For the Record
Getting it right at the time, and not later

1965 Vietnam:

Australia and the Lost War in Vietnam.
(Heading of my article published in the Australian, October 1965)

1967 Vietnam:

And even if some countries (such as Vietnam) do go Communist, provided no outside intervention is involved there is no reason to believe that these countries would be any more of a threat to us than Yugoslavia is to Italy.

From: IS ASIAN COMMUNISM A THREAT TO AUSTRALIA?
Australian Institute of Political Science – 1967 Canberra Conference

1999 Kosovo: Playing Footsie with Thaci

Nor expect anyone, apart from Wikipedia, to look at what actually happened at Rambouillet. Yet even they do not look at the strange relationship between the US representative, Madeline Albright and the young handsome KLA leader Thaci.

For that feisty lady, the moderate Ibrahim Rugova whom Belgrade had accepted as a leader in an autonomous Kosovo, was dull, old and boring.

Partly on the basis of that personal whim, much of Serbia’s infrastructure was to be destroyed and several thousand of its citizens killed.

Kosovo: The Rogova Alternative

As I pointed out at the time, if the West was to intervene in Kosovo then the obvious choice for support should have been Rugova, who had over the years built up an alternative ethnic Albanian administration there — schools, doctors, banks, etc. — which the Serbian authorities had come grudgingly to tolerate. He had strong local support. With Western support he could have gained even more concessions from Belgrade.

But Rugova was dismissed as a wimp and an elderly has-been, as an impotent, scarf-wearing, academic philosopher. The young, handsome, dynamic Thaci was seen as eminently superior, particularly in the eyes of that feisty lady, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright. When at the height of the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, Rugova arrived in Belgrade to discuss a compromise solution with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the U.S. and NATO propaganda machines went into apoplectic condemnation. Since then he has had to keep a low profile, with his key adviser assassinated, probably by KLA militants.

Yet in the first postwar Kosovo provincial elections, Rugova thumped Thaci by a margin of two to one. If the West had backed Rugova from the start, Kosovo would have already moved peacefully to semi-independence. By backing the KLA, the West guaranteed the vandalistic bombing of Serbia and Kosovo, KLA bandit control over much of Kosovo today, intensified KLA ethnic cleansing against the Serbian minority, continued misery for many of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population, the need to indefinitely station NATO troops, and now KLA-backed efforts to destablilize Macedonia.
(Japan Times 12/3/ 2001)

Kosovo: The Real Ethnic Cleansers

Soon, with the KLA in control, more ethnic cleansing was underway in Kosovo, this time not only of the Serbs but also Jews, gypsies (both favorite targets of pro-Nazis around Europe) and even moderate Albanians who had tried to coexist with Serbs.

In little more than ten years, the Serbian population had been reduced from 30 percent to 10 percent though killings and forced expulsions.

But the Europeans continued to gloat and boast how they had had bravely to resort to ‘robust measures’ (their favorite word nowadays for any form of brutal force) to put an end to the evil of Serbian ‘ethnic cleansing’, even though the remaining ten percent Serbs now have to live in protected enclaves to avoid being further ethnically cleansed.
(Chapter 26, Life Story)

Bubble Trouble:

A few of us at the time tried to point out that Japan still had plenty of land available, that skewed land-tax policies plus a boom mentality were the main reason for demand outstripping supply, and that there would be “blood on the floor” when the absurd land valuations inevitably collapsed. We were thoroughly ignored.
 (Japan Times 2004.9.26)

Supply-sider Fallacy:
 
Meanwhile, the hapless Takenaka clings dogmatically to his discredited supply-side policies, sustained by the very strong support and advice he gets from rightwing U.S. colleagues anxious to see Japan recover and act as a counterweight to China in Asia. Ironically, it is just this advice that guarantees Japan’s continuing decline vis-a-vis China.
(Japan Times 2004.1.14)

Japan versus China:

Western commentators then, and even now to some extent, have a romantic view that sees Japan and China as East Asian cultural lookalikes, destined to come together eventually, but kept apart only by US pressure.

The reality is very different. Wide cultural difference, the virulent anti-communism of Japan’s conservatives and right-wingers, fear of China’s size and potential, resentment at China’s refusal to forgive wartime atrocities, even a lingering belief that those atrocities were forced on Japan by China’s unreasonable behavior (the rightwing argument that Japan never intended to attack China proper, that it planned to go into the Soviet Union from Manchuria but was sucked in by anti-Japanese Chinese behavior during and immediately after the Marco Polo Bridge incident of 1937 deserves more attention than it gets) ….. all combine to create a rigid anti-China dislike, and even hatred, that will probably never be cured.

