ASEAN and the Obama Administration: Views from the Region
SPFUSA Asian Voices Seminar Series

Monday, March 30th, 2009
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (lunch will be served)

The Cosmos Club
Powell Room
2121 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.
(business attire required)

Speakers

Bambang Harymurti, Corporate Editor-in-Chief, Tempo (Indonesia)

Mr. Bambang Harymurti is Corporate Editor-in-Chief of the news magazine Tempo Weekly and the newspaper Tempo Daily. He is also CEO of PT Tempo Inti Media and member of the Press Council in Indonesia. He has also worked as a Deputy Chief Editor of Tempo Weekly, Executive Editor of Media Indonesia Daily, and Editor of the Sunday Edition of Media Indonesia. He graduated from Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia, majoring Electrical Engineering (1984) and from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (1991). In addition to receiving the Knight International Press Fellowship Award, he is a winner of the Mason Program’s Vernon Award at Harvard and the Excellence in Journalism Award given by the daily Indonesian Observer. His publications include, “Indonesia, Challenges of Change” in Journal of Democracy.

Kavi Chongkittavorn, Executive Editor, The Nation (Thailand)

Mr. Kavi Chongkittavorn is Assistant Group Editor of Nation Multimedia Group, responsible for The Nation, Krungthep Turakit, and Kom Chat Luek, Nation TV Channel. He has been a journalist for more than two decades, covering Thailand and regional affairs. He was bureau chief in Phnom Penh (1986-88) and Hanoi (1989-91). From 1993-94, he served as a special assistant to the ASEAN Secretary General. In 1993, he was a Reuters Fellow at Oxford University and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2001. He was named the Human Rights Journalist of 1998 to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of UNDHR by Amnesty International, Thailand. From 1999-2003, he was the president of the Thai Journalists Association. He has also chaired the Bangkok-based regional free media advocacy group, Southeast Asian Press Alliance.

Yuli Ismartono, Executive Editor, Tempo

Ms. Yuli Ismartono is Executive Editor of the English edition of Tempo, Indonesia’s largest circulating weekly news magazine, and concurrently the Managing Editor of AsiaViews, a regional online publication, a collaboration between Tempo and four other Southeast Asian news publications funded by the Tokyo-based Sasakawa Peace Foundation. She is also a senior advisor at APCO Jakarta, a media relations consulting agency. Ms. Ismartono has been in media and communications since 1970, following her undergraduate studies at the University of India where she studied political science and where she met and befriended Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She did her graduate studies at the Newhouse School of Journalism at Syracuse University. As Tempo’s Bangkok-based Asia bureau chief from 1983 to 1993, Ms Ismartono reported on issues and events ranging from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam to the Sri Lankan civil war and the first Gulf War. She returned to Jakarta in 1993, only to have Suharto close down Tempo in June 1994. Ms. Ismartono rejoined Tempo when it re-launched in 2002, after a stint in public affairs and corporate communications.

Moderator

David Steinberg, Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies, Georgetown University

Professor David Steinberg is Distinguished Professor of Asian Studies, Georgetown University. He was previously a Representative of the Asia Foundation in Korea; Distinguished Professor of Korea Studies, Georgetown University; and President of the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs. Earlier, as a member of the Senior Foreign Service, U.S. Agency for International Development, Department of State, he was Director for Technical Assistance in Asia and the Middle East, and Director for Philippines, Thailand, and Burma Affairs. He spent three years in Thailand with the USAID Regional Development Office. Professor Steinberg was educated at Dartmouth College, Lingnan University (Canton, China), Harvard University, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of thirteen books and monographs, including: Turmoil in Burma: Contested Legitimacies in Myanmar; Burma: The State of Myanmar; Stone Mirror: Reflections on Contemporary Korea; and The Republic of Korea: Economic Transformation and Social Change. He has authored numerous articles, book chapters, and op-eds.

Summary

To state the obvious, Barack Obama is the first President of the United States with deep ties to Southeast Asia. But what might that mean for U.S. relations with ASEAN and its member states? This panel will discuss three general topics: the potential for American cooperation with Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority state, and how that can serve to address America’s problems in the Islamic world; how the U.S. and ASEAN can address issues in the region relating to Burma, China, and India; and the changed perceptions and expectations of the U.S. under the Obama administration.

