On Thursday the Naval Diplomat will have the privilege of moderating a roundtable featuring Vice Admiral Yoji Koda, a former commander-in-chief of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force fleet, and Admiral Sureesh Mehta, a former chief of naval staff of the Indian Navy. That's distinguished company for your humble scribe to keep. The panel will take place at this year's China Maritime Studies Institute conference, which is probing "China's Evolving Surface Fleet." That should make for a bracing mix of perspectives on the PLA Navy.

Think about the asymmetries between the two seafaring Asian states. Japan faces China across the congested Yellow Sea, an operating ground for both the JMSDF and PLA Navy fleets. The island state also lies well within striking range of shore-based Chinese sea power, manifest in tactical aircraft, antiship cruise missiles, and antiship ballistic missiles. The PLA Navy surface fleet is a beneficiary of extended-range fire support from Fortress China -- and all mariners know a ship's a fool to fight a fort. The JMSDF, then, executes its daily routine under the shadow of an unseen but imposing arsenal.

Geographic distance affords India time -- sort of. India is remote from China by sea. Ships must undertake tortuous voyages through the Malacca, Sunda, or Lombok straits to reach the Indian Ocean from East Asia (or vice versa), or else detour around the South China Sea rim, or else steam way, way around southern Australia. China also has abundant business to tend to in the China seas, limiting the forces it can spare for South Asia. India thus enjoys some leisure to build up its seagoing capacity, whereas Japan already finds itself in the thick of strategic competition with China. On the other hand, the two continental powers share a contested land frontier. They can apply pressure on one another without even putting ships to sea -- much as Chinese troops have done along the "line of actual control" in recent days. Bilateral encounters, then, can unfold along direct or indirect axes, on land or at sea.

Nor do the differences stop at geography. Japan is an established naval power of decades' standing. The JMSDF boasts a world-class fleet featuring such platforms as light aircraft carriers, Aegis-equipped destroyers, and diesel-electric submarines. India is a sea power on the rise, albeit one with proven capabilities such as naval aviation. Whatever New Delhi's travails with the Admiral Gorshkov/Vikramaditya carrier project and indigenous flattop construction, naval aviation has a long pedigree in the Indian Navy. Indeed, seamanship and tactical excellence appear to be virtues common to Japanese and India seafarers. For now the human factor appears to work in their favor vis-à-vis the PLA Navy. Whether that will remain true as China's navy matures remains to be seen.

And then there's the American factor.  Japan and the United States are the closest of allies, bound together by a security pact that dates from 1951. (One hopes it doesn't retire at 65.) Japan is also home to the U.S. Seventh Fleet, meaning that the PLA Navy must reckon with a combined fleet, not the JMSDF alone. India and the United States have concluded no formal alliance. Nor are they likely to, in light of India's nonaligned tradition, suspicions of the United States that linger from the Cold War, and proprietary attitudes toward the Indian Ocean region. In all likelihood New Delhi would make common cause with Washington if under extreme duress. Still, there's no automatic commitment akin to the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. Debating whether to join forces would introduce unknowns during times of crisis, a hothouse environment where uncertainty is high, options narrow, and the pressure to act intensifies.

I could doubtless push this comparison much further but will stop here (for now). America should wish Japan and India well in their seaborne ventures. More than that, it should keep working with them to hone the skills and interoperability crucial to any combined fighting force. That keeps options open for policymakers.

Eeyore is an unworthy metaphor for superpower diplomacy. Of  late, nonetheless, the lovable yet perpetually downcast donkey from E. E. Milne’s classic Winnie the Pooh books and films seems to encapsulate the American national mood. The national-security establishment in particular is in a funk that makes Eeyore look upbeat. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone weeping and gnashing teeth over the budgetary "sequester," I could retire a rich man. The topic came up repeatedly at our Fletcher School roundtable last week, and that gathering was far from atypical on this count. Is some pain in the offing? Sure. But as Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter pointed out recently, sequestration amounts to "temporary budget turbulence imposed by the Congress." Bravo! The cuts imperil neither the strategic pivot to Asia nor other pressing priorities.

