By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He recently presented a paper at a conference called “Nuclear Politics, North Korea and the Political Economy of Northeast Asia in the Wake of the World Economic Crisis” at the University of Washington. Download the paper here. Also, an English-language version of Scott’s blog piece “Is North Korea Playing a New Game?” first posted on Chosun Ilbo, is featured on GlobalSecurity. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound.org.

North Korea’s nuclear aspirations have served as the driving force for the development of ad hoc security multilateralism in Northeast Asia. This development has occurred in stages, with each successive phase in responding to the North Korean crisis resulting in strengthened regional cooperation, despite persisting underlying strategic mistrust among the parties. This presentation will briefly evaluate the significance and contributions of three stages in the development of ad hoc security multilateralism in Northeast Asia: KEDO, the Four-Party Talks/establishment of the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG), and the Six Party Talks. Then, the author will offer a critical evaluation of prospects for Six Party Talks and analyze whether the six party process might develop into a permanent feature of the security architecture in Northeast Asia or whether a fourth stage might be necessary to achieve a lasting security framework for the region. The author will also evaluate the extent to which the North Korean nuclear issue and the U.S.-led bilateral alliance system, respectively, may be both a catalyst and an obstacle to the establishment of an effective Northeast Asian regional security framework.

Read the full paper.

By Silas Everett and Butch Ragragio

Silas Everett is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Timor-Leste and Butch Ragragio is Chief of Party for the USAID-funded local governance, elections, and civil society project. They can be reached at severett@asiafound.org and bragragio@asiafound.org, respectively.

It’s a sunny day and the wind is blowing in off the sea from the port in Dili. Behind the government palace, the white, octagon-shaped parliament building shines in the hot, tropical sun. Outside the parliament – a few pick-up trucks, then a taxi, drives by some sauntering pedestrians.

In front of the Parliament stands Senor Jose Barreto amid a group of university students smoking cigarettes, one of whom is text messages on his phone. Senor Barreto is Chief of Lauhata Suco. Suco is a term that describes a traditional administrative unit of governance and is often translated into English as “village.” In practice, however, Suco means more than that: it is an administrative unit that has been the main local governing structure for the majority of East Timorese for at least five centuries.

While Timor-Leste, newly-independent, rebuilds itself, state services are still far from the reach of many.
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By Herizal Hazri

Herizal Hazri is The Asia Foundation’s Program Director in Malaysia. He can be reached at Herizal@asiafound.org.

I was on my way to University Teknologi Petronas in Malaysia’s Perak state the other day when a colleague of mine, better known as Ali, whilst driving, posed a question to the four passengers: “Why doesn’t the government just shut down PROTON (the Malaysian national automobile manufacturer)? It’s a failure by any international standards and it is an inefficient company. Why must we support an inefficient company?” He then went on to suggest a solution, which is to sell the manufacturing component to multinational car manufacturers like Mazda or Honda, but to retain the sales and delivery units. So, in fact, stick to the downstream selling and after-sales service activities and let the more efficient car companies manage and build the cars. This move, he continued, will also make the account books “cleaner” because you are selling your liability, which in this case is a non-profit making car industry. I interjected at this juncture, “but what will happen to the thousands of workers and their families working in the production plants?” The reply was not unexpected, “Well, the new owners will retain some employees and the rest will just have to find other jobs; I do sympathize with their fates but we have to concentrate on the bigger picture here. In time things will be better, that is the way the market sort itself out, it will find a new equilibrium.”
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By Scott Snyder

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. Below are excerpts from his June 17, 2009, testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade. The transcript of his full testimony is posted on our website. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

Snyder on The Six Party Process: A Regional Framework for North Korea’s Denuclearization: “North Korea’s unilateral pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities over the last two decades has ironically been a primary catalyst for strengthened regional cooperation in Northeast Asia. But this cooperation has thus far been insufficient to deter North Korea’s nuclear development given the existence of longstanding regional security cleavages. … No single actor, including the United States, can meet this challenge without cooperation and collective action from North Korea’s neighbors. But the concerned parties most directly affected by North Korea’s destabilizing actions have been least willing to challenge or block North Korea’s nuclear development.”
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By Nadia Tariq Ali

Nadia Tariq Ali is The Asia Foundation’s Senior Program Officer in Pakistan. She can be reached at ntali@asiafound.org. For more information on ways to support our work with internally displaced persons in Pakistan, please contact Bulbul Gupta, Grants Manager for Programs and Private Philanthropy, at bgupta@asiafound.org.

United Nations officials have described the recent displacement of Pakistanis as the biggest humanitarian crisis since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It is also the largest dislocation of people in the region since the partition of the South Asian subcontinent in 1947 and, arguably, the worst crisis facing Pakistan since Bangladesh separated from Pakistan in 1971.

