Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

With the fiscal cliff looming and the economy is still weak, it would seem that domestic issues will be most dangerous for Obama's second term.  However, I believe that there will be more difficult challenges from foreign affairs in the next 4 years.  I am cautiously optimistic that the economy will be better in the next 2-3 years.  But as the conflict between Israel and Hamas over the last few days show, the outside world will produce predictable and unpredictable headaches.  Besides the middle east, another area of likely conflict is in Asia between China and Japan over some small islands.  In both middle east and Asia, Obama should try to stay as low as possible unless there is a chance to help broker a long lasting peace.

There is really nothing much the U.S. can do about Israel and Hamas other than pressure Egypt to broker a cease fire.  This conflict has been going on for decades and rhetoric about supporting Israel, spoken by Obama and Hilary Clinton, does nothing except for political consumption back home.  I think everybody understands that if one lives in Israel and rockets are attacking them from Hamas, it is human nature to retaliate.  But that would never lead to peace.  As Gandhi said "an eye for an eye only leads to the whole world being blind."  Since there has not been any attacks from PLO controlled West Bank, the U.S. should convince Israel to recognize the government of West Bank as a legitimate state.  The U.S. and Israel should help the new Palestine state to thrive economically.  Eventually support for Hamas in Gaza will drop when the people see that a thriving Palestinian state is possible.  If Obama is bold, that is what he should try to do.  Sending a war ship to the area to show support for Israel will only anger the Arabs, it does nothing to help Israel.

As far as the situation between China and Japan, it can escalate if the U.S. interfere.  I am sure they will not go to war over these islands but the bad blood between them already have an economic impact in Asia.  Again by sending a war ship over there only gets China angry.  The government will use that to rev up nationalism against both Japan and the U.S.  The economic impact will then even be worse.  I say stay low and hope things cool down on their own.  It is really none of our business.  Interesting enough, Taiwan agrees with China about the history of these islands.  This is because China claimed that historically the islands are part of the Taiwan province, which is part of China.  Taiwan, which is closer to these islands than mainland China and Japan, also claims them for itself.  So Taiwan agrees that the islands are part of Taiwan, only that Taiwan is NOT part of China!