Atttitudes have consequences. It’s been said decline is a choice. So is declinism, the deep-seated pessimism that holds that one's day in the sun is slipping irresistibly into nightfall. Indeed, I would say the latter is the deadlier sin by far. Decline implies misallocating resources. It's correctable. Great powers can bounce back. Classical Athens rebuilt its maritime empire scant decades after a crushing defeat at Spartan hands. Great Britain and its Royal Navy reached a nadir in 1781, losing to the French Navy at the Battle of the Virginia Capes, only to smash the same fleet the next year in the West Indies. Britain went on to a triumph over Napoleonic France that ushered in a century of nautical mastery. The U.S. Navy rebounded from the "dead apathy" (Mahan's term) of the post-Civil War years, from the ravages of Depression-era economics, and from the "hollow force" of the post-Vietnam years. Material decline can be put right with grit and determination.

Declinism connotes despair, the sort of spiritual rot that invites real-world repercussions. Thinkers from Clausewitz to Schelling depict national strength as a product of power and resolve. And others have to believe in U.S. power and resolve. Few foreign governments, whether allies, opponents, or bystanders, will take seriously a superpower that's constantly kicking the dirt. Declinism could embolden competitors while prompting allies and friends to look elsewhere for support.

Fortunately, Asians seem cheerier about American staying power than Americans are. Over at Foreign Policy, University of Southern California professor David Kang touts low defense spending figures in Asia as proof that no one fears China. But many Asians do fear China. Try walking down the streets of Manila and asking about Beijing's conduct at Scarborough Shoal, or quiz the man on the streets of Tokyo about the Senkaku Islands. We could just as easily interpret Kang's numbers as a token of confidence in U.S. fortitude and maritime might. Asian governments, that is, see little need to spend more on defense so long as a trustworthy protector remains nearby. If there's a problem, it's that Asians repose excessive confidence in the U.S. military. Discouraging free-riding is a diplomatic chore to which Washington must apply itself. But that, as they say, is a story for another day.

So buck up, all you Eeyores out there.

Editor's Note: Yesterday, The Diplomat in partnership with Tufts University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the Fletcher Forum hosted a panel discussion on U.S. Foreign Policy. The following remarks were delivered by our own Naval Diplomat.

The question I’ve been asked to venture a few thoughts on is, can the U.S. military pivot during the sequester? My answer: yes, if it rediscovers habits of mind that come with tight budgets. I am a seaman and view the world through a seaman’s eyes, so my remarks have a saltwater flavor. The good news is that operating on a shoestring used to be second nature for the U.S. Navy. Ours wasn’t a two-ocean navy until World War II, within living memory.

One thing seems clear: if resources are going to shrink, the United States must either shed secondary commitments or keep these commitments through economy-of-force measures. Safe parts of the globe can be entrusted to local allies or to small, low-end military contingents. But here’s a theoretical question for us to ponder: it appears that great powers have a hard time letting go of longstanding commitments, no matter how compelling the logic for doing so appears. Maybe you can help me puzzle out why.

Let me call in some intellectual fire support. Our patron saint at the War College, Clausewitz, teaches that there is no higher or simpler law of strategy than to concentrate resources at decisive places on the map at the decisive time. This is somewhat less true in peacetime, when we have to disperse forces within theaters to perform a variety of missions. But the underlying logic remains. We should match power with purpose in as few theaters as possible, lest we attenuate our military resources into irrelevance.

How do we know when to shed a commitment? Well, Clausewitz offers two thoughts. First, he notes that the value we assign our political goals dictates the magnitude and duration of the effort we put into obtaining those goals. That is, it determines how many lives and resources, and how much treasure we’re prepared to expend on behalf of our objectives, and for how long. The corollary is that when an endeavor starts costing more than it’s worth, we should look for the exit. We should cut the best deal we can and get out.