After years of procrastination, in late April of this year, Pakistan launched a full-scale military operation against Taliban militants and their Al Qaeda associates in its restive northwestern territories. Since the Taliban were consistently undermining the writ of the state, the battle has been long overdue: Taliban militants carried out suicide attacks across the country, targeting Pakistan’s security forces, intelligence community – and innocent civilians – which has made it nearly impossible for the Pakistani government to work with its allies in the region.
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By Asfundyar Khan

Asfundyar Khan is The Asia Foundation’s Senior Program Officer in Pakistan. He can be reached at akhan@asiafound.org.

The deteriorating law and order situation in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan Province is Pakistan’s most urgent problem. A new kind of war waged by extremist elements using suicide bombings, targeted attacks - and the takeover of strategic areas - has shaken the entire nation. Here, the militants are increasingly posing a formidable challenge to Pakistan and its law enforcement.

The recent surge in conflict and violence in these provinces - and in Afghanistan - mainly stems from the Taliban phenomenon. For this, Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to blame each other, causing tremendous strain between the neighboring countries. Recently, on the Pakistan side, the Taliban has transcended the ungoverned tribal areas on the border and moved into the “settled,” picturesque Swat Valley of the NWFP. The militants successfully challenged the government’s writ in Swat, violating a peace deal with the Pakistani government, and then made their expansionist designs evident by moving into adjoining districts down the hills and into the plains. An alarmed Pakistani government launched a military offensive in the occupied areas at the end of April 2009. The fallout of this has been the displacement of over two million people.
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By Robin Bush

Robin Bush is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Indonesia. She can be reached at rbush@tafindo.org.

Indonesian Muslims looked forward with great anticipation to the long-awaited “speech to the Muslim world” by a president they consider at least partially their own. With the possible exception of Obama’s inauguration, the Indonesian public has not, in recent history, ever so eagerly anticipated a speech by a U.S. president.

More than one national television station aired the speech live in its entirety, and featured expert panels in the studios to discuss it before and after. Around Jakarta, there were many “speech viewing” gatherings - mini-seminars where experts provided commentary and analysis.

Reaction from the Indonesian Muslim public was generally positive, although - like everything else in Indonesia - the response tended to vary widely between the general public (more positive)  and elites (more negative), and among the various elite commentators.
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By Rosita MacDonald

Rosita MacDonald is The Asia Foundation’s Women’s Program Officer in Washington, D.C., where she coordinates the Women and Islam program. She can be reached at rmacdonald@asiafound-dc.org.

“No American president has ever gone out of his way to reach out to the Muslim world in the way that President Obama has. We applaud that. But our applause is discreet rather than rapturous for these are as yet mere words.” - From ‘Rhetoric and Reality’, The News (Pakistan), June 5, 2009.

The substance of President Obama’s speech was not new - but the act of an American president coming to Egypt, addressing the world’s Muslims, and making a public commitment to closer cooperation and understanding between the United States and the Muslim world, was.

Obama worked to create a speech that would resonate with one billion Muslims spread across every country of the world, with diverse religious practices and beliefs - so it is not surprising that his speech had a level of abstraction and didn’t involve an announcement of any concrete policy or an indication of how he would implement his commitments to the Muslim world.
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By John Brownlee

John Brownlee is The Asia Foundation’s Director of Islam and Development program in Indonesia. He can be reached at jbrownlee@tafindo.org.

In Indonesia, Muslim organizations have long been a force for social and political change, and have been cited by many researchers as playing a leading role in Indonesia’s democratization and in social issues such as gender equality and human rights. In recent years, Muslim organizations have also become involved in efforts to improve the responsiveness of local governments to the needs of the poor and the marginalized. Now, in a world that increasingly recognizes the importance of global warming and other environmental concerns to people’s lives and well-being, it is interesting to take a look at the ways in which Muslim organizations are becoming more involved in environmental protection and their potential for future efforts.

The influence of Islamic organizations comes largely from their size. The two largest mass-based Islamic organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, claim a combined following of over 70 million Indonesians, with local branches throughout the country, down to the village level.
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By Soo-Mee Park

Soo-Mee Park is The Asia Foundation’s public affairs officer in the Korea office. She can be reached at smpark@asiafound.org.

Standing in Gwanghwamun, the heart of downtown Seoul, amid the sea of sobbing mourners at the funeral of the former Korean president Roh Moo-hyun, a curious déjà vu struck me.

Out of nowhere, the scene in front of me overlapped with a black and white footage of the funeral of Park Chung Hee I had seen some years ago on a local history channel. For a moment, the connections seemed rather unclear. Then it hit me: there was something unusual to the public grief toward the deaths of these two men that somehow surpassed the loss of a political leader.

For years growing up in Korea, I always wondered why there was such hype surrounding Park’s glory in our history textbooks.
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