International Affairs

In his great small book of the early 20th century, The Temptation of the West, Andre Malraux proposed that the question of the century would be: How will the Chinese adapt to individualism? The question we might ask today as President Hu Jintao visits the United States is, how will the West adapt to the rise of China? So far, I am afraid, not very well. Western people are dreaming now of tigers and dragons. Bad dreams.

Possibly only few can make the journey across the Pacific. Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier, uncomfortable in Seattle with the Hindu waitress at the coffee shop, may long for the Irish charm and camaraderie of the “Cheers” bar in Boston. But those who will be successful in this American journey will travel the path west with him because America’s future faces across the Pacific.

The ouster of Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali holds a lesson for authoritarian regimes all over the Middle East. The Tunisian leadership thought it could keep a lid on the pressure cooker, but it was wrong. The result is the first “velvet revolution” in an Arab land.

France refused asylum to the discredited leader, who was last elected with an implausible 89.62 percent of the vote. France’s role in its former colonies has long been ambiguous, but I think it likely that the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and probably also the Americans, told Ben Ali that his time was up. However, the future remains uncertain as — like the rest of the Arab world — Tunisia has never known Western-style democracy since independence.

So it’s official, or at least as official as it gets in the murky diplomatic world of the United Nations. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants a second term.

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As I look into my crystal ball for 2011, I wish I could say that I see a tall, dark, handsome stranger. In fact, I can safely predict that there will not be another war. How do I know? Because according to the Chinese zodiac, 2011 is the year of the rabbit. So all quiet on the Eastern front after the turbulent year of the tiger.

At least I hope so. For me, 2011 should be the year when the American people wake up to the fact that their fate and that of China are intimately linked. It remains to be seen, though, whether it will be a partnership — as appeared to be the hope at the outset of the Obama administration — or rivalry. In Congress there are already those such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) who are predicting that armed conflict between the U.S. and China will be inevitable. But not this year, if you believe the Chinese zodiac. Read more...

According to newspaper reports, Prince Williams’s upcoming nuptials to Kate Middleton are facing criticism from some royalists within the British monarchy. The reason? She is too common.

Yes, despite being particularly beautiful and having more family than Midas, Middleton doesn’t come from royal stock. In fact, she has some coalminer’s dust on her lineage, as they say in Old Britannia. (One of her ancestors actually worked in a coalmine.)

We have royal families in America, too.

When you get up in morning and you are trying to find your cell phone, you probably aren’t thinking about neodymium, but maybe you should.

Neodymium is a rare-earth element that plays an essential role in making certain that your cell phone works. Without neodymium and other rare-earth elements, cell phones wouldn’t be as small or as powerful as they are, televisions wouldn’t be as big and as thin as they are, and many other of the creature comforts that we now rely on wouldn’t be around.

Bringing Bill Clinton to the podium to support his tax decision further delegitimizes Obama’s presidency. It makes him look like a child. Like more of a child; the adulthood aspect was never that convincing. And that anyone would consider Clinton to be a father figure is absolutely spooky. This is not the party of Roosevelt and Jack Kennedy. This is the party of Maynard G. Krebbs. In fact, that could explain everything: the Pelosi House, the Barney Frank initiatives, the irresponsible and unconstitutional spending in the trillions and the delusional foreign policy. Forget Marx and Keynes, Jefferson and Hamilton. As the prescient Aldous Huxley said, the eye of the camera had come to control us, to make us its willful zombies. It could all be from the mind of the 1950s TV beatnik Maynard G. Krebbs, sidekick and antithesis to the blond and happy Dobie Gillis, who enchanted an entire generation in its formative years.

How does Pyongyang claim to deserve respect when it won’t even begin to respect parties in the talks? If it wants to be taken seriously, then that means North Korea should begin taking seriously its own role and responsibility in these negotiations, not its shoot-ready-aim policies of the past.
 
Think of the precedent such behavior potentially establishes. If we succumb to the North’s demands, then what do we do with the Taliban? Iran? Let them attack anything and everyone because we don’t “respect” their right to negotiate better deals for their people, then we sheepishly come to the bargaining table? Such logic is rooted in naïve foreign relations.

As Israelis increasingly come to understand, American leadership at the top can no longer be taken seriously. Last week would bring a paean to his beloved friend beautifully displayed on the op-ed pages of The New York Times by a former American president, hoping to “finish Rabin’s work” — not sure what he means by that — the better to help out the missus in corralling those pesky bearded Jews in furry hats to fit into his “global initiative.” This week it is announced that the same American president will be doing a cameo in “The Hangover 2.” And so, in Israel, a Tea Party arises. For exactly the same reasons it arose in the United States.

An image of what appears to be the trail of a large missile launched from beneath the sea 35 miles off the coast of Los Angeles appeared on California TV screens last night. But the Pentagon said it had “no clue” who fired it.

"Nobody within the Department of Defense that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said. "So far, we've come up empty with any explanation."