Second, he sets a rather high bar for undertaking secondary theaters or commitments. Such a theater should pay off disproportionately without risking too much in the theaters that matter the most. Again, we should be choosy about taking on new commitments, and flexible about shucking off old ones. And indeed, top-level strategic guidance seems to abide by Clausewitzian cost/benefit logic. Our 2007 Maritime Strategy, for instance, focuses attention on the Western Pacific and the greater Indian Ocean.

But if you read it closely, it also instructs the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard to remain prepared to seize control of any body of water on the face of the earth—unilaterally if need be. Again, retrenchment is hard. Why is that? Let me offer a few candidate explanations. First, Thucydides depicts fear, honor, and interest as the prime movers that drive human actions. Interests are largely subjective. Consequently, fear and honor color how we measure the importance of interests as well as ideals. As a result, we may fret about losing credibility with allies, or we may simply worry about the unintended consequences of changing the status quo.

Second, powerful constituencies agitate on behalf of particular regions or commitments. For instance, Europe-first is a tradition with a long pedigree in U.S. foreign policy. Entrusting safe zones like Europe and the Atlantic Ocean to local guardians in order to free up resources for Asia is tougher than Clausewitz makes it sound.

Third, allies fear American abandonment. The concept of free-riding has bad connotations, but it says something true about coalition maintenance. If an external provider of security has been there for decades, it’s hard to ask your taxpayers to take on the burden of supplying this international public good—even if you inhabit a region where threats are minimal.

And finally, bureaucratic culture plays some part. The idea of allocating the entire surface of the globe to some regional command or another is engraved on the culture of the U.S. national-security community. Google our Unified Command Plan if you doubt me. Thus a strong bureaucratic interest may lobby against drawing down in what appears to be—to them—a critical place on the map.

What to do? There are no simple answers. As I suggested up front, one thing U.S. practitioners and pundits should do is rediscover an older way of thinking about strategy and forces. To return to a naval example: before the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940, U.S. decision-makers never assumed they can manage events everywhere. Our fleet was big enough to oversee events in the Atlantic, or the Pacific, but not both. That’s why thinkers like Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt worried incessantly about where to station the fleet, and whether to divide it between coasts. They had to think in terms of managing risk. So must we, if our navy keeps shrinking.

Do I wish we had the resources to sustain our current posture as guarantor of the international system? Of course. But Congress makes strategic decisions when it makes budgetary decisions. If lawmakers decide we will have fewer naval and military resources, it only makes sense to cut back on overseas commitments—keeping ends, ways, and means in sync. That will be even more true if climate scientists have it right and a new maritime theater—the Arctic Ocean—opens to shipping in the 2030s. The Arctic washes against our shores, contains natural resources, and will provide convenient shipping routes for part of the year. We can hardly ignore that theater—and it will tax military forces that are already in short supply.

Bottom line, we need to start relearning how to execute a strategy of relative naval and military poverty. And time’s a-wasting!

Uncharacteristically blunt language issued forth from Tokyo on Tuesday, after the news broke that eight Chinese maritime-enforcement ships had entered the waters around the contested Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. While a Chinese presence in these waters has become commonplace in recent months, this was the largest flotilla to fly the PRC flag near the archipelago. The deployment reportedly came after Japanese nationalists ventured near the islands in small craft. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reported instructing Japanese forces "to take resolute measures against attempts to enter our territorial waters and make a landing." If Chinese personnel landed on the islets, added Abe, "then of course we will forcibly expel them."

There are a few question marks to the encounter. First consider the Chinese side. Some news reporting attributed the Chinese action to Japanese officials' recent visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Such visits are guaranteed to raise hackles not just in China but in South Korea. It stands to reason that there may have been some link between the two events. But correlation isn't causation. Beijing made no explicit connection between Yasukuni and the Senkakus. This week's maritime incursion, moreover, differed from previous Sino-Japanese encounters only in scale, not in kind. And China's leadership has vowed to maintain a regular if not standing presence in waters that lap against the archipelago.

