Roundup: Media's Take

Martin Jacques: China and Japan ... Two Nations Locked in Mutual Loathing

Martin Jacques is the author of When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. The large-scale demonstrations that erupted across China on Sunday, in response to activists from Japan landing on disputed islands in the East China Sea, were a fierce reminder that it takes little for the deeply rooted animosity between the two countries to rise to the surface. The islands lie near to Taiwan and not far from the Chinese coastline; they are a long way from the main Japanese islands, but not so far from Okinawa, one of Japan’s southernmost islands. How can such small, uninhabited islands – known by the Japanese as the Senkaku and by the Chinese as the Diaoyu – arouse such anger and passion? The reason lies deep in history. The islands were for a long time regarded as Chinese, but they were taken by the Japanese – along with Taiwan and much else – following China’s humiliating defeat in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-5. It marked the beginning of Japanese expansionism in East Asia, with the subsequent colonisation of Korea as well as Taiwan. This reached its zenith after 1931 with the Japanese occupation of north-east China, and from 1937 with the Japanese conquest of further swathes of the country.

Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco: The Hollowing Out of America

Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and writes a weekly column for Truthdig. He was part of the New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He has written for numerous publications including Harper's Magazine, the Nation, Granta, and Foreign Affairs, and is the author of the bestsellers Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion, and War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. The above excerpt is from his new book, Days of Revolt, Days of Destruction.Joe Sacco is widely hailed as the creator of war-reportage comics. He is the author of Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza (winner of the Ridenhour Book Prize), and Safe Area: Gorazde.

Alan Wolfe: The Ridiculous Rise of Ayn Rand

Alan Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and a professor of political science at Boston College....Rand’s “thought,” such as it is, boils down to two propositions. One is that selfishness is the highest of moral virtues. The other is that the masses, above all resentful of success, are parasites living off the hard work of capitalists far superior to them in every way.Self-interest is a useful concept, while selfishness is not. That, I believe, helps explain why Adam Smith is a first-rate thinker and Ayn Rand is an amateur.

Ryan Prior: Romney vs. Niebuhr

Ryan Prior is a college correspondent for USA Today and has previously written for David Frum’s blog at Newsweek and the Daily Beast. 

Anne C. Heller: What Paul Ryan Learned From Ayn Rand

Anne C. Heller is the author of the critically acclaimed Ayn Rand and the World She Made.

Dina Rashed: What Morsi Could Learn From Anwar Sadat

Dina Rashed is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on authoritarian regimes, armed actors, and civil-military relations. On Sunday President Mohamed Morsi issued a new constitutional declaration making major changes in Egypt's current balance of power. According to the new declaration, the president now enjoys all powers that were vested in the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), including legislative. The president sent the defense minister and general commander of the SCAF, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the chief of staff of the armed forces, General Sami Anan, and the heads of the air force and navy into retirement. Although the reshuffle comes in the aftermath of a major a assault by militants in Sinai, it is unrealistic to think of the latest security arrangements as spur of the moment choices in reaction to the attacks. The president's decisions probably have been brewing for some time given the careful selection of succeeding generals. The recent changes may be the most important military purges since former President Anwar Sadat's elimination of the "power centers" in the early 1970s.

David Rothkopf: The Drums of August ... Israel is Not Bluffing

David Rothkopf is CEO and editor at large of Foreign Policy. It is easy to be skeptical when the alarms start going off about a pending Israeli attack on Iran. They seem to come with the seasons, a geopolitical biorhythm that reminds us never to be too comfortable with one of the world's most volatile relationships. But it is worth remembering that the punch line of the story about the little boy who cried wolf is that ultimately, the wolf shows up. For all the good reasons Israel might want to show forbearance, seven of which were pointed out by the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg recently, the reasons to attack are also clearly growing more compelling for Israeli leaders, uniting them on this issue to a greater degree than at any time in the recent past. Diplomacy doesn't seem to be working. The Iranian nuclear program continues moving closer to weapons capability. And the Iranians themselves have matched their rhetoric about the annihilation of Israel with direct support for attacks on its people, like the suicide-bomb murder of five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, which U.S.

Paul R. Pillar: Culture and Constitutionalism in Egypt

Paul R. Pillar is director of graduate studies at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program and a former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia. He is a contributing editor to The National Interest where he writes a daily blog. Much we still do not know about the background to the ouster of senior figures in the Egyptian military. Specifically, it is unclear to what extent President Mohamed Morsi enjoyed the approval or even the active cooperation of elements within the military. We know there has been discontent within the military ranks about the performance of the top brass, entirely apart from any larger political issues about the distribution of power. The recent incident at a border post in the Sinai, in which Egyptian soldiers were killed and military leaders were widely criticized for letting security deteriorate in that corner of the country, was a ready-made occasion for shaking up the top ranks. Whatever cards Morsi had been dealt, he evidently played them skillfully in making the changes in the military leadership positions as well as reclaiming for his office some powers that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had earlier claimed for itself.

