The Nutbox moves to The Observers.

The Observers is now up and running!

It’s a collaborative blog I’ve put up with the help of some friends. We intend it to be a source of thought-provoking analyses on social and cultural issues, political and economic developments, and other relevant trends. We want it to be wide-ranging, inclusive of all ideas, intellectual but never patronizing. We envision it to provide ideas that, in the words of some of this blog’s esteemed readers, combine “the applied practicality” of journalism with “the intellectual nuance” of the academe, and “un-insular in their breadth and scope.” We also hope to attract others to add to the discourse by posting comments and contributing articles.

As of press time, we’ve published five articles:

President Poe in 2016?
Taiwan and the Philippines: Ma’s Bewildering Tantrum
Hashimoto, Comfort Women, and Why Japan Is Not Sorry Enough
Taiwan and the Philippines: Aquino’s Heel
Japan, Germany, and the Politics of Apology

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How Kim is losing China.

Kim shows off at great cost.

Observers may differ on what motivates North Korea’s current saber-rattling, but they generally agree on one thing: No matter how crazy Kim Jong-un might appear to be, he’s not irrational. He and his clique know that an all-out war on the peninsula is theirs to lose. Therefore, it’s not their intention to spark actual war.

North Korea’s actions, belligerent as they are, follow a logical line of thinking, the premise of which is the assumption that the country’s neighbors value stability so much they would always find it better to pay Pyongyang off than risk military conflict. Such a conflictcould mean the derailment of President Vladimir Putin’s economic plans in the Russian Far East for Moscow, economic nightmares for Seoul and Tokyo, and destabilizing flow of refugees and geopolitical risks for Beijing. True enough, during the last decade, the regional powers had been so preoccupied with the preservation of the present geopolitical calculus that they grudgingly put up with the late Dear Leader Kim Jong-il’s racket.

North Korea and legitimacy.

Watching his back: Kim Jong -un.

Like all secluded totalitarian states, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is very difficult to read. Information emanating from that hermit country is very scarce; hence, whatever political analysis experts come up with are often based on nothing more than reasonable conjectures.

In the past few days, the United States and the Asian neighborhood have once again been abuzz with the recent bellicose rhetoric coming from Pyongyang. There are those, like the editors of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, who think that North Korea’s saber-rattling is a result of paranoia common to many authoritarian regimes. It would seem, however, that the prevailing opinion is that all-out war remains unlikely, and that the escalation of tensions is merely an exercise of tactical brinkmanship on Pyongyang’s part. The general analysis is that this is just a way for the North Korean regime to test the mettle of the newly-installed administration of South Korean President Park Geun-hye, and to consolidate its bargaining position in order to leverage for foreign aid. I generally agree with this prevailing view, but my opinion has a slightly different nuance.

Who would push for marriage equality in PH courts?

Anyone bold enough to bring the parade to the courts?

By JESUS FALCIS

NOTE: This is a guest post. It may or may not reflect my own views.

A week ago, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, a California initiative amending the state constitution in 2008, and the Defense of the Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law passed in 1996. Both laws restrict marriage to a man and a woman.

In the Philippines, the Family Code, issued by President Corazon Aquino in 1987 when she still had legislative powers, defines marriage as a special contract of permanent union between a man and a woman. However, the Constitution defines marriage merely as an inviolable social institution and as the foundation of the family.

Sabah: Rewarding violence.

Peace for our time: Is this the last chapter of violence in the Bangsamoro?

By BORIS C. LUNA

NOTE: This is a guest post. It may or may not reflect my own views.

President Benigno S. Aquino III has spoken out against conspirators as the ones at fault in the violence in Sabah. He has threatened to charge Jamalul Kiram, pretender to the throne of the defunct Sultanate of Sulu, for his actions that caused his followers to invade Sabah to assert the ancient claim of his family to the vast territory.

But is it really about the Kirams? Is it about the claim to Sabah? Is it about Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo? Or is this incident merely a product of the traditional myopia of successive Philippine administrations, sacrificing long-term perspective for political expediency in developing policy?

Thaksin’s other sister.

The Prime Minister and the spare tire.

A week before the Philippines achieved its first investment grade status, credit ratings agency Fitch upgraded Thailand’s ratings three notches higher than non-investment levels. The said upgrades were in recognition of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s ability to maintain political stability just a couple of years after divisions created by his brother Thaksin almost succeeded in tearing Thailand apart.

A farang expert on Thai politics once described Thaksin as a Thai Mussolini. The erstwhile mogul and former police chief built a patronage system that rivals that of the monarchy’s. His strong support base, composed mostly of the rural poor in the kingdom’s Isan region, made him a formidable alternative power pole to King Bhumibol Adulyadej‘s circle. His populist economic policy– dubbed by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as Thaksinomics– gave Thailand its first economic turn-around since the Asian Financial Crisis; but his tenure was marked with alleged corruption, human rights abuses, and authoritarian tendencies. In 2006, he was ousted in a military coup that was widely believed to have been engineered by the President of His Majesty’s Privy Council, General Prem Tinsunalonda.

The post-Edsa presidents.

Doves, not pokemons.

In November, right after the President of the United States was re-elected, I wrote the essay “What Kind of President Would Obama Be?” In that piece, I drew on the works of professors Jack Balkin and Stephen Kowronek, the renowned scholar of American presidential history who classified his country’s presidents into four kinds: reconstructive, affiliated, pre-emptive, and disjunctive. The said essay elicited some reactions from both friends and readers, and at least a couple have asked if a similar classification of Philippine presidents can also be made.

Professor Kowronek’s classification describes a political cycle of creating and overturning dominant political regimes, which occur through a long period of time. Thus, it might not be applicable to the Philippine presidency, which has a relatively shorter history. At any rate, I don’t know all Philippine presidents well enough to come up with a similarly structured analysis of the entire Philippine presidential history. However– and I think this is obvious to all observers of Philippine politics– all five post-Edsa presidents seem to fit into only three different leadership templates, of which all students of Philippine politics should take note.