Tokyo's break with low-key diplomacy was more intriguing. Sovereignty is about control of territory. By asserting jurisdiction over the archipelago and adjacent waters, Beijing has in effect asserted the right to land personnel there at its discretion. But again, this is nothing new. It's part and parcel of China's claim. Did Prime Minister Abe have some reason to expect a landing now? Was he afraid Japanese hotheads would go ashore and Chinese mariners would follow? If so, Abe was probably trying to mount a deterrent. Displaying capability while laying down a marker about Tokyo's resolve could dissuade Beijing from doing something rash – and irrevocable.

The larger context may have played some part as well. In late March a PLA Navy flotilla paid a visit to James Shoal, reaffirming Beijing's claim to "indisputable sovereignty" over most of the South China Sea. The Malaysian government was moved to protest the foreign naval presence a mere 44 nautical miles off its shores, and deep within its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone. While ASEAN holds out hope for a code of conduct in Southeast Asian waters, that hope dimmed from already weak candlepower with the PLA Navy's fresh provocations. Abe may have meant to serve notice that Japan, a great seafaring power, falls into a different category than weak South China Sea states. It can push back.

Sino-Japanese relations may be entering a new phase. This bears watching.

Editor's Note: Below is the full text of the Naval Diplomat’s essay for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on February 26, 2013. It appeared in Shihoko Goto, ed., Taiwan and the U.S. Pivot to Asia: New Realities in the Region? Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, March 2013, pp. 25-32.

Apathy kills. The Obama administration’s pivot to Asia—a politico-military endeavor that combines strategic mass, strategic maneuver, and geography in intensely competitive surroundings—may well bolster Taiwan’s security vis-à-vis the mainland.Yet the pivot’s capacity to dissuade or defeat China hinges on whether U.S. Navy relief forces can reach the island’s vicinity, do battle, and prevail at a cost acceptable to the American state and society. This is an open question—but one that Taiwan’s armed forces can, and must, help answer in the affirmative. The island must bear a vigorous hand in its defense rather than passively awaiting rescue. Otherwise it may stand alone in its hour of need.

Get Serious

Taiwan, then, must think of itself as a partner in as well as a beneficiary of the United States’strategic pirouette.Why? Because the remorseless logic of self-help, whereby nation-states bear primary responsibility for their own defense, still rules international affairs. And because appearances count in alliance politics. A lesser ally that covets help from a stronger one must demonstrate that it merits the effort, lest the strong stand aside during a crisis. Taipei’s performance is suspect in both military and diplomatic terms.Defense budgets, a rough gauge of political resolve, have dwindled from already meager levels. Military spending stood at 2.2 percent of GDP in 2012, down from 3.8 percent in 1994.

For comparison’s sake, 2 percent of GDP constitutes NATO’s benchmark for defense expenditures. Taiwan barely meets the standard fixed by an alliance whose members face no threat. This is not the behavior of an ally serious about its defense.

Taipei thus remains on a peacetime footing even as the cross-strait military balance tilts more and more lopsidedly toward the mainland. Its armed forces’ capacity to withstand assailants long enough for U.S. forces to reach the theater is increasingly doubtful. Only by conspicuously upgrading its defenses can the island’s leadership help a U.S. president justify the costs and hazards of ordering increasingly scarce, and thus increasingly precious, forces into battle against a peer competitor. Otherwise the American people and their elected officials may ask why they should risk vital interests for the sake of an ally that appears unwilling to help itself.

Granted, this is a dark picture to paint at a time when knowledgeable observers proclaim that peace has broken out in the Taiwan Strait. But think about it. America’s superpower status—among the most vital of vital interests—hinges on sea power. Losing a major part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in an afternoon would set back the republic’s standing in the world. Even in victory, a costly encounter could carry dire consequences for both the United States and the global order over which its sea services preside.

