In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

As uprisings continue across North Africa and the Middle East, Asia Foundation President David D. Arnold will speak on May 4 at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, examining what the “Arab Spring” might mean for Asia. As a governance specialist whose international career has spanned Arab and Asian societies, Mr. Arnold will examine [...]

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“Revolution is in the air … and there are thousands of people demanding their universal human rights. …We are witnessing attempts to suppress the aspirations of the people and this lends an urgency to this year’s event,

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While the events of the past weekend have shifted the world’s attention to Libya, there are clearly reverberations for North Korea, especially given that Muammar Qadhafi pursued, then gave up in 2003, a nuclear weapons capability as part of what seemed then like a step toward normalcy with the rest of the world. Qadhafi’s strategic decision to give up Libya’s nuclear program in return for rapprochement with the United States was held up to North Koreans as a model for pursuing diplomatic normalization with the United States.

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Many are wondering what lessons the 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines, which ousted Ferdinand Marcos after 14 years of strongman rule (which followed two terms as elected president), might hold for the current “fourth wave” of democratization sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East.

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As the world watched in wonder the phenomenal events in Egypt over the past weeks, a few solitary voices were already urging analysts and policymakers to look not toward Iran, but rather toward Indonesia for historical precedent that might help us make sense of what’s happening, and importantly, what might be to come. The Carnegie Endowment’s Thomas Carothers, in The New Republic, reminded readers that in Indonesia, in 1998, a dictator of 32 years, firmly backed by the U.S., toppled in the face of a student-led popular movement – amid similar fears that extremist forces would fill the power void.

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