Invitation (PDF Format)

I don’t know why system developers tend to take a good (or at least passable / workable) system and make it completely unusable. It seems as though every time they’re tasked to create a new build, they sit down with a list of features and try to incorporate them into the new system without addressing the critical questions of — how do users generally access or use the information on the website, and how will the systems changes affect the overall usability of the interface?

Look, for example, at the new Georgetown University registration page. There are in general two main ways to use a schedule of classes: (1) search for a particular class (by name, subject, teacher, credits, class time, etc), or (2) browse though the list of classes to find the one(s) you’re looking for. Obviously the designers of the new system favored the former and decided give people who prefer the latter, myself included, the short end of the bargain. In the previous system, I liked being able to click on a department (JAPN, for example) from the list of departments on the schedule front page and view a list of all the classes in that department. Now, in order to get the same list you have to choose a department name from a select box (that only displays three course names at a time), then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen and click on “class search.” When the list comes up there’s no way to bookmark the results page (variables not contained in the URL).

On the other hand, I definitely approve of the ability to filter classes by instructor or class time — so the new build isn’t all negative. I just wish they’d left the ability to browse through classes as well.

New York Times: Abstract City Blog
By Christoph Niemann

“During the cold and dark Berlin winter days, I spend a lot of time with my boys in their room. And as I look at the toys scattered on the floor, my mind inevitably wanders back to New York….”

(Niemann creates a series of highly-imaginative NYC-related items using legos. Follow the link to view the images)

Being an NPR addict, I’ve had an earful and then some of debate on the economic stimulus package — ask a question about money, and suddenly it seems like everyone’s an expert. I’ll make no such claims here, but I’ll still add my own two cents to the ongoing debate:

(1) Some Republicans in the House have claimed that programs such as Pell grants shouldn’t be part of the stimulus package because it’s unclear how such spending would immediately help our economy. My response to this argument is that as families fall on hard times, it’ll become more and more difficult for students to pay for tuition (or even get side jobs while they study). Without federal support, there’s a good chance that some of these students will end up dropping out of school and joining the ranks of the unemployed (7.2% in Dec 2008).

• Young people receiving unemployment compensation instead of attending college would further strain state governments in a time when some state, such as California, are in deep financial trouble.
• Regardless of whether continuing/increasing federal scholarships for higher education will have an immediate, direct effect on the US economy, it’s in the best interest of our nation for students to continue their schooling instead of being forced into the lousy job market.

(2) Another sore spot for some legislators in the House package is money to re-seed the National Mall. Perhaps I’m biased (being a former DC resident), but I’ve seen the Mall post-inauguration, and it’s essentially a frozen dust bowl — bereft of grass and looking pretty bad.

• On the one hand I’ll make the argument that redoing the lawn will be done with US labor using US supplies and that it’s essentially shovel-ready once the ground thaws in the spring.
• On the other hand I’ll also argue that regardless of whether re-doing grass or building a new road is more useful in the long run (no, that’s not a trick question; in most cases the answer here’s the road), the National Mall is part of our public face to the rest of the world.

In the same vein as how the NYCPD’s crack down on petty crime such as window-breaking and graffiti arguably helped decrease violent crime too, if our National Mall looks like a dump when visitors from overseas come to DC, isn’t it the same as just putting up a huge screen and broadcasting our economic weakness to the world? Of course, we shouldn’t seek to disguise the problems in our credit markets or mis-portray the value of of currency — global markets are build on trust, and deliberate lying won’t get us anywhere. But just as a taxi driver with peeling paint and no hubcaps might find it more difficult to pick up passengers, it’s my personal opinion that the US would find it harder to maintain its image as a global superpower if it can’t even keep up its national lawn.

NPR listeners submitted what they thought were the best songs of the year, and NPR compiled the results here: NPR Listeners Pick The Year’s Best Music. You can also see the complete poll results.

Maybe I’m just out of touch with pop culture, but I actually hadn’t heard of a fair number of the songs on this list. Or maybe it’s just that I’m one of those annoying people who contentedly listen to the same ten tracks day in and day out. I have a car mix I’ve been cycling through for the past two months or so — just add or subtract a song every now and and…

Oh, and if you need a little holiday fun, here’s a great rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas from the a capella group Straight No Chaser. Nice.

I thought I’d written about Japan’s crazy vending machine costume before, but perhaps it was back in the archives of my blog that disappeared in the server debacle awhile back. Anyhow, I’m posting (or reposting?) it on request.

