Since the Democratic Party of Japan came to power in August 2009, upsetting fifty years of conservative rule, U.S.-Japan relations have been on rocky ground. It would seem that the DPJ is upending decades old policies, hewing its own path with the United States, China, and the Asia-Pacific region. As Shorenstein APARC Director for Research Daniel Sneider notes, Japan’s new tack not only has caught the United States flat-footed, but also has other countries in the Asia-Pacific worried. Most importantly, Tokyo seems to be making uncharacteristically friendly overtures to Beijing. But it would be wrong to assume that Sino-Japan relations are really much improved. From oil and gas rights in the East China Sea to China’s military modernization there are still plenty of points of contention. Moreover, the much-contested issue of U.S. marines stationed on Okinawa remains the biggest deterrent to North Korean aggression and Chinese expansion – two fears not far from Tokyo’s mind. This is not to say U.S.-Japan relations will return to the status quo, but that the interlocutors are likely to recall the reason for such a persistent alliance.

The dramatic end to Japan's half-century of conservative rule in a late August election led almost immediately to a public spat with the United States. An inward-looking Japan that had reflexively followed the American lead suddenly was no longer an obedient ally.

At a time when the US was trying to woo a recalcitrant China to become a "strategic partner", Japan's insistence on reopening an agreement over US military bases seemed to upset the regional balance. But there are recent signs of a concerted effort on both sides to put underlying strategic interests back in the forefront, propelled in part by the recent eruption of frictions between China and the US.

The row began with the newly elected Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's call for more "equal" relations with the US, his advocacy of an East Asian Community à la the EU, and his focus on repairing ties with China. Put together, some saw a nascent urge to abandon the post-war security alliance. A senior State Department official went so far as to tell the Washington Post in late October that the "the United States had ‘grown comfortable' thinking about Japan as a constant in US relations in Asia. It no longer is, he said, adding that ‘the hardest thing right now is not China, it's Japan.'"

The trigger was growing frustration over the Hatoyama government's handling of the relocation of the US Marine air base at Futenma on Okinawa. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) consistently opposed the deal to relocate the base elsewhere within Okinawa, expressing sympathy for the disproportionate burden of the US military presence in Japan born by Okinawans. American officials were loathe to reopen an agreement that had taken years to negotiate and believed the Japanese government exaggerated its domestic political constraints.

At the same time, Japan seems eager to hew its own course with China, to improve relations and begin to build the foundation for a new Asian community. If one is to believe US officials, alarm bells have been ringing among their allies and others in Asia over the rift with Japan. The talk of building a regional organization that might exclude the US made Singapore, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines and even Vietnam worried that this would only aid Chinese ambitions.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration itself was ardently wooing China. President Obama, on the eve of a trip in November, spoke of creating a "strategic partnership." In Beijing, the President avoided public finger wagging. Discussion of difficult issues such as human rights, Tibet and sanctions against Iran were conducted largely, if at all, behind closed doors.

Given their own pursuit of Chinese partnership, American officials could hardly object to Tokyo's efforts along the same lines. In public, they said this is not a zero sum game, that an easing of Sino-Japanese tensions could aid security and stability in the region for everyone. But some US officials soon saw evidence of Sino-Japanese collusion to push the US out of Asia. Privately they pointed to what was considered a telling moment following a trilateral summit of Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders in Tianjin in October. Talking to reporters after the meeting, Hatoyama had spoken about Japan's desire to lessen its "dependence" on the US. American officials considered Hatoyama's actions a gross display of obeisance to the Chinese.

Accusations that Japan was drifting into Chinese arms grew louder after DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa led a group of about 140 lawmakers on an adulatory visit to China in early December. Then Hatoyama and Ozawa raised hackles when they pushed for the Emperor to receive a visiting Chinese senior official, the heir apparent for leadership, Xi Jinping. However, these depictions of Tokyo lurching toward Beijing ignore the gradual evolution of Japanese policy and the deep-seated rivalry that persists.

Sino-Japanese relations reached a low point five years ago after anti-Japan demonstrations were apparently sanctioned by Chinese authorities. Unresolved wartime historical issues drove those outbursts, prompted by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni shrine, which honors Japan's war dead. Disputes over oil and gas rights in the East China Sea threatened to explode. And China launched a campaign to block Japan's bid for permanent membership in the UN Security Council.