In short, U.S. presidents can no longer blithely send forces into combat in the Western Pacific. It is no longer 1995-1996, when the Clinton administration dispatched two aircraft-carrier task forces to the island’s vicinity to deter Chinese aggression during presidential elections. The prospective adversary is far more capable, the costs of battle mounting in relative terms. After all, each ship or aircraft lost in combat constitutes a bigger proportion of a smaller force. Beijing is counting on the increasing “lumpiness” of U.S. military capital to help dissuade Washington from involving itself in a cross-strait war.

The decision will be doubly difficult if Taiwan seems indifferent to its own security—indeed,to its own political survival.The island must help America pivot to the region rather than assume help will automatically arrive during times of strife.

Competing to Mold Washington’s Cost/Benefit Calculus

Theory helps clarify such matters. Strategic theorist Carl von Clausewitz urges statesmen and commanders to impose rationality on international strife—an arena for chance, “friction,” and dark passions—as best they may. The value of the political object, writes Clausewitz, should govern the magnitude and duration of the effort a belligerent puts forth to gain that object. In other words, how much importance a combatant attaches to its goals determines how many resources—lives, weaponry, treasure—it should expend on theundertaking, and for how long. It is the price a belligerent is willing to pay.

Should the costs come to exceed the likely gains, adds Clausewitz, the leadership should write off its losses and exit the conflict as gracefully as possible. Such hard scrabble logic should trouble Taipei, raising the prospect of American abandonment. And it gets worse. No enthusiast for alliances, Clausewitz adds laconically that

"One country may support another’s cause, but will never take it so seriously as it takes its own. A moderately-sized force will be sent to its help; but if things go wrong the operation is pretty well written off, and one tries to withdraw at the smallest cost."

Allied commitments, that is, are typically tepid. Harvard professor Steve Walt maintains that common interests and threats, cultural and social affinities, and incentives or coercion furnished by the leading partner can bind together alliances and coalitions. If so, his taxonomy offers scant comfort for Taipei.

Consider. The same things are not at stake for Taiwan and the United States in East Asia. Washington must uphold regionwide and global interests while keeping the peace in the Strait. Taipei concerns itself mainly with cross-strait relations. Taipei clearly cannot pay off or compel Washington to fight on its behalf.That leaves sympathy for a fellow democracy under threat as the chief motive impelling the United States to intervene.Yet Walt declares that social and cultural affinities are relatively weak adhesives. Doubtless Clausewitz would agree.

To bias a stronger patron’s cost/benefit calculus in favor of military intervention, accordingly,a lesser ally like Taiwan must shoulder as much of the burden as it can, demonstrating it remains a going concern while keeping down the costs to its ally. To help the United States pivot to its defense, Taiwan must demonstrate that the fight will not be too costly or take too long. Showing the American people and their leaders that they can advance a worthy but secondary—for them—cause at an acceptable price will easeWashington’s decision to intervene.

"Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt, / And any thing that may not misbecome / The mighty sender, doth he prize you at." Since it's the week after Patriot's Day, it's probably heresy not to quote Longfellow or some other patriotic man of letters in response to the Boston bombings. But to me it's Shakespeare, the greatest of Englishmen, who sums up the proper sentiment toward such atrocities. The Bard has the Duke of Exeter deliver this marvelous taunt from Henry V to the Dauphin of France on the eve of Henry's cross-channel offensive. It certainly embodies the attitude of this former denizen of Cambridge and Watertown.

And attitude matters in twilight struggles such as this one. Readers of this site know I'm a follower of the late Rear Admiral J. C. Wylie, who classifies military campaigns as "sequential" or "cumulative." Sequential campaigns unfold from tactical action to tactical action, each leading to the next. You can generally use vectors to plot them on the map or nautical chart. They have destinations. Cumulative campaigns are nonlinear. Plotting them on the map looks like spattering paint everywhere, with each spot depicting a tactical action unrelated to any other action in time or space. The aggregate effect of this scattershot approach is to wear out an adversary -- much as Henry Adams observed that the British blockade, a quintessential cumulative campaign, drove the American economy to "exhaustion" during the War of 1812. It leads to no decisive battle or definite end. Morale is crucial when under prolonged assault.