Robert G. Rabil: The Battle for Aleppo

Robert G. Rabil served as a chief of emergency for the Red Cross in Lebanon during the country's civil war. He is associate professor of political science and the LLS Distinguished Professor of Current Events at Florida Atlantic University.

Joseph Rago: The Forgotten History of Ryan's Medicare Reform

Mr. Rago is a member of the Journal's editorial board. There was a small but instructive moment in 2010, the summer after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, that shows why Paul Ryan is so unusual for Washington. A panel at the American Enterprise Institute featured Richard Foster, the Medicare actuary who estimates that ObamaCare's $716 billion in Medicare cuts will cause one of six hospitals to become unprofitable. In the audience was Chip Kahn, the president of a for-profit hospital trade group that lobbied for ObamaCare, who stood up to defend the bargain his industry cut in return for 30 million new subsidized customers. Mr. Foster noted that the cuts, which come via a technical change to Medicare payment rates, apply in perpetuity. But the hospitals only get the extra patients once, so the wedge between costs and benefits for hospitals widens over time. "Well," Mr. Kahn replied, "you can say, 'Did you make a bad deal?' Fortunately I don't think I'll probably be working after 2020." When Mr.

William McGurn: Go for Bust, Mr. Romney

William McGurn is a Vice President at News Corporation who writes speeches for CEO Rupert Murdoch. Previously he served as Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Mitt Romney may have pandered when he told a London crowd he would restore the bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office. Then again, symbols play an important role in politics. Now Mr. Romney has given us another by choosing as his running mate Paul Ryan, the market-minded Republican congressman from Wisconsin. In this spirit, let me suggest a man whose bust would be a good companion for Churchill as well as for Mr. Ryan. His name is Sir John James Cowperthwaite. In America, Cowperthwaite's name languishes in obscurity. That should change. Cowperthwaite was the Hong Kong financial secretary whose free-market convictions helped the war-weary colony grow into an economic powerhouse. Milton Friedman once explained the significance of this example: "Hong Kong's been very useful to me and it would be hard to overestimate the debt Hong Kong owes to Cowperthwaite."..

Giles Fraser: Paul Ryan's Faith in Ayn Rand is a Political Problem for Romney

Dr Giles Fraser is priest-in-charge at St Mary's Newington in south London and the former canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral. When I was a teenager, my American girlfriend at the time gave me Ayn Rand's cult novel Atlas Shrugged to read. It changed her life, she said. It changed mine, too. She was not my girlfriend by the morning. It was the most unpleasant thing I'd ever had the misfortune to read. As a work of literature, Atlas Shrugged is drivel, and not simply because it is so up itself with its own perceived radicalism; fundamentally, all propaganda is drivel, even if it is propaganda in a good cause. Rand's cause was to celebrate what she called "the virtue of selfishness", to denigrate the poor as scroungers and to celebrate the muscular individualism of the creative heroes of capitalism. Altruism, she contends, is "complete evil". The question she poses: what would happen if all the bankers and captains of industry went on strike? What would happen if these Atlas-like gods, who hold up the world, decided one day to shrug and refuse to support everyone else? Then the world would be buggered, she contends.

Derek Thompson: The Chart That 'Proves' Obama Will Be Crushed in the Election

Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for the website.How bad will Obama lose in November? Real bad. And people've got charts to prove it. There's this one, from Jim Pethokoukis, predicting a blood bath for incumbents based on a formula that incorporates both economic growth and military fatalities:

Melinda Liu: China’s Trials of the Century

Melinda Liu is Bejiing bureau chief for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, a veteran foreign correspondent, and recipient of a number of awards, including the 2006 Shorenstein Journalism Award, acknowledging her reporting on Asia. A petite, short-haired woman prone to mood swings, the defendant was charged with murder. Although her charismatic husband was nowhere nearby, the case reflected on the powerful leader whose communist rhetoric had won him a loyal following—but whose flaws had caused a key aide to turn against him. Ah, you say, this must be Gu Kailai, wife of disgraced Politburo member Bo Xilai. Gu went on trial on Thursday, along with one of her husband’s employees, Zhang Xiaojun. The court adjourned Thursday afternoon after only a few hours to await verdict and sentencing, state-run media said, and Gu had raised no objections to the accusation that she murdered British businessman Neil Heywood, a family friend. Yet the opening description fits another infamous female accused, whose court appearance was also touted as China’s "trial of the century." That defendant was Jiang Qing, widow of Great Helmsman Mao Zedong.