There are a couple of cultural details you have to be familiar with in order for this story to make any sense — (1) Japan is a very safe country, but people tend to be paranoid. (2) Even deep in the Japanese countryside there are vending machines everywhere in Japan. You’ll see rows of them lined up on the street, near train station, or even apparently in the middle of nowhere. (3) Especially in certain areas of Tokyo, you can see people wearing some of the craziest things… and somehow it’ll see perfectly normal.

Essentially, the vending machine costume is designed to be something a woman could carry in her purse and hide in if she felt threatened (most likely in an urban environment). It is supposed to be realistic enough to fool an attacker and easy enough to unfold that a woman could do so in seconds.

This video shows what appears to be an earlier prototype of the vending machine costume — it’s just two-dimensional but has a pattern similar to that on the three-dimensional costume. It also shows the manhole cover purse (I think the best part is when the man actually trips over the edge of the purse):

Apparently the rationale behind the costume is that people in countries such as the US might fight back against an attacker, but women in Japan are more timid and don’t want to make a scene, so it’s “easier for them to hide.”

Here’s a longer story about the vending machine disguise (via Reuters). You can see a glimpse of the 3D costume at the end. It seems to be for two people. The clip plays after the commercial.

I’m not sure what he is smiling about in the background as they’re taking the journalist away… In many parts of the Middle East, shoe-throwing is one of the harshest gestures one can make. Note that shoe-throwing also made news in 2003 when Iraqis threw their footwear at the toppled statue of Saddam Hussein.

See also:

• BBC: Bush shoe-ing worst Arab insult
• Reuters: Iraqi shoe-throwing reporter becomes the talk of Iraq
• IHT: Shoe insult against Bush resounds in Arab world

The Vocaloid program sounds best in Japanese (what else would you expect from a singing synthesizer from Yamaha?), but it’s actually pretty entertaining to hear it sing in English. It definitely sings English with a classically Japanese accent. The clip above is from the song “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”

I’m constantly amazed with what you can find (by accident) on YouTube. Here is the “The Fast Food Song” by British pop group the Fast Food Rockers. Can you believe the song managed to reach #2 in the UK charts in June 2003? I think it’s hilarious.

I’ve always loved reading and have over the years accumulated more books than I really know what to do with–meaning that I’ve run out of bookshelf space. And yes, I have seriously considered buying an e-book device, but I’m still not sold on any of the major brands on the market today.

The Kindle by Amazon.com with its wireless Whispernet is definitely a compelling choice, but I can’t get beyond its physical design. Even though it looks better in person than in pictures, it just looks really retro and clunky compared to other devices currently on the market. I mean, look at the Sony PRS-700 reader. Sleek and shiny with lovely curves and six-inch touchscreen E-Ink display… I like how the line of buttons was switched to horizontal, compared to the earlier PRS-505 model.

And while it would be useful to be able to download books straight from the internet onto the device, I admit that I’m a compulsive book buyer, and it might be good for my bank account to require an extra step between the “I’d like a book” thought and the actual purchase.

Additionally, no matter what device you use, the fact remains that many non-fiction books still aren’t available in e-book format. For example, what about the Strategic Asia series by The National Bureau of Asian Research? The newest edition, Strategic Asia 2008–09: Challenges and Choices was launched in September 2008 but isn’t even available on amazon.com in print form (none of the earlier editions are available in e-book format). Or there was an interesting book I read a while back called Koizumi Diplomacy: Japan’s Kantei Approach to Foreign and Defense Affairs–nope, not a chance that one’s been digitalized. So bottom line: the weak link for all digital readers is the content that you can purchase for them. If you want to read fiction and mainstream non-fiction, then it shouldn’t be an issue. For others, book availability is definitely a problem.

There are many “common” phrases used in the world of international politics that we use often put probably don’t fully understand — One of these for me is the term, “Japan passing.” According to the Economist, this phrase has two meanings: (1) that world’s second biggest economy was being passed by in a fast-changing world, and (2) that Japan can no longer even be taken seriously. Although it probably originated from then president Clinton’s nine-day visit to China in 1998 during which he did not visit Japan. Some say that the idea began to take root as early as 1971 when Nixon normalized relations with China. Importantly, the term most often seems to means Japan’s fear of being seen as irrelevant when compared to China.

