Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Pawns

The NYTimes reported on two American journalists that were caught crossing the border from China into North Korea and are being detained.

"When Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were arrested on the border between China and North Korea under the still-unclear circumstances, they became unwitting pawns in the delicate international politics surrounding the North’s planned rocket launch, said a senior South Korean official."

I think that line hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, I think Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee are in for a long and awful stay in North Korea. It will be interesting to see if the US government will be at all successful in negotiating their release. I feel very bad for them.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Computer Security

I would really like to learn more about network security and get a better understanding of computers in general. I feel that as we become increasingly dependent on a technology, it behooves us to acquire a more refined knowledge of it. But then again, I'm not exactly an expert on the internal combustion engine that I use every day. Hell, I'd probably have trouble changing my own oil...

Anyway, I found these two articles (one, two) to be interesting/alarming. For the first one, I'm comforted only by the fact that the "instructions" being sent to the worm are scheduled to take place on April 1st. I'll naively continue to hope that some young 14 year-old with cheeto stained sweatpants and too much time on his hands came up with an excessively elaborate April Fools joke.

And the second article is part of a growing theme that I've taken note of. The Chinese are thought to be investing a lot into cyber-warfare. Since computer security and China are both topics I'm interested in, maybe this could turn out to be a future employment opportunity. Keep up the good work China!

Nuclear Proliferation

I don't look to Bill Maher or the celebrity panelists on Real Time for any revolutionary ideas on politics, but I'm a fan of the show's format and the content. The latest episode brought up the topic of Iran and nuclear proliferation, which I thought would be worth spending some more time thinking about.

Iran has continually made the case that they are not seeking nuclear weapons, but are merely trying to acquire an alternative source of energy. The Bush administration has viewed these claims to be dubious at best, and probably purposefully misleading. I understand the concern here, despite the fact that there hasn't been any conclusive evidence suggesting that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. There is reason to fear a nuclear Iran, which has made thinly veiled and not so thinly veiled threats against the US and its allies.

The opposite side of this argument is that the US has no right to tell Iran that it can't have nuclear weapons. This is a valid point, but is essentially irrelevant. The United States will not sit by idly as Iran acquires nuclear weapons. At least, you'd hope they wouldn't. The question then becomes, what is to be done? The Obama administration seems to be taken a softer approach, which may or may not get results. The recent rebuff from Khamenei after Obama reached out to them is not exactly a good sign, but I think it's just political posturing on the part of Iran.

But really, what's the incentive for Iran to stop its quest for nuclear weapons? The talk about "keeping all options on the table" by both Bush and Obama is meant to suggest that military involvement is a possibility, and I think having Bush at the helm for the past eight years has made Iran take this threat a lot more seriously. However, it seems like Iran's nuclear ambitions are being spurred on by America's flaunting of military might. Perhaps this softer approach isn't such a bad idea.

Unfortunately, there is precedence is working against the carrot approach. Iranians need only look to Libya as an example of what happens when you play by America's rules. The answer is, not a whole lot. Qaddafi isn't exactly happy with what his country has been given as a result to giving up nuclear weapons and admitting responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. But maybe the problem is with Qaddafi himself and the US is merely waiting for the next leader to begin the thawing of relations in earnest. I think Libya is an often overlooked accomplishment of the Bush administration, and I'll be interested in reading about it in more detail in the future when the details are more readily available.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

怎么说 "Avast, ye matey?"

The US navy and several Chinese naval vessels had a "significant encounter" yesterday, 25 miles south of Hainan island. The event brought to mind a recent article by Robert Kaplan that discussed what a future confrontation between China and the US would entail, along with a subsequent article from the same author that described the increasing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean and his views on the changing role of the US navy.

The brief clash in the South China Sea between the two nations is probably not a good sign in the eys of Kaplan who states that "a U.S.-Chinese understanding at sea is crucial for the stabilization of world politics in the twenty-first century." However, I do not believe this encounter is a portent for US-Sino naval relations. As Kapaln suggests, China is a competitor of the United States and not an opponent. The relationship could probably be better served by closer communication between the two militaries, and indeed such a trend has been taking place.

I am certainly no expert on the subject and there are people that would disagree with me. When I was living in China last year I just such a conversation. A friend and I were on an overnight train and were sharing a compartment with a group of naval soldiers that were on leave. After they learned we could speak Mandarin, we quickly found ourselves in a political discussion. A common question that I faced while living in China was "do you think the US and China will go to war?" Inevitably, this came up. I expressed my opinion and when I turned it back to one of the navy guys, he told me that he "was certain that they would go to war." He didn't elaborate much further, but said that the US and China get worked up over seemingly insignificant problems all the time, which to him meant that a larger problem surely was on the horizon.

I questioned the validity of that statement then and continue to do so now. The accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1998, or the spy plane collision in 2001 are but two examples of "big problems" that the countries were able to work through without further loss of life. And I think that relations between the two countries are much better now than they were 10 years ago, and the prospect of conflict is that much less likely as a result.

A bit of a wandering post here, but I'm trying to get into the habit of writing more often.