I propose to examine the resurgence of East Asia in the final decades of the long twentieth century in relation to three major forces that shape the era and the region: nationalism, regionalism and globalism. I understand contemporary globalism primarily in relation to the US bid to forge a hegemonic order predicated on military and diplomatic supremacy and neoliberal economic presuppositions enshrined in international institutions. “The characteristic policy vectors of neo-liberalism,” Richard Falk comments in his critique of the economic and social dimensions of globalism, “involve such moves as liberalization, privatization, minimizing economic regulation, rolling back welfare, reducing expenditures on public goods, tightening fiscal discipline, favoring freer flows of capital, strict controls on organized labor, tax reductions, and unrestricted currency repatriation.” It is the sum total of the effects of these measures, from the perspectives of global governance, social justice, and the environment, that drove his conclusions about Predatory Globalism, a volume that appeared in the year of the Seattle anti-globalization protests and a decade before the economic meltdown of 2008.

This paper proposes the creation of a Northeast Asian Biodiversity Corridor (NEABC) that would connect in a consistent manner critical habitat in Russia, China, and the Korean Peninsula. Such a corridor may be considered now because of decades of scientific and policy work to establish a DMZ Peace Park, a mountain-watershed ecosystem network in the ROK, nature reserves in the DPRK, and cross-border mega-species migration corridors between the DPRK, China, and Russia. The paper reviews each of these stepping and foundation stones, and refers to proposed regional biodiversity corridors in other regions. It emphasizes parallels between the Northeast Asian context and that of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC), an existing regional biodiversity corridor which involves eight Central American countries that, like the two Koreas, are trapped in inter-state conflicts. It suggests that the Korean traditional concept of “The Baekdudaegan” that integrates the cultural and ecological landscapes of the mountains and rivers of Korea may be an important cultural device that frames the ecological basis of a regional NEABC. The paper reflects on how indirect and incremental social and political engagement may be a necessary attribute of strategies that build ecological security in a conflict zone. It concludes by contrasting this approach to the characteristics of what the author terms “nuclear insecurity” and suggests that a Northeast Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone may be a form of nuclear insecurity that relies less on balances of terror, and thereby is more conducive to the creation of sustainable security in this region.

Sixty five years ago, the United States emerged from the Second World War as the undisputed hegemon of world capitalism. But within a generation, neither the American will nor the American ability to continue managing the global capitalist order could be taken for granted. This essay will argue that the key to understanding the repair and continued re-enforcement of American economic and financial primacy since the system-shaking tremors of the 1970s can be found in the postwar experience of Japan and its neighbors. Within that experience lies a paradox: it was precisely Japan's deviations from orthodox capitalist methods – the distinctive marks that characterize its political economy – that help explain the continuation of an American-centered world capitalist system long after one might have expected its manifest contradictions to bring it down.

Liu Xiaobo, the primary drafter of Charter 08, has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 for “his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.” The award signals international recognition of the Chinese people's quest for justice, universal human rights and democracy through peaceful means.