WASHINGTON ― Talleyrand, the celebrated French diplomat, is said to have offered this inscrutable advice about the use of military power: “One can do everything with bayonets except sit on them.” Perhaps that’s a starting point in thinking about President Obama’s new approach of what might be called “strategic humility” about American power in the turbulent Middle East. How should we apply this pointedly ambiguous French aphorism? Obama might argue that rather than attempt to sit on the bayonet

Charles de Gaulle, the French Resistance leader and later president of France, was once warned that he should not hate his friends more than his enemies. “France,” he replied, “has no friends, only interests.”It would be interesting to know how he would have responded had he learned, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently did, that his phone communications had been secretly monitored by an American spy agency. But it’s a pretty safe bet that he wouldn’t have been surprised.Merkel herself pr

Since the National Assembly hearing on the appointment of high government officials started in 2000, we have watched lawmakers use a common checklist for individual qualification, helped by the media. The top item of inquiry is whether the appointee and his children fulfilled the compulsory military service. Next come the questions about any speculative investment in real estate by the appointee’s family, possibly with false residence registration, and involvement in any plagiarism scandal if he

For months it was a matter of intense speculation: Who would President Obama nominate to chair the Federal Reserve? Now that he has named Janet Yellen, currently the Fed’s vice chair and an exceptionally well-qualified candidate, maybe we can move on to discussing a more important issue: the challenges facing the nation’s central bank.After having taken extraordinary steps to support the economy since the financial crisis hit in 2008, the Fed must now engineer a return to more normal policies, a

BERKELEY, California ― The first time I went to Washington, D.C., as an adult was in 1993, when I arrived to work for President Bill Clinton in the Treasury Department. Back then, America urgently needed to rebalance the federal budget to rein in explosive growth in the debt/GDP ratio; to overhaul America’s extraordinarily expensive and inefficient health care system; and to begin to deal with global warming via a slow ramp-up of a carbon tax.Beyond these three immediate issues were long-run pol

The last thing many Koreans want to see is Japanese soldiers setting foot on this soil again. They shudder at the mere thought of Japanese boots here as it brings back memories of Japan’s ruthless colonial rule.To their dismay, however, the specter of Japanese troops being deployed here has loomed, as Tokyo is seeking, with the full backing of the United States, to lift a self-imposed ban on collective self-defense.The United Nations Charter declares that each member country has the inherent rig

Public utility charges are expected to rise sharply as state-run corporations seek to increase their income to rein in their mounting debt.The government recently told the 41 public entities with assets exceeding 2 trillion won to submit medium- to long-term plans to curb their fast growing debt. One solution suggested by many of the organizations was to transfer a large chunk of the debt to the public through gradual hikes in utility charges.For instance, Korea Express Corp., which is 25 trilli

It has been no secret that intelligence agencies of many countries are engaged in information gathering activities using all means available for the interest of their countries. When it comes to this issue, the initial reaction has almost become the pot calling the kettle black. If, however, one of the targets has been the head of state or the head of government, that is a somewhat different story. Tapping the phone conversation of the top official for a long period of time is way out of line. D

If imitation really is the greatest form of flattery, Shinzo Abe should be thrilled the Chinese are copying his “Abenomics” strategy to excite investors. The rest of the world shouldn’t be.China isn’t cribbing the Japanese prime minister’s actual blueprint, but his formula of spin and hype that has convinced the world something that doesn’t yet exist is real. The key to a great ad campaign is attracting customers and keeping them, something Abe has done with a brilliance that could teach the Ede

Today it’s easy to assume that social media platforms are a recent development, a phenomenon unique to the Internet age. But the exchange of media along social networks of friends and acquaintances is in fact much older than Facebook, Twitter or MySpace.Consider the situation in the late Roman republic, in the 1st century BC. At the time there were no printing presses and no paper. Instead, information circulated among the intermarried families of the Roman elite through the exchange of papyrus

