Life imitates The Simpsons

From io9, Gawker Media's science fiction blog, comes a report that Russia will once again be parading ICBMs in Red Square on Victory Square.

This story brought to mind a moment from "Simpson Tide," an episode from the ninth season of The Simpsons:

Russian official: The Soviet Union will be pleased to offer amnesty to your wayward vessel.
American official: The Soviet Union? I thought you guys broke up.
Russian official: Yes, that's what we wanted you to think! [laughs]

(Sorry, no clip on YouTube.)

Cyber war against Estonia?

This New York Times story, "Estonia Computers Blitzed, Possibly by the Russians," strikes me as pregnant with implications that reach far beyond the Russo-Estonian dispute over the removal of a Soviet monument commemorating the "Great Patriotic War."

The Times reports that Estonian officials have blamed Russia for a series of attacks on its government websites, although the Russian government has denied involvement.

I found this statement striking, however: "'If you have a missile attack against, let’s say, an airport, it is an act of war,' a spokesman for the Estonian Defense Ministry, Madis Mikko, said Friday in a telephone interview. 'If the same result is caused by computers, then how else do you describe that kind of attack?'"

What is the value of an alliance like NATO, designed to protect the people and physical infrastructure of an alliance member from attack, in an age when threats may increasingly be of the sort described in this story, attacks on the virtual infrastructure that are increasingly the source of prosperity for countries like Estonia?

If NATO — and other standing alliances among democracies, like the US-Japan alliance — are incapable of deterring new, unconventional threats that target a country's vehicles of wealth creation in ways short of what is recognized as war, can those alliances survive without substantial change?

While the details of the campaign against Estonia have yet to be elucidated, this incident strikes me as a harbinger of something with which all developed countries will have to contend: as the risks of interstate conventional warfare diminish, states will have to contend with new ways for states to flex their muscles in disputes with other states. Are existing alliances and international organizations up to the task?

Revolution from below

This article at Mainichi online, on ceremonies to commemorate Northern Territories Day, caught my eye for a couple reasons.

The first is that I can't help but wonder if a push to resolve longstanding territorial disputes with Russia is driven by rising fears of abandonment in the government of Japan. Outside the alliance with the US, after all, Japan is short on reliable friends, and perhaps Abe reasons that, with this irksome issue resolved, Russia might be open to cooperation on initiatives in East Asia, especially regarding China (don't forget about those Chinese migrants flooding into the Russian Far East). Russia, of course, is no substitute for the US in Japan's foreign relations, but better relations with Moscow would at least somewhat mitigate a sense of isolation.

I found, however, that more interesting than the strategic reasons behind this campaign is the language used by Abe to promote this effort.

The territorial issue is a matter of national concern, and it is important for each person to be interested in the problem to mobilize efforts.

There, in one sentence, can be found the reason why Japan's political system has proven so resistant to change, and points to the kind of change needed.

The Meiji Restoration looms large over the Japanese political system; both parties struggle to claim the mantle of the proper heir of the restoration's legacy. But the Meiji Restoration was a top-down revolution, and the modern state to which it gave birth has been indelibly marked by its origins at the hands of the Meiji elite. Even after the "second opening" that was the US occupation of Japan, the outlines of the state shaped during the Meiji era remain. All the US did was change the content of the state, infusing it with a touch of New-Deal liberalism without destroying the fundamental character of the Meiji state: change would be managed and directed from above, by bureaucrats and their politician allies.

Accordingly, overriding national goals have had considerable resonance in Japan in the past, as in the 1960s, when rapid economic growth was the great national project that moved all.

All of this was supposed to have changed in the 1990s, when confidence in the bureaucracy collapsed following the bursting of the economic bubble, the mismanagement of economic recovery, the woeful response to the Hanshin earthquake and Aum subway attack in 1995, and so on. In place of bureaucrats, power was supposed to shift to politicians -- and in some ways, it has. But that's precisely the problem. Substituting politicians for bureaucrats without changing the way Japanese society thinks about policy and governance simply substitutes a new class of corruptible leaders for the old (cue The Who).

Hence the title of this post. Politicians' appealing to the Meiji Restoration misses the point, which is that rather than have yet another top-down revolution, as Abe intends with his talk of dismantling the postwar regime, the Japanese people need to step up and claim the political system for themselves. Instead of talk of national goals about which "it is important for each person to be interested in the problem to mobilize efforts," it is time that the elite step back and let the people learn to speak for themselves.

Anything short of that will simply invite the same problems with corruption and stagnation that Japan has experienced in the recent past. Politicians of all stripes may talk about dynamism, but a truly dynamic Japan will only emerge if the system opens up to competition in policy and politics, as well as economics, if the Japanese people claim leadership of society.

Chinese Siberia

This piece in today's Japan Times by Cambridge's own David Wall spells out in detail the silent, slow-motion annexation of Pacific Russia by China.

Russia is in quite a bind as far as the Russian Far East is concerned. As Wall points out, the region is being depopulated of Russians, and millions of Chinese are migrating -- whether temporarily or permanently remains to be seen -- into Russia to work. Even if the Russian population remained static, however, Russia would still be facing demographic defeat in the territories it took from China in the 1860s.

Were Pacific Russia to return to China sometime during the twenty-first century, the consequences would not necessarily be dire, particularly if China exercises de facto rule before formalizing the transition.

This process shows, however, that alarms about Russia may be overblown. Yes, Russia is an increasingly substantial player in global energy markets. And yes, Vladimir Putin's government has taken a frightening turn in the direction of outright autocracy. But increasingly Russia is imploding, so that even as super-wealthy Russians make splashes internationally and Putin's government taunts and threatens, they are the shiny facade hiding a country in terminal decline. Russia's inability to control its territory adjacent to China is just one example of how powerless it has become in the face of high mortality rates and a pervasive spiritual gloom.