By Brad Glosserman and Scott Snyder

Brad Glosserman is the Executive Director of the Pacific Forum at CSIS. Scott Snyder is a Senior Associate at The Asia Foundation.

The January 25th inauguration in South Korea marks the beginning of a transition to a potentially new era in US/Korea relations. According to conventional wisdom, the U.S.-Republic of Korea alliance has been on shaky ground. Five years ago, amidst a wave of anti-American sentiment following a traffic accident in which a U.S. military vehicle killed two Korean middle-school girls, South Koreans elected a new president. The election platform of left-leaning President Roh Moo Hyun directly challenged the policy preferences of the Bush administration on the eve of war with Iraq.

It is true that the last five years have been difficult for the U.S.-ROK alliance. President Roh Moo-hyun’s supporters highlighted differences whenever the two governments’ positions on key issues clashed. Summits have been characterized by forced smiles and statements that politely paper over serious differences in how to deal with North Korea. Although the Roh administration has cooperated on some issues, the process has been sufficiently unpleasant to inspire some Americans to simply write off the alliance.

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By Thomas Parks

Thomas Parks is The Asia Foundation’s Regional Director for Conflict and Governance.

Violent conflict presents enormous challenges for development and security in Asia. Many of Asia’s worst cases of instability and political violence are a direct result of sub-national conflicts involving areas in remote or border regions. In these peripheral areas, the state tends to have very limited capacity and its authority is challenged by armed non-state actors. Conflict-affected peripheral regions are usually home to disaffected minorities or marginalized populations that hold significant grievances with the central government and political establishment. These center-periphery conflicts raise an important set of questions that largely fall outside current policy discourse on fragile states.
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By Nilan Fernando

Nilan Fernando is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lankan government’s decision to abrogate the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) with the LTTE on January 2 is the final act in the long, slow unraveling of Sri Lanka’s peace process. The CFA has only existed on paper for the past two years; both the government and the LTTE abrogated it long ago through their actions. Now the CFA is no more in word as well as in deed. While it marks with some finality the end of one campaign — the formal search for peace between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE – it marks the beginning of another: the campaign for the next parliamentary election, now two years away, based on new political and social divisions. It draws a sharp battle line between two opposing camps. On the one hand are nationalist forces led by the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) – that are unequivocally committed to the destruction of the LTTE. On the other hand is an opposition led by the United National Party (UNP) that vacillates between wanting to appear just as tough on terrorism in order to appeal to Sinhalese voters, but not so tough that it alienates minority voters – an important element of its vote bank — and the international community which it has tried to use as a counterweight to a popular president.
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By Allen Choate

Allen Choate is the Vice President for Partners in Asian Development at The Asia Foundation.

While all eyes are focused on Taiwan’s Presidential election in March, the more imminent Taiwan legislative election may generate more emotional heat and have greater long-term significance for the island’s 23 million people. Next week, on January 12th, Taiwan’s voters will for the first time choose their legislative representatives using a new electoral system. Once elected, representatives will be serving in a downsized but strengthened legislative body. These systemic changes in Taiwan’s democratic institutions will have a significant, long-lasting impact on the behavior of Taiwan’s politicians and parties, hopefully for the better. But the omens are not good.

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