Michael Freund: Serbia ... Lost and found

Freund is a correspondent and syndicated columnist for The Jerusalem Post. Imagine a country with a long and proud history that is regularly vilified by the international press. It faces mounting pressure to concede its ancient heartland and turn its back on a central part of its cultural and spiritual heritage.Surrounded by numerous foes, in a region where ancient hatreds run deep, this diminutive but intrepid people perseveres, standing firm on principle rather than selling out its age-old patrimony.As familiar as this reality may sound to our Israeli ears, there is a country in the heart of Europe which would find it no less resonant: Serbia...

Michael Kuz: The Abandoned Alliance ... What Might Come of the U.S. Eschewing its Eastern European Allies

Michael Kuz is an instructor at the political-science department of Louisiana State University. He was named Bernard Marcus Fellow by the Institute for Humane Studies in 2011–12 and is an active member of the Philadelphia Society. Adding insult to injury has become a trademark of President’s Obama policies regarding Poland and other Central and Eastern European (CEE) states. After several political jabs and diplomatic mishaps, including referring to Nazi concentration camps as "Polish death camps," he has created considerable tension in relations between the U.S. and the region. Of course, the administration’s lack of commitment to strengthening ties with CEE in the short run is a far greater problem for CEE than for the U.S. Still, Obama’s policies regarding Russia and the CEE states seem to consist in eschewing some old, faithful allies without acquiring new ones. In the long run, the decline of American influence in the region and the failure of the Russian "reset" will undermine the U.S.’s strategic foreign-policy goals. "What on earth happened to Sikorski, why has he become so pro-German and pro-EU all of a sudden?" I was recently asked by a renowned British journalist and writer known for his skepticism toward the European Union and his support for the Anglosphere.

Michael Tanner: Obama Is No Clinton

Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution. Lately President Obama has done everything except seduce an intern in his attempt to morph into Bill Clinton. In virtually every speech, he invokes Clinton’s name, trying to link his policies with those of the popular former president. He has even called upon Clinton to place Obama’s name in nomination at the Democratic National Convention. But, try as he might, Barack Obama, is no Bill Clinton. President Obama says that he wants to raise taxes back to the level they were under Clinton, but that’s not quite true. Under President Obama’s proposal, the top tax bracket would be raised to 39.6 percent. The president has also called for phasing out high-income taxpayers’ itemized deductions, adding another 1.2 percentage points to the effective tax rate, bringing it to 40.8 percent. Add in the 2.9 percent Medicare tax and the top marginal rate would be 43.7 percent, roughly equal to what it was during the Clinton years.

Robert W. Merry: Harry Reid's McCarthyite Screed

Robert W. Merry is editor of The National Interest and the author of books on American history and foreign policy. His most recent book is Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians (Simon & Schuster). In early 1953, the newly inaugurated President Eisenhower nominated Charles E. ("Chip") Bohlen as ambassador to the Soviet Union. The man was eminently qualified—fluent in Russian and widely recognized as one of his country’s foremost Soviet experts.

Ian Buruma: Nostalgia for Winston Churchill Shows An America in Decline

Ian Buruma is a professor of democracy and human rights at Bard College, and the author of Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents. The election of the next president of the United States is surely the most important contest in the democratic world. Yet the issues being contested can seem awfully trivial. Consider, for instance, the question of Winston Churchill’s bust. A bronze sculpture of the British prime minister had been in the Oval Office of the White House since the 1960s. On becoming president, Barack Obama replaced it with a bust of Abraham Lincoln. Mitt Romney, his Republican opponent in November’s election, has vowed to restore it if he wins. Then a White House spokesman said that the bust was still on the premises, just in a different room, whereupon the story changed once more: There were apparently two busts of Churchill; one still in the White House, and one that Obama returned to the British Embassy. Why would anyone care about this?

Edward J. Blakely: Survival Lessons From an Ancient Failed City

Edward J. Blakely is honorary professor of urban policy at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He served as the Executive Director of Recovery in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He is an international urban policy theorist and practitioner. His most recent book is "My Storm."The city of Angkor Wat, Cambodia, was a vibrant, growing metropolis in the late 17th century. Angkor was the New York, Paris or Rome of its time. At its peak from the 9th to 17th centuries AD, no one could have imagined any threat to this Khmer city-state. Yet, Angkor collapsed almost totally in the 17th century, and the reasons behind its demise offer an important lesson for today’s cities.Angkor was built on a vast transportation network: canals acted substantially like freeways. The metropolis grew by expanding its network of canals from the central city to form a vast complex of suburban satellites. As depicted below, this was a gigantic enterprise. Ankgor grew exponentially as internal wealth and power increased. The waterways allowed goods and people to move well beyond the central core of the city.