Power Politics

Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu's last-minute decision to postpone his trip to the Middle East illustrates Japan's dilemma in its search of a larger role in world affairs. While desiring to live up to a rising expectation of Japan's larger contribution to the world community, Tokyo chose, out of a growing sense of uncertainty, to maintain Japan's traditional style of defensive, low-profile diplomacy.

Lost track of who's shystering whom and who's recounting what in the disputed Florida election? Worried about being blindsided by ballot-box developments in other disputed states, such as New Mexico, New Hampshire, Iowa and Wisconsin? A physicist would say that understanding is impossible because the situation is chaotic; tiny variations of input make for 100% uncertainty as to output.

Anticipating election day, Americans need to examine the pieces of the puzzle to see how they fit together. They might first look at a commander in chief without much personal credibility. Next, they could ponder a military without much institutional credibility. Finally, they must factor in the presidential election. The most startling news of last week was the apparent miscommunication about the precise sequence of events on Oct. 12, the day the U.S. warship Cole was blasted. If the ship was bombed when it first pulled into port at Aden, then responsibility for the loss of 17 sailors would go right to the top of the chain of command--to those who decided, as a matter of international power politics, to send the Cole to terrorist-teeming Yemen.

How can Japan become once again a political force in the world when the heavy legacy of its past and its immediate political and economic comfort do not encourage it to take on such new responsibilities? Japan and the United States are facing opposite dilemmas. America is pondering its (relative) decline in the world and reflecting on the fact that its commitments have exceeded its means. The Japanese, thanks to their global economic power, have more means than commitments.

As demand starts to build for President Obama to "do something" about the situation in Syria, let's review where the United States and its citizens stand on the general question of using military force abroad. On this issue, Americans are divided in strange ways. There are liberal hawks and conservative doves, and vice versa. Liberal doves oppose almost any use of U.S. power because their mind-set hardened during Vietnam: War kills children and other living things; we can't be the world's policeman; and so on. This sounds dismissive, but it's not meant to be. In fact, it's more or less where I come out. Then there are liberal "bleeding hawks," who see a humanitarian catastrophe developing in Syria - or virtually any place in the world where there is strife of any kind - and feel that the world's only superpower (for the moment)

In the rubbled forecourt of Lebanon's presidential palace at Baabda, Syrian troops Sunday heated coffee over a fire fueled with shredded posters of fallen Christian strongman Michel Aoun. The flag of Damascus flew over the Lebanese Defense Ministry in nearby Yarze, and for the first time in 12 years, Syrian soldiers patrolled the streets of East Beirut, capital of the Christian heartland.

As new groups scramble to consolidate power and patronage in Los Angeles County's small cities, the pushing and shoving usually takes place underneath public radar. One exception involves a pair of lawyers who, adversaries complain, have not exactly been using the good government handbook. The lawyers, Stanford-educated J. Arnoldo Beltran and Harvard-trained H.

One of the many pleasures of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski novels is that the sharp-tongued, short-tempered detective often seems to be following clues that lead not just to the heart of whatever mystery is at hand, but also into the red-hot center of the zeitgeist itself. Recent books have dealt with the trauma of the Iraq War and the dangers of the Patriot Act. In the 1980s, when V.I. burst onto the scene as one of publishing's first "hard-boiled" female detectives, the plots were spun of the concerns of those times, from corporate malfeasance to labor racketeering.

President Reagan accused Democrats of "a naked display of power politics" as he campaigned here Wednesday for Republican congressional candidate Richard D. McIntyre, whose narrow victory in a 1984 House race was revoked last year after an investigation of contested ballots by a House task force controlled by Democrats. "I'm here today because I was hoping you could right a great injustice," Reagan told an enthusiastic crowd of GOP supporters at the Municipal Stadium.

Look for the emergence of a new political power in L.A. The name--the Book Study Group--certainly doesn't reflect its purpose, which is to push political candidates to take stronger positions on gay issues, especially testing of AIDS drugs. The deliberately misleading title was chosen to allow the group to work on an agenda without interference from other gay activist organizations.