Japanese policymakers began to worry about the impact of these tensions on Japan's growing economic interdependence with China. They were critical of Koizumi's one-sided focus on the US-Japan security alliance.

"To weather the wild seas of the 21st century, Japan's diplomacy must have two elements: the Japan-US alliance and a Japan-China entente," wrote Makoto Iokibe, a defense specialist who now heads the Japanese Defense Academy, in the summer of 2006. "A combination of a gas field accord and a depoliticized Yasukuni issue would provide Japan and China with a clear view for the joint management of East Asia."

Beginning in late 2006, a succession of Japanese administrations has made concerted efforts to repair ties with Beijing and Seoul. Though the atmosphere with China has improved, substantive differences remain. In January, Japan's foreign minister warned that Tokyo would take action if China continued to violate a 2008 deal to develop oil and gas fields jointly. When Ozawa met the Chinese defense minister in December, he said the Japanese see China's military modernization as a threat. Ozawa suggested that if such fears were not eased, Japan might be prompted to undertake its own arms build up.

The Hatoyama government has also moved to upgrade ties, including security links, with Asian powers that share a fear of China, including India, Indonesia and South Korea. Ozawa stopped in Seoul after his visit to China where he apologized for Japan's colonial rule in Korea and pledged to push through legislation granting voting rights to Korean residents in Japan, an issue of great importance to Koreans and opposed by conservatives in Japan.

Recent events seem to have caused the US to reassess its handling of relations in Northeast Asia. There is growing evidence of an emboldened China that seems to interpret America's bid for a strategic embrace with the country as a sign of weakness. The authorities in Beijing took a tougher line toward internal dissent, openly clashed with the US at the climate change talks in Copenhagen, balked at cooperation on sanctions against Iran, and brushed off American protests over evidence of cyber attacks on Western firms.

After all this, America has begun to soften its tone toward Tokyo. Officials pledge patience as the new government looks for a solution to the base problem, while also mounting a public effort to convince Japan that the Marine presence in Okinawa is key to "deterrence" of North Korea and China. There is a renewed emphasis on broadening the security agenda to include other issues, from cyber security to climate change. Hatoyama, too, has emphasized that the Japan-US alliance remains "a cornerstone for Japan to enhance its cooperative relations with other Asian countries, including China."

Whether any real lessons have been learned in Tokyo or Washington remains to be seen. But perhaps the turn in Sino-US relations has reminded people in Tokyo and Washington that there remains a strategic purpose to the alliance.

Global Voices was inspired by an incident in 2004, when a friend reading a New York Times article about Cameroon's elections posed the question: is there anyone in Cameroon blogging about this? Along with his colleague, former CNN Beijing journalist Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan convened a group of bloggers from the developing world at Harvard. What came out strongly from these discussions was a desire for participants to be able to read each others' blogs. What started as Rebecca and Ethan each summarizing a couple of hundred blogs daily has grown into the Global Voices website, which uses a network of 400 editors to filter, translate and provide context to global blogs, making them accessible to readers around the world.

Since 2004, there have been some major changes to the context in which Global Voices operates. The organization has tried to respond to each of these:

• There has been massive expansion in internet access across the developing world, but rarely beyond the middle class and educated. Rising Voices allows media organizations from developing countries to apply for small grants to help them use digital media in their communities. A number of great success stories coming out of this initiative have demonstrated that it is possible to get traction for citizen media, even in very low resource communities.
• The digital space has emerged as a political space. This has prompted far greater levels of censorship. Global Voices Advocacy works to highlight cases of individuals arrested for involvement in citizen journalism and attempts to keep these stories live. It also works to document censorship of publishing platforms and to provide spaces where people can blog anonymously.
• In 2004, almost all blogging was in English. Now the majority of people are blogging in their own languages, about local issues. Translation therefore becomes a greater challenge. ProjectLinguauses volunteer translators to amplifyGlobal Voicesin many languages other than English.

Ethan suggested three possible theories about what we are seeing in the growth of social media:

• Social media will be the natural organizing tool for a new generation.
• Social media is an asymmetric tool - it is what you use when the tools of more effective mainstream media are not available to you.
• