Word: war
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...1950s Japan, during the years after the country's devastating defeat in World War II, Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama believed his island nation should not become too subservient to the U.S. To make his point, he flew to Moscow to normalize relations with the Soviet Union. It was a bold stand to take at the opening of the Cold War - and one that ultimately failed. Despite Hatoyama's views, Japan locked itself firmly into the U.S. orbit, becoming America's key Asian ally...
...home, Hatoyama's ideas have struck a chord with those who want their country to chart a new course. For decades - ever since its defeat in World War II, in fact - Japan has struggled to define its role in the world. Though in many respects a political and economic power in its own right, Japan has remained reliant on the U.S. for its own security. (Japan's postwar constitution renounces the use of force in international disputes.) The stabilizing presence of the U.S. military in Asia is as crucial as ever to Japan, which shares the same neighborhood...
...Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "They're working it out as they go." Nowhere has that been more apparent than in Hatoyama's handling of the status of American bases on Okinawa. That southern Japanese island, a famous World War II battleground, still hosts roughly 25,000 troops, almost all of them Marines, and the local Okinawans have long resented the heavy military presence. In 2006, the U.S. and Japan reached an agreement to move a Marine air base on Okinawa to a less populated part of the island...
...Pakistani military to clear the Swat Valley's lush, mountainous tribal terrain of its Taliban usurpers last summer, using some 30,000 troops to dislodge the guerrillas from the once-bustling tourist haven, 80 miles northwest of the capital Islamabad. Now, however, almost a year after winning the war, the same number of troops are still in place in order to hold Swat, rebuild it and prevent a Taliban resurgence - and that may keep Islamabad from going after the extremists in other parts of Pakistan's unruly frontier with Afghanistan...
...Some caution that expecting perfect elections is unrealistic in a country so precipitously balanced between war and peace. Neha Erasmus, the South Sudan coordinator for the advocacy group Justice Africa, says the decision to pull Arman from the race was a good one. By not contesting the presidential vote, she says, the SPLM refuses to endorse a flawed process but also avoids destabilizing relations with its partner in peace. (See "Omar al-Bashir: Sudan's Wanted...