After the Clinton years when people such as Richard Armitage (US Deputy Secretary of State from 2001-05) and Michael Green (Senior Director for Asian affairs at the NSC from 2004-05) came to power in Washington the concern of “Japan passing” receded from the minds of many Japanese politicians. The nomination of Obama and the return of the Democrats to power has rekindled the idea that America may again tilt more toward China. (Random Obama fact: He likes bulgogi and kimchi).

Interestingly, the fear in Japan of being passed (or ignored) doesn’t only apply to relations with the United States. In addition to the ongoing Australia-Japan disputes over whaling, current prime minister of Australia Kevin Rudd’s “widely celebrated Sinophile credentials” have also contributed to concerns that Australia will lean more toward China at the expense of relations with Japan.

So are Japan’s concerns about being “passed” (by the United States, Australia, or other bodies such as the UNSC) unfounded or warranted? Even if many of Obama’s advisers indeed turn out to be from the Clinton era, I think it’s unrealistic that Japan will cease to be an important US ally in Asia.

I forgot where I saw this… whether it was part of a film festival or just on YouTube. But either way, it’s funny in a particularly Japanese sort of way .

Right Place
By Kosai Sekine

I’ll leave the election commentary to the professionals (mainly because I’m happy with the results and don’t have much to add to what’s already been said), and instead offer one realization that came to me today. More people voted in Washington, DC than the whole of Alaska (try DC = 225,224 vs. Alaska = 216,688 on for size). Heck, Virginia’s Fairfax County (407,232) had way more voters than Alaska. So why do states like Alaska get representation in both the Senate and the House, and DC can’t even get a vote in the House? How unfair….

And to continue my rant against Alaska, I can’t believe that it looks like Ted Stevens will be re-elected. What a world.

I think it’s despicable to say that there’s a “real America” and the rest of America. It’s divisive, hateful, and completely against the ideals that America tries to stand for. It’s equally dangerous to say that those people who don’t hold the same social/religious views as you are less “patriotic.” Haven’t any of these people heard of our bill of rights? And logically (gasp, logic?!), if the country is so split over an issue such as abortion, how can one position be any more “un-American” than the other? Are half of US residents therefore not really American? Ridiculous.

So let me begin on the second part of my rant tonight. Alaska. I’ll admit that I didn’t know much about our northernmost state before the start of this election — just assumed that it was a cold yet beautiful, sparsely-populated yet geographically huge state.

I’m not that fond of winter, but I was definitely happy to continue in my naive bliss and assume that Alaskans felt as though they were part of the US despite their detached location. Now I have my doubts.

NPR tonight quoted one Alaskan woman who in response to the Ted Stevens conviction said, “Twelve outsiders trying to pass judgment on our United States senator? I won’t have any part of it,” she said. “That’s like in the days pre-statehood, when outsiders used to pass judgment on us.” Yes, I know this is hardly a significant sample size, but I found her comment utterly shocking. (1) She’s undermining the very basis of our judicial system — the jury system. (2) She’s saying that mainland USA is so completely different from Alaska that it’s impossible for people there to “pass judgment” on a legislator from Alaska (who has, by the way, probably spent more of his life in DC than Alaska). (3) Alaska became a state in 1959… I don’t think many people viewed the trial as a fight against Alaska or its sovereignty. This is about political corruption, not membership to the union.

Although today’s biggest headlines were in the Middle East and South Asia, as I was scrolling through the headlines about Japan I couldn’t help but notice this lead: Japanese Yen Has Huge One-Day Decline; Helps Market Rally.

Really now. When was the last time you heard a market rally over currency devaluation? Unfortunately for the yen, it was the victim of a financial practice known as the carry trade. In (relatively) plain English this means borrowing in a currency offering low interest and investing in high-interest currencies — or, in other words, taking advantage of different interest rates in different markets to make money.

Because the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has kept Japanese interest rates so low, the yen has been on the borrowing end of the carry trade, and traders have used this yen to invest in developing markets around the world. Unfortunately for Japan, with the global financial system in turmoil and developing markets looking increasingly risky, investors are pulling out of these investments and are converting assets in other currencies back into yen. Demand for yen goes up, and the value of the yen rises against everything, even the dollar (one of the other currencies currently on the rise).

Or something like that. The end result of the whole mess is that Japanese exports are more expensive on foreign markets (due to the strong yen), and Japanese manufacturers are freaking out.