Chancellor Angela Merkel won re-election in Germany with an impressive share of the vote, but talks to form a coalition remain jammed over whether to establish a minimum wage. This focus is myopic.The next government ― probably a grand coalition between Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party ― will need to concentrate on fundamental issues affecting the next generation that have been neglected under Merkel as she concentrated on balancing the budget.Germany may be th

PARIS ― “Day by day, Europe is moving further away from Turkey,” Egemen Bagı, Turkey’s Minister for European Union Affairs, declared last week. But the reverse is equally true: With a mixture of disillusion and defiance, Turkey has been distancing itself from Europe in recent years. “If you do not want us,” the Turks appear to be saying, “we really do not want you.”In reality, nearly three years after the beginning of the “Arab Spring,” Turkey is more in search of itself than it is of Europe, ev

Thirty, 20 or even 10 years from now, will historians write that the unbridled zeal of the National Security Agency fatally undermined U.S. leadership in the Information Age and the creation of a truly global Internet?The latest sign this could happen comes from the European Parliament, where legislators have advanced privacy legislation that would forbid the transfer of data generated in the European Union to an outside country unless the subject in question and the EU source country first give

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark paper that helped delineate the federal poverty line. A huge leap forward in its day, the poverty line established credible criteria for what constituted an acceptable standard of living. It continues to be the official measure used, for example, to determine who will get what subsidies under assistance programs such as food stamps, housing assistance and Medicaid.However, like anything half a century old, it could use a little updating. By it

The HealthCare.gov website is a disaster ― symbolic to Obamacare opponents, disheartening to supporters, and incredibly frustrating to people who just need to buy insurance. Some computer experts are saying the only way to save the system is to scrap the current bloated code and start over.Looking back, it seems crazy that neither the Barack Obama administration nor the public was prepared for the startup difficulties. There’s no shortage of database experts willing to opine on the complexities

An occupational hazard for foreign journalists is traipsing into “exotic Japan” and getting lost in a forest of stereotypes, fuzzy data and tarted-up headlines.Such is the case with the media’s renewed obsession with reports that the Japanese have given up on sex. This canard emerges every couple of years, but it’s snowballing anew thanks to an Oct. 19 Guardian headline screaming: “Why Have Young People in Japan Stopped Having Sex?” The references to dominatrixes-turned-sex counselors, men who g

The Afghan people’s most dangerous foe is not the Taliban. It’s not Pakistan or al-Qaida. No, it’s their president, Hamid Karzai.U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Kabul earlier this month and spent more than 24 hours with Karzai, trying to work out an agreement that would allow a modest contingent of U.S. troops to remain in the country after 2014, to continue protecting Afghans from their enemies.The two men said they came to agreement on several important issues. But the pact remains

Saudi Arabia has been throwing a diplomatic temper tantrum lately, threatening a “major shift” away from the U.S. over differences on Iran, Syria and other issues. The Obama administration can relax.Trouble has been brewing in this relationship for years. Saudi Arabia was aghast at President Barack Obama’s support for the 2011 Egyptian revolution, which overthrew another old U.S. ally, former President Hosni Mubarak. It was aggrieved, too, at the lack of U.S. support for that year’s Saudi-led in

PARIS ― Our standards for heroism really have tanked, and a new Hollywood movie has driven that point home ― at 180 mph.Ron Howard’s breathtaking new movie, “Rush,” is the story of the famous 1976 season of Formula One legends Niki Lauda and James Hunt, during which world champion Lauda had a near-fatal crash at Germany’s Nrburgring track. The film underscores just how easily impressed we’ve become as a society since the Lauda-Hunt era. I walked out of the theater wanting to punt a Bieber.Just 4

A new report has sent a jolt through the world of spies and spy-handlers, with revelations of a major betrayal by a key ally of the United States and the West. That ally is Turkey, a member of NATO, a candidate for membership in the European Union and nation with close ties to the United States and, until a few years ago, a good friend of Israel.The well-connected Washington Post writer David Ignatius reported the shocking news that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave Iran the names