Terrorism is another cumulative mode of warfare, and so is counterterrorism. Counterterror forces can't be everywhere at all times to thwart individual attacks. It would bankrupt the public treasury, and no one would want to live in such a garrison society. That being the case, ordinary people will bear the brunt of the initial response, whether by fighting back -- remember the heroism of the passengers of Flight 93, self-made warriors who prevented a third strike on September 11 -- or by rendering aid and comfort to victims, or by supplying the authorities with information. Everyone is a potential first responder.

Come to think of it, there is a Patriot's Day tie-in here. "Minutemen" such as Captain John Parker -- rank-and-file citizens who took up arms to defend their communities -- make a fitting model for societies under siege. Parker led his ragtag force of citizen-soldiers out onto Lexington Green on April 19, 1775 to oppose a Redcoat column marching to seize a weapons cache at Concord. Thus commenced the American Revolution. His statue still adorns the green. (My daughter seems unimpressed when reminded that she learned to walk under Captain Parker's watchful gaze.) The heartening public response to last week's events suggests that the defiant Minutemen ethos lives on in Boston. Let's keep it that way.

Last month the Economist published a brace of articles setting in motion a spirited debate over whether India has a strategic culture. The authors draw an unfavorable contrast between neighboring China, whose "rise is a given," and India, which "is still widely seen as a nearly-power that cannot quite get its act together." They catalogue several factors that purportedly explain New Delhi's underperformance in diplomacy and strategy. They pronounce the diplomatic apparatus "ridiculously feeble," for example, not to mention trivial in size; the political class evinces little interest in or taste for grand strategy; civilian officials at the Defense Ministry are "chronically short of military expertise." The authors mention ideas mostly in passing. Nonalignment, quasi-pacifism, and mistrust of the West remain the north star for decision makers, inhibiting strategic thought and action.

Insightful as the Economist pieces are, they conflate several related but separate things under the rubric of strategic culture. Indian commentators such as retired rear admiral Raja Menon have largely followed suit. Individual leadership, bureaucratic politics, and civil-military relations put in appearances in such accounts alongside strategic culture itself. These dimensions are closely related but far from identical. It's worth separating them out to glimpse the challenges before India. Some of these challenges are relatively straightforward to tackle. Others will demand time, determined political leadership, and, in all likelihood, some event or series of events that demonstrates -- in irrefutable fashion -- that the cultural reform project is worth undertaking. Military defeats and other setbacks have a way of clearing the national mind. Often times it takes a debacle to overcome political inertia and create a constituency for modifying a nation's strategic culture.

What is strategic culture? To borrow from scholar Colin Gray , it refers to the "disarmingly elementary" notion that "a security community is likely to think and behave in ways that are influenced by what it has taught itself about itself and its relevant contexts. And that education, to repeat, rests primarily upon the interpretation of history and history’s geography (or should it be geography’s history?)." What have the subcontinent's geography and venerable history primed Indians to think about strategy? How should New Delhi comport itself in regional and world affairs, and what sorts of actions are unthinkable?

Conscious cultural reform is a project of mammoth scope. Inexpert individuals can be replaced with knowledgeable ones. Civil-military relations can be revamped, as the United States has done several times within living memory. One of my mentors, Professor Carnes Lord, observes that bureaucracies can be remade through the artful -- and, one hopes, metaphorical -- wielding of Niccolò Machiavelli's "poisoned stiletto" to remove recalcitrant officials. But revising Indian strategic culture requires investigating the dim recesses of the subcontinent's past. Scholars must foray well beyond the post-independence decades to sketch a meaningful cultural profile. Kautilya's Arthashastra, a manual of statecraft from classical antiquity, is worth studying. So are the habits of mind foisted on the nation by outsiders such as the Mughal Dynasty and the British Empire. And on and on. Figuring out where the nation stands is central to discerning its path ahead.

