Or was it simply the beginning of a new phase?

In four years, China will be celebrating the centenary of the 1911 Revolution which toppled not only the Qing dynasty but imperial rule itself, a system that can be traced back 2,132 years when “China” was a much smaller place. In order to understand the central role played by a handful of extremely energetic (and in some cases equally eccentric) Japanese, it is helpful to consciously try to forget much of what has occurred in the intervening century, especially the two decades leading up to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937 and commencement of the Sino-Japanese War. A motley group of activist Japanese, men whose activities were not necessarily coordinated, but who felt impelled to risk their lives for the Chinese cause, early on identified Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan) as the leader to bank on and offered him their wholehearted support. Native Anglophones have for the past half-century been in the unusually lucky position of having the best book on this subject in their native tongue. This is Marius Jansen's The Japanese and Sun Yat-sen, a book that can be read today with the same freshness as when it was first published.

The diary of Victor Klemperer, who had repeated tragic experiences in the 1930s as a German Jew, provides a valuable record of that epoch. In the diary he frequently asks why “extreme nationalism” has become so rampant in Germany and some other countries at a time when “modern technology annuls all frontiers and distances.” Klemperer remained basically optimistic, and he wrote in late 1938 that nationalism was “already a thing of the past” and that its appearance in such extreme forms was perhaps its “last convulsive uprising”.

In late May 1949, after troops of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) entered Shanghai, Mansfield Addis, then First Secretary of the British Embassy in Nanjing, wrote to his mother back home: “Shanghai liberated! We rejoice that it was not more difficult! It brings the end nearer.” The sentiment expressed in Addis's letter drew the attention of the British Foreign Office, which felt the matter serious enough to warrant a special telegram to its Nanjing embassy in July 1949:

We notice a growing tendency in telegrams from China to refer to the Communist occupation of an area as “liberation”. In the case of a Consular officer reporting to you en clair and post facto the expression may possibly be unavoidable, but we feel bound to point out that China telegrams get a wide distribution here with the consequent danger that expressions such as this, oft repeated, may serve to strengthen beliefs all too prevalent that Chinese Communism is different from the Soviet brand. We hope therefore that posts will in future refrain from using this word in a sense so far divorced from its true meaning.

[We present a two part series on Angkor Wat and Asian tourism. See Geoffrey Gunn, “Angkor and Beyond: the Asian tourism phenomenon”]

SIEM REAP, Cambodia–Tourism is becoming the lifeblood of this land that survived the “killing fields” and a civil war. There are many signs of progress in the 13 years since United Nations-sponsored elections brought peace.

In the midst of one of the most serious nuclear crises in history and with 30,000 dead or missing and close to half a million people rendered homeless in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has submitted plans to build more reactors in Fukushima.

Tokyo ~ Ko Bunyu's comic book Introduction to China is not for the fainthearted. In 300 graphic pages, it claims that the Chinese are incapable of democracy, practice cannibalism, and have the world's leading sex economy. In one sequence, famous political figures say the country is the source of most of Asia's contagious diseases. In another, illustrated with naked, spread-eagled women, China is said to have exported 600,000 “AIDS-infested” prostitutes.

New Delhi — Sharpening Asian competition over energy resources, driven in part by high growth rates in gross domestic product and in part by mercantilist attempts to lock up supplies, has obscured another danger: Water shortages in much of Asia are beginning to threaten rapid economic modernization, prompting the building of upstream projects on international rivers. If water geopolitics were to spur interstate tensions through reduced water flows to neighboring states, the Asian renaissance could stall.

Did in Meiji 43 [1910] Japan annex Korea, the Empire of Korea (J. Daikan teikoku, K. Taehan cheguk)? Do you call this Japan's colonizing the Empire of Korea? If so, [Mr. Education Minister], I would like to ask, is Scotland an English colony? Please, could you answer this question for me? Are Northern Ireland and Wales English colonies? Please let me know. Before World War I, was Hungary an Austrian colony?

Japan did not want to annex Korea. Koreans came to Japan and asked to be annexed. This was expressed in the Korean Emperor [Sunjong]'s last Imperial Rescript, where it is written, “From now we have no choice but to request the Emperor of Imperial Japan's protection.” Also, in 1910 a demonstration took place in Seoul, the capital. Those leading this demonstration were from the Advance in Unity Society (J. Isshinkai, K. Ilchinhoe). Do you know what kind of demonstration this was? It was one that requested Japan to merge with (J. gappei), or annex (J. heigō) Korea.

In addition to defining specific rights for women, the post-WWII Constitution of Japan (enacted 1947) also articulated a commitment to preserving peace. Article 9 of the Constitution reads in part, “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a mean of settling international disputes.” The “Peace” Constitution includes a statement that Japan will “never” maintain military forces. With the start of the Korean War in 1950, U.S. occupiers re-interpreted the Japanese constitution to create the “National Police Reserve,” which became Japan's Self Defense Forces (SDF) in 1954. SDF troops have since been deployed beyond national borders for “relief operations” beginning in 1992. Under international pressure following 9/11, Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi supported an anti-terrorism law in October 2001. This legislation allowed the SDF to provide “logistical support” for U.S. combat troops in the Indian Ocean. Based on the constitutional protection of peace, a group of 15 women led by feminist lawyer Nakajima Michiko (1935-2007) sued the Japanese state for deploying local troops to Iraq in 2004. Nakajima and the other plaintiffs argued that the continued presence of Ground SDF in Iraq violated the “right to live in peace.”

Mark Ealey translates and Introduces Yoshimura Akira's novel probing the moral equation underlying the Pacific War in a novel that explores American firebombing of Japanese cities and the Japanese revenge killing of U.S. POWs.

Throughout history, acts of hypocrisy have come easily to the world's Great Powers. In 1938, in reaction to Japan's “barbarous” bombing of Chinese civilians, the United States placed a “moral embargo” on the supply of planes and aviation equipment to Japan. One year later, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the following appeal:

The President of the United States to the Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and His Britannic Majesty, September 1, 1939.

On May 23, 1988, in Arlington, Texas, Bell Helicopter unveiled with much fanfare a new combo-aircraft; a fixed-wing plane that could climb and hover like a helicopter, but also rotate its giant propellers forward and fly like an airplane. On that day, Peter Van Sant, then correspondent for CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, called the plane a “revolutionary new aircraft” that was the latest “future shock”. He expected it to carry commuters to Washington or Boston from Manhattan, as it could take off and land in downtown business districts, reducing travel times. It was called the V-22. “By the year 2000, there could be a market of five to eight million passengers annually,” a company spokesperson at Bell Helicopter predicted at the ceremony. Twenty-four years later, the V-22 has yet to be used as a commuter aircraft between New York and Boston. Instead, across the Pacific, the Bell- Boeing MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, having been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, is becoming the next tinderbox issue on Japan's southernmost subtropical island prefecture, Okinawa.

As the most pressing resource, water holds the strategic key to peace, public health and prosperity. The battles of yesterday were fought over land. Those of today are over energy. But the battles of tomorrow will be over water. And nowhere else does that prospect look more real than in Asia.