The selection of Yasuo Fukuda as the new Prime Minister of Japan, a veteran concerned with smoothing over ruffled regional feathers, will hopefully return some stability to the regional security posture.  The rise of nationalist politicians in Japan has been a gift to Washington.  An assertive set of political leaders in Tokyo have proved to be more than willing to act as Washington's "Asian Britain" in helping to meet global security challenges.  Since the rise of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi Japan has deployed military personnel to assist the US military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as demonstrated a new found willingness to move beyond the pacifism that has been the hallmark of its defense policy since the ending of World War II.  This is good news to those in America who have sought to push Japan to shoulder a greater burden of the international community's security problems beyond just writing checks. 

I got into a passionate discussion with a friend after going to Church this Sunday. The friend who I was debating with is from Hong Kong and our "discussion" revolved around the approaches that have been used by China and the West in their economic relationship with Africa. His bottom line is that the strategies used by both sides is essentially the same-that both sides have sought to exploit Africa in every which way and as quickly as possible.

In his view the main difference is that the West is more sophisticated in their exploitation and that their efforts at encouraging good governance and human rights simply serves as good PR (with China being more "honest" about just simply wanting to get at the natural resources). I agreed that both sides were looking out first for their own national interests in Africa and that the West was not entirely altruistic. However, I argued that the West's focus on getting African countries to improve their human rights and governance frameworks would ultimately serve the continent's long term interests better and demonstrated a concern with moving the relationship beyond one of dependence.

A couple things struck me in reading about Lebanon's clean up operations against Fatah Al Islam.  One is the praise that the Lebanese army received for their "restraint" and President Emile Lahoud's  boast that the army "has achieved what superpowers could not in confronting terrorism."  Certainly Beirut had success in getting the militants out of the camp-and seemingly without many innocent lives lost in the end (at least compared to counter-terror operations elsewhere around the globe).