Once scholars and statesmen understand Indian strategic culture, what should they so about it? It's ultimately up to Indians to decide what kind of nation they want to be. To manage the culture, they could do worse than study U.S. history, especially the century after our founding. Nonalignment, quasi-pacifism, and mistrust of the West -- in this case European empires -- were once the watchwords of American diplomacy and strategy, just as the Economist notes they are for India today. New Delhi could do worse than review how Americans consulted their "usable past"  and used it to manage the republic's self-image, and its strategic behavior, as it ascended to world power.

India has a strategic culture. Learning from others can advance its cause of self-discovery.

Editor's Note: The following is a guest post from Terence Roehrig, a Professor in National Security Affairs and the Director of the Asia-Pacific Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He is also a Research Fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard University in the International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom. The views voiced here are his alone."

Barring a miscalculation or accident, in the next few weeks tension levels will begin to decrease along with continued assessments of what happened and the motives of the new Kim Jong-un regime.  Yet, the more important question is what’s next in dealing with North Korea.

Several key parameters shape any future policy toward North Korea.  First, Pyongyang is unlikely to relinquish its nuclear weapons capabilities.  Nuclear weapons have become a core element of its security strategy and the lesson to North Korean leaders from Iraq and Libya is that regimes without nuclear weapons are vulnerable to a take-down. 

Second, despite Pyongyang’s hopes, the international community will not accept it as a nuclear weapons state.  A nuclear North Korea threatens regional security, sends the wrong message to others trying to acquire nuclear weapons, particularly Iran, and seriously weakens the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Third, military action against the North Korean nuclear program is unlikely.  A military strike against North Korean nuclear facilities would be very dangerous, possibly setting off a chain of events that could wreck the peninsula. South Korea has made absolutely clear that it will retaliate if North Korea initiates some type of provocation but a direct military strike to eliminate its nuclear program is unlikely. Finally, despite some indications of unhappiness with Pyongyang’s actions, there are limits to what China is willing to do to exert pressure on North Korea.  To be clear, Beijing has not been happy with North Korea’s behavior but the historical bonds and strategic interests between the two countries make it unlikely China will turn up the heat. 

So once the current tensions die down, where do we go from here?  Many have called for increased dialogue with North Korea. The United States has had a few low level meetings with the North’s UN delegation with little progress. Given the collapse of the 2012 Leap Day Deal, Washington is unlikely to expend much capital to begin high level talks.  Fittingly, South Korea will likely take the lead in beginning a dialogue with Pyongyang. Throughout the past few weeks, South Korean President Park Geun-hye has talked about engaging North Korea through a trust-building process.  Pyongyang has not said much about these efforts but recently rejected talks as a “cunning ploy.” Thus, it is not clear North Korea is interested in talking just yet.  Dialogue is a good direction; talks need not be appeasement and help to increase our understanding of the regime and its new leader. Yet given the irreconcilable positions on denuclearization and levels of mistrust on both sides, it will be a long, tough road.    

The Naval Diplomat has been critical of our Taiwanese friends of late, so it would be churlish not to send out a hearty huzzah! when one is due. This is one such time.

Last week the news broke that officials in Taipei and Tokyo had agreed to permit fishing vessels from Taiwan to ply their trade within the 12-nautical-mile belt of territorial sea girdling the Senkaku/Diaoyu archipelago. Though the deal may look trivial, here are three intertwined reasons it's a nifty bit of statesmanship:

3. It shows that Taipei is no one's crummy little toady. For awhile it appeared as though Taiwan might side with the mainland in the Senkakus impasse. Ganging up against Japan would have set a disturbing precedent for playground-style diplomacy in the China seas. Cross-strait cooperation of this sort would not just bestow legitimacy on Beijing's effort to strongarm Tokyo, but also start to turn Japan's southern marine flank. To Japanese eyes, driving a salient into the Western Pacific would constitute a worrisome geostrategic development indeed. President Ma Ying-jeou and his lieutenants wisely desisted from helping the mainland bully their common neighbor.

