Michael O'Hanlon – författare

"In describing their comprehensive proposal for negotiations with North Korea, O''Hanlon and Mochizuki exhibit the strategic creativity and analytical depth badly needed by United States policy makers dealing with this strange, dangerous place."

--Ash Carter, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

IN EARLY 2002, in his fateful state of the union address, President Bush described North Korea as being a member of the "Axis of Evil." Since then, the U.S. has gone to war with Iraq, and the world now wonders what the future of Bush''s preemption policy will bring. Many of the nation''s top experts feel that North Korea is a more imminent threat than Saddam''s Iraq was. They have a nuclear program, a million-man army, and missiles to deploy and export.

In Crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Michael O''Hanlon, a Senior Fellow at Brooking and visiting lecturer at Princeton, and Mike Mochizuki, endowed chair in Japan-US Relations at G.W. University, not only examine this issue in detail but also offer a comprehensive blueprint for diffusing the crisis with North Korea. Their solution comes in the form of a "grand bargain" with North Korea. Accords could be negotiated step-by-step, however they need to be guided by a broad and ambitious vision that addresses not only the nuclear issue but also the conventional forces on the hyper-militarized peninsula and the ongoing decline of the North Korean economy.

Between the 1870s and the 1930s competing European powers carved out and consolidated colonies in Melanesia, the most culturally diverse region of the world. As part of this process, great assemblages of ethnographic artefacts were made by a range of collectors whose diversity is captured in this volume. The contributors to this tightly-integrated volume take these collectors, and the collecting institutions, as the departure point for accounts that look back at the artefact-producing societies and their interaction with the collectors, but also forward to the fate of the collections in metropolitan museums, as the artefacts have been variously exhibited, neglected, re-conceived as indigenous heritage, or repatriated. In doing this, the contributors raise issues of current interest in anthropology, Pacific history, art history, museology, and material culture.

As total federal debt trends toward 100 percent of the GDP, and America wavers on the edge of another recession, Congress has responded with a plan for deficit reduction—more than two trillion dollars over ten years. But its plan emphasizes some parts of the federal budget over others. Entitlements are likely to be spared, and tax reform deferred. Defense spending, however, could be cut by as much as one trillion dollars over a decade, above and beyond savings from ending current wars. This, Michael O’Hanlon argues, isn’t just unwise—it is potentially catastrophic. Such a prospect demands that we have a serious conversation about our national security priorities in an age of austerity.

Deep cuts to the U.S. military would make for brutal politics in any ordinary time, and this is no ordinary time—our government is rife with partisan enmity, and 2012 promises to be one of the most heated presidential election campaigns in our history. THE WOUNDED GIANT asks us to take a deep breath and think clearly and deeply about our national security, and about our role in the world. O’Hanlon forcefully reminds us that it’s not a question of how much we want to pay for our military, but how much we need to pay. O’Hanlon’s command of the whole vast range of American military spending, past and present, is rare, as is his grasp of the strategic logic of our military’s gigantic footprint.

O’Hanlon tests his proposals through a series of chilling plausible scenarios. What would happen if North Korea detonated a nuclear bomb? If the Pakistani government fell? If China turned militant? His conclusions are challenging and impossible to dismiss easily. Through tougher management, changes in military compensation policies, a selective reduction in the number of ground, air, and naval forces, as well as smart and selective modernization efforts and technological advancements, O’Hanlon argues, we can reduce our defense budget without untenable risk to our military, and our country, as long as cuts over the next ten years do not exceed half a trillion dollars. None of the choices is easy: these recommendations will be controversial; all involve the goring of a cherished sacred cow in someone’s view. But the heated debate THE WOUNDED GIANT will spark is a necessary one, and the sooner we have it, the better.