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Article: People power vs. military power in East Asia.
- Article from:
- Foreign Policy in Focus
- Article date:
- February 13, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Institute for Policy Studies. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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People power does not just trouble the sleep of dictators. It can also introduce an element of unpredictability and uncertainty into the security debate in pluralist societies. People, to put it bluntly, can be a problem for the military because civilians frequently come between a military and its objectives.
"In the short term, making governments more accountable to people introduces new uncertainties and limits into diplomacy," Kent Caldor has written about Northeast Asia. Calder's point was that transitional democracies are not ready to open national security to public debate. But the people power quandary perhaps even more profoundly affects Washington. Other ...