...expect anonymous rumours to emerge from certain bureaucratic quarters, and they may well be amplified into a scandal to undermine the about to be formed government. In some parts of the bureaucracy there is considerable ambivalence about the need for Japan to have a political steering wheel. As I myself have found in numerous conversations over the years with Japanese officials, quite a few of them have for some time realised that the national interest is not served by the rudderless political system as a whole, and by the absence of guidance for some of their ministries in particular. But the belief is ingrained with many of these officials, and shared by important newspaper editors and commentators, that Japanese politicians are simply not competent enough to run the show. No wonder if they have rarely had an opportunity to try their hands at it. The Japanese who have been frustrated with unfulfilled expectations prompted by 16 years of promised fundamental change can only hope that their new government is given much time (and peace from scandal mongers) to work out an effective and productive collaboration between elected and career officials – simply the single greatest political problem of modern Japan....

...vigorous. By withdrawing troops from Iraq more manpower will become available for Afghanistan. With money and fine words the local warlords and clan leaders must be seduced to choose the side of the invader. But the actual American presence ‘on the ground’ is at least as important in the thinking of the generals as are the good intentions of the new planners. If need be the allies can simply stay home is the audible complaint among those wearing stars. How serious matters have become is illustrated by remarks made by the commander of the US Central command – of which Afghanistan is a part. Gen David Petraeus, architect of the ‘surge’, the temporary reinforcement of American troops in Iraq in 2007 (which according to prevailing propaganda has delivered results) has declared: “We do believe we can achieve progress [in Afghanistan], but it’s going to get worse before it gets better. When you go into the enemy’s sanctuaries, they will fight you for it. There will be tough months ahead, without question.” He also had a recipe for overcoming the huge dilemma with which the Americans are confronted – how to fight a motivated and well trained opponent in the midst...

...however, did little more than buy the presidency, and the deal was clinched only when his men resorted to intimidation of the opposition and legal sleights of hand. Can such a president ever enjoy the authority of wartime presidents like Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman? A torrent of wishful thinking has deluged the United States at the moment. The media consume considerable amounts of propaganda. Independent thought is not given much of a hearing, and while the authorities keep repeating that they are dealing with an entirely new kind of war, and that the world finds itself in a wholly new situation, there is no indication of fundamentally new questions being discovered and being asked. The President must be seen as a commanding commander in chief, assisted by knowledgeable advisers. The country is unified behind him – for the first time since Vietnam even ready to sacrifice soldiers of flesh and blood. American skeptics, too, must try to believe that they have a competent president. Not to believe it risks being labeled unpatriotic. But trying to believe such a thing is a hard task, not envied by politically aware people outside the United States. On the day of the attack...

...Yet another term that is being celebrated in the context of Obama’s approach to policy making is ‘pragmatic’. In an interview with the New York Times he said “what I have been constantly searching for is a ruthless pragmatism”. Now, pragmatism describes an approach toward a purpose. Should the newspaper not have asked what he was ruthlessly pragmatic about? Has his aim been merely to get the economy running again as it did before? The incontestable fact that Obama has inherited about the worst set of problems that a predecessor can bequeath a new incumbent has also delivered him the benefit of a mighty reservoir of patience. The most charitable conclusions that have come out of the widespread endeavour to make sense of Obama’s governing so far revolve around the idea that the new American president wisely chooses to first fight the political battles that he thinks he can win, and that having won those he will move slowly, with increased ‘political capital’, to incrementally repair the things that need repairing. And the idea that he is constantly playing a kind of three-dimensional chess, as one awakening critic put it, against known and potential political opponents continues to linger. Practically...

...of the Arab world suggests innocence. A good chunk of America’s political class, apparently seduced by this claim as justification for the belligerence of their government, probably did not have a clue as to what such a project would entail. This type of innocence had its charm in the past, and should not be dismissed out-of-hand by non–Americans. Like the “today is the first day of your life” approach, American optimism, the widespread “can do!” mentality, may have an invigorating effect on political figures whose dull routines and lethargy can otherwise infect entire societies. But it has made the American popular imagination gullible to the idea that the nation confronts a world with unfinished business for it to clear. There appears to be a fate that comes with American existence, embedded in the conception of the American colonies and later the United States as a much better alternative than the Europe left behind, which contained an apostolic task to bring revolution to the human condition. At least from president Woodrow Wilson onward, democracy has often been made to seem something requiring little more than simple political will to bring it about: a matter of choice for a population given such...

...order – yes, I know, it also saw a great deal of bloodshed and there was much wrong with it, but still… Like practically everyone else who holds forth on the subject, Ikenberry predicts that China will end the ‘unipolar moment’ of the United States, but he adds that this does not not “necessarily mean a violent power struggle or the overthrow of the Western system. The U.S.-led international order can remain dominant even while integrating a more powerful China – but only if Washington sets about strengthening that liberal order now”. Ikenberry comments on the predictions made by others about “the coming epic battle over the rules and leadership of the international system”, and other typical features of a power transition. He thinks that the coming power transition can be different from those of the past because of the international order that came into being after World War II. Today China faces a “Western-centered system that is open, integrated, and rule-based, with wide and deep political foundations”. We are back here on familiar Ikenberry territory of the post-World-War-II system of international relations, helped into being by the United States more than any other power and, on the whole, a...