TOM PLATE WRITES — The first thing that must be said to Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his Bersatu party for their stunning ejection of the greedy incumbent prime minister is simply this: Congratulations! Sometimes politics is fiendishly complicated, but in this case it is not. The voters of the Republic…
Pix shows author and Harvard Fellow William H. Overholt at an LMU reception for his book at the Del Rey Yacht Club in Los Angeles. TOM PLATE WRITES — The American general and statesman Colin Powell, at his secretary of state confirmation hearing years ago, bluntly told Congress: “China is…
TOM PLATE WRITES — America is now more confused than ever about North Korea. And it’s not all Mr Trump’s fault. Neither can America fairly say it’s all China’s fault. For as long as I have been writing about Asia, North Korea has been the black hole of American foreign…
WRITES TOM PLATE – In the pantheon of American movies, the 1985 flick ‘Back to the Future’ does not rank at the top of temple Hollywood, as do canonical masterpieces such as ‘Casablanca’, ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘Lawrence of Arabia” and others. Yet the movie title alone enriched American argot,…
PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES – Years ago, Singapore’s founder Lee Kuan Yew would needle me, in all seriousness, about the time and effort we silly journalists invest in seeking to lay out a leader’s personal traits. This dynamic man dubbed our penchant for such detail “the Western journalist’s exaggeration of…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Recent U.S. presidents, at least in public, would speak of China only after the vetting of practically every word, as if an errant one might prove seriously chancy. The bilateral was too complex, the stakes too high, the relationship freighted with too many tensions to have…
TOM PLATE WRITES -If you’d like a snapshot of the current state of US diplomacy versus the state of PRC diplomacy, simply compare how the two top diplomats of each country are doing. Not so good for the American side: whereas the foreign minister of China looks well-suited, secure and…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Surprise! Few parents, perhaps including those in brand-shopping Asia, realize that Stanford University – on America’s sunny West Coast, not far from glorious San Francisco – is tougher for kids to get into than Princeton, Harvard or Yale. Its students, by their self-selection and innate talent,…
TOM PLATE WRITES — To what does Mr Xi Jinping truly aspire? Who does China’s ‘paramount leader’ think he is? Mr Xi Jinping doesn’t need fawning media coverage to mislead him into believing something he may or may not be. Whether China’s president is crowned person-of-the-year by a self-important U.S.…
FOUNDER TOM PLATE WRITES — How can a fiery logjam be tamed by throwing more logs onto the fire? The Backstory: The Korean mess began brewing long before the current U.S. administration took power. It is true that since January President Donald Trump’s madman/rocket man pugnacity has unnerved just about…
TOM PLATE WRITES – It’s so easy to imagine that in some officers’ club, perhaps at Yulin naval headquarters on Hainan Island, where China’s brass (vice admiral, rear, lower-rank whatever) gather and after a few belts of Baijiu recycle submarine stories and second-guess their masters in Beijing – it’s easy…
Asia Media International, based at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, is happy to announce that Ms. Jay Seo LMU ’17 has been promoted to Executive Editor after serving six months as assistant executive editor. She was a political science major at LMU and aims to get her law degree…
PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES — The U.S. public rarely gives larger-than-life Indonesia, the most populous country in Southeast Asia, more than passing thought, and even on those rare moments it might mainly be thinking about nothing more than a dream vacation in Bali. Yet, as every cosmopolitan knows, the world’s…
By AMI Staff – Marshall Cavendish Asia International, one of the leading quality book publishers in all of Southeast Asia, has now put out onto the SEA market the print edition of ‘Yo-Yo Diplomacy,’ the latest book by Professor Tom Plate of Loyola Marymount University. E-book editions will be available…
PROFESSOR TOM PLATE WRITES – Winston Churchill is said to have said: “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.” Sure, but what if too much of the wrong sort of jaw-jaw were to convert the idea of war-war to less of a no-no? Here is what is meant. No…
TOM PLATE WRITES – How sad is the ongoing family quarrel in otherwise brilliant Singapore? On my first trip to Singapore, as a Los Angeles Times columnist, which featured my first interview with Lee Kuan Yew, then titled senior minister, I returned home feeling I had seen something special and…
