North Korea’s missile politics
Governments in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington reacted angrily to the announcement last month of North Korea’s impending rocket launch. But what are they really concerned about? Geoff Dyer, US diplomatic correspondent, and Christian Oliver, Seoul correspondent join Shawn Donnan to discuss Pyongyang’s missile politics.
Bo Xilai with his wife Gu Kailai
Not so long ago, Bo Xilai was one of China’s “princelings”, a charismatic, high-flying politician who was apparently destined for its top leadership. From his power base in Chongqing he became known for smashing organised crime, increasing foreign investment and running “revolutionary” campaigns involving singing contests and the revival of Maoist symbols.
But when in February a mafia-busting former police chief called Wang Lijun walked into the US consulate in the western city of Chengdu, he set in train a series of events that brought scandal and infighting out of the secret confines of Chinese party politics and into the public eye. The result was Mr Bo’s spectacular fall from grace and the arrest of his wife Gu Kailai – herself the daughter of a top general – on suspicion of murdering the British citizen Neil Heywood.
It’s hard to see why a Shakespearean play about a Scottish king should be controversial in Thailand. Nevertheless, the Thai film board has seen fit to ban a local film version of Macbeth.
One of the producers says the film board obviously thinks the story of Scottish regicide retold in the film, Shakespeare Must Die, is an allegory about Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister. Mr Thaksin, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup, is disliked by many Thai royalists for allegedly challenging the authority of the king, something he has always denied.
I am currently in Washington, DC. I packed two books to read on the flight over: “Russia, China and Global Governance” by Charles Grant (actually a long think-tank pamphlet, published by the Centre for European Reform) and “Every Nation For Itself, Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World” by Ian Bremmer.
Once in Washington, I passed by the Brookings Institution and bought three more books: “Deadly Embrace, Pakistan, America and The Future of Global Jihad” by Bruce Riedel; “Bending History – Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy” by Indyk, Lieberthal and O’Hanlon; and “Obama and China’s Rise” by Jeffrey Bader, who should know what he’s on about, since he was head of the Asia desk at the NSC in the Obama White House.
All of these books look excellent. But I’m afraid “look” is the operative word, since I haven’t actually got round to opening any of them. Instead I have been reading the collected essays of Christopher Hitchens, published under the title, “Arguably”. And a slim volume, I picked up in a second-hand bookshop on Dupont Circle, Richard Overy’s “1939, Countdown to War.”
Surprise choice for US nominee – and thus, let’s face it, immediate frontrunner - to be president of the World Bank. Jim Kim is a technocrat rather than a politico, so the White House has refreshingly eschewed partisan patronage if not nationality, and has deep (if somewhat narrow, being restricted to public health) development experience. Together with the traditional US lock on the position, those are very likely enough to carry him over the finishing line to the presidency.
So says, well, the IMF in the staff report produced as fodder for the executive board to OK a €28bn loan to Athens on Thursday.
Not only is the Greek programme itself on a knife-edge – super-sensitive to yet more growth shortfalls, doubts over political commitment to implementation, the usual – but the Fund is close to the limits of its own flexibility on how much it can lend to a single country, under its snappily-named “exceptional access” criteria.
Exaggeration and contradiction, fairly obviously, but hear me out. As various people have pointed out, the rare earths case threatened at the WTO comes at an odd time given what is happening in the real world. Rare earth mineral prices have plummeted (h/t FT colleague Ed Crooks) and supply is coming on stream from elsewhere – indeed, Molycorp, the big US producer, is gearing up to export to China.
The timing has more to do with domestic politics in the US and the fact that the US and EU just won a similar case to establish precedent. (Precedent isn’t legally binding in the WTO dispute settlement process, as it isn’t a common law-type system, but it is certainly helpful.)
Still, while it won’t have much impact on current trade, it’s good that governments are continuing to use the dispute settlement system in the WTO, especially since the negotiating function has seized up, and China’s record of adhering to the rulings of same is actually better than you might expect. Any suggestion that the White House is “starting a trade war” with an action like this is daft. Getting Beijing to adhere to WTO rules and stop restricting the free flow of trade, however belatedly and weakly, is a Good Thing.
Joseph Kony in November 2006. AP Photo/Stuart Price
By Matthew Green
The first thing I wondered was ‘who irons his shirts?’
When Joseph Kony stepped out of the jungle and into a clearing in eastern Congo, he looked almost debonair in his smartly-pressed white suit. A small army of pint-sized soldiers trailed behind him, hair tousled into dreadlocks, feet flopping in Wellington boots. One or two even cracked a grin, but Kony’s face was stone. An overlord in his forest kingdom, the rebel leader seemed unnerved by the sight of strangers.
That was in 2006. I became one of the few journalists to meet the founder of the Lord’s Resistance Army during one of his sallies from the bush to engage in an ultimately futile dance of peace talks with elders from his native northern Uganda.
Having spent six months tracking him for a book I was writing, I felt a curious pang of nostalgia when I once again saw his face leering out of StopKony2012, the viral video.
Welcome to our live coverage of the eurozone crisis.
By Tom Burgis and Esther Bintliff on the news desk in London, with contributions from FT correspondents around the world.
All times are GMT. This post should update automatically every few minutes, but it may take longer on mobile devices.
19.15: That’s it for the liveblog for today. Follow FT.com through the evening for analysis of the day’s developments and more news of the deal as we get it. A few top stories from today to keep you going in the meantime:
| About this blog | About Gideon | Blog guide |
FT latest world news
For views and opinions on the European Union from Peter Spiegel, Joshua Chaffin, Alex Barker and Stanley Pignal, follow the FT's Brussels blog here.
The FT's Global Insight column
Older entries