Written back in 1990 and now Chapter 8 in this website Life Story:

China Economy:

Some predict China will eventually suffer something like Japan’s lost decade. I disagree, for two reasons. One, on the basis of past performance I cannot see China’s planners making the mistakes that led to Japan’s Bubble boom. Nor do I see them making the same mistakes as Japan’s planners after the Bubble, namely the foolish moves to cut fiscal spending when the economy was still weak. Apart from anything else the eagerness for improved infrastructure – high-speed railways and highways across the nation, for example – will keep the economy bubbling along for decades.

American Chamber of Commerce in Japan Journal, March 2010:

Japan-China relations:

Western commentators then, (1970’S), and even now to some extent, have a romantic view that sees Japan and China as East Asian cultural look-a-likes, destined to come together eventually, but kept apart only by US pressure.

The reality is very different., Wide cultural difference, the virulent anti-communism of Japan’s conservatives and right-wingers, fear of China’s size and potential, resentment at China’s refusal to forgive wartime atrocities, even a lingering belief that those atrocities were forced on Japan by China’s unreasonable behavior, all combine to create a rigid anti-China dislike.

Iraq and WMD Pretexts:

But the WMD/terrorist pretexts for the attack on Iraq break new ground. For even if the pretext can almost immediately be proved false (most other pretexts need years before they can be challenged), you can now simply turn around and claim that regime change was needed. With regime change, all you have to do is say that the regime in power is cruel and obnoxious and had to be replaced.
(Japan Times 2003.6.15)

European Integration Folly:

Another was the fact that multilateral free trade schemes between nations with different economic levels and needs inevitably cause problems. It is one reason why the WTO is in such a mess, and why the EU finds it hard to get off the economic ground.

If freer trade is seen as desirable, then the bilateral FTA’s which we see today make much more sense.

Chapter 5, Life Story, discussing the origins of APEC.

Multiculturalism Folly:

The harsh treatment handed out to European Union ideals by French and Dutch voters this month was in part a reaction to excessive EU bureaucracy and expansionism. But it was also a gut rejection of so-called globalization — the foolish effort to deny economic and social differences between nations.
(Japan Times 6/15/ 2006

But any large influx of foreigners, especially difficult-to assimilate foreigners, needs to be handled with extreme care. To embrace large numbers of foreigners uninterested in local values, all in the name of multiculturalism, is a form of national suicide.
(From Multiculturally Bemused in Tokyo, Quadrant July/August 1996)

Koizumi Economics:

A popular pun in Japanese is to take the word kaikaku (change for the better, i.e. reform) and turn it into kaiaku ( change for the worse.) Certainly kaiaku best describes former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s promises of kaikaku for the economy.

He came to office in 2001 promising structural reforms that would cut government debt, then put at 700 trillion yen. He would also invigorate the economy. Instead, the economy fell into immediate recession. Now five years later government debt has ballooned by as much 187 trillion yen according to the careful calculations by Stephen Church of Japan Invest. And an economy now heavily reliant on the vibrant U.S. and Chinese economies has just managed to struggle back roughly to where it was before his attempted reforms.
(Japan Times October 12, 2006)

 
Abduction issue:

Japan is understandably upset over past abductions of its citizens by North Korea. But rightwing pressure has made a solution almost impossible. It is a good example of how emotional nationalism and Tokyo’s manipulations can damage sensible foreign policies.
(Japan Times 6/19/ 2006)

Terrorist Label:

But since the insurgents (Tamil guerrilla forces) were labeled as “terrorists,” the government was able to claim global approval for an excessive use of force to defeat the insurgents, causing immense civilian casualties.
(Japan Times June 1 2009 – article pointing out the arbitrary use of the word ‘terrorist’ to label any group fighting against pro-Western governments)

From 2001 Events in Life Story:

Western commentators then, and even now to some extent, have a romantic view that sees Japan and China as East Asian cultural lookalikes, destined to come together eventually, but kept apart only by US pressure.

The reality is very different., Wide cultural difference, the virulent anti-communism of Japan’s conservatives and right-wingers, fear of China’s size and potential, resentment at China’s refusal to forgive wartime atrocities, even a lingering belief that those atrocities were forced on Japan by China’s unreasonable behavior (the rightwing argument that Japan never intended to attack China proper, that it planned to go into the Soviet Union from Manchuria but was sucked in by anti-Japanese Chinese behavior during and immediately after the Marco Polo Bridge incident of 1937 deserves more attention than it gets) ….. all combine to create a rigid anti-China dislike, and even hatred, that will probably never be cured.

Right through to the very end, in 1971, the Sato administration was secretly lobbying, mainly among the Latin Americans, in a vain effort to get the votes to prevent Beijing from joining the UN.


Japan Times, July 2003:

“The main result of the U.S. action (in Iraq) will probably be to turn a nation free from al-Qaida links into yet another hotbed of anti-U.S. ‘terrorism,’ and to push one of the few secular Middle Eastern societies into the embrace of Islamic extremists.”