2. It reminds everyone that Taiwan remains a responsible de facto sovereign. International agreements are made by sovereign governments -- a status the mainland denies Taipei. China has sought to constrict the island's "international space" for many years, for instance by foisting the stilted name "Chinese Taipei" on it at international gatherings large and small, and by denying it entry into multinational institutions whose members are, after all, sovereign states. By concluding even a modest deal like the one with Japan, Taiwan subtly reminds outsiders that it retains its independence in international affairs, and that its people possess the capacity and the right to decide their own destiny.

1. It shows how mature powers conduct themselves. A stench has surrounded the term appeasement since 1938, when the Munich Conference bartered away parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler's Germany without the Czechs' consent. Munich involved a particularly toxic variant of appeasement, but in reality nations appease one another all the time. One doubts, for instance, that the United States will come to blows with Canada or other NATO allies over how the Arctic fits into the law of the sea. They will debate, and sparks may be struck, but they will find some mutually acceptable compromise. Similarly, the Taiwan-Japan pact shows that it is indeed possible for Asian powers to shelve big disputes indefinitely while getting on with everyday life.

Not a bad piece of diplomatic judo vis-à-vis, ahem, a certain regional power that appears to view the land grab as the way to resolve nettlesome territorial disputes. More, please.

We're rapidly closing in on the centennial of the outbreak of World War I. The Great War is like an ugly bug. You want to look away but are too fascinated to. It appears as though all of the European belligerents underwent a kind of inversion experience that turned the rational calculus of war on its head. The more lives and treasure armies spent in battle, the more commanders, pressure groups, and rank-and-file citizens wanted out of the effort. The more they demanded, the greater resistance they provoked from the enemy, and the more the bloodletting on the Western Front dragged on. No one appeared willing to abandon the sunk costs of war, as economics would mandate. Political leaders who might have done so proved too weak-willed to resist popular and military sentiments. Buffeted by passions and bereft of strong leadership, Europe stepped through the looking glass.

Carl von Clausewitz opines that the value a society assigns its political goals governs how much effort it expends to obtain those goals. That is, it determines the rate at which the combatant invests lives and resources in the endeavor, and how long it will keep up that rate of expenditure. Makes sense, doesn't it? Rational actors decide what price they're prepared to pay for something, and they cancel the sale if the seller raises the price above that level. But again, Clausewitzian cost/benefit logic presupposes a kind of sobriety that was conspicuously absent from European capitals until late in the day, when statesmen like Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson restored some semblance of rationality to the Allied cause.

In a real sense, then, the mounting "magnitude" and ever-longer "duration" of the war effort -- how much the belligerents spent and for how long -- drove the value European decisionmakers assigned their cause. If so, this mental reversal also negated the corollary to Clausewitz's rational calculus, namely that leaders should look for a graceful way out of an enterprise whose costs have grown unbearable. If there's no upper bound on the expenditure of national resources, whence do you summon the discipline to cut your losses?

The baneful effects of flouting cost/benefit logic were felt well beyond the battlefield. I think the decoupling of costs from benefits helps account for the surreal feeling you get from reading about the Great War. It may also help explain the black, apocalyptic mood that gripped European populaces during the interwar years, as deftly recounted by Richard Overy in The Twilight Years. Doomsaying was commonplace in that age. It was the era when the dystopian novels of Aldous Huxley appeared, when George Orwell chronicled the failings of British imperialism in Burma and his life as a bum on the streets of London and Paris, and when radical ideologies took hold among the resentful and dispossessed.

Such is the cultural and social backsplash of abandoning the rational calculus of war. That potential for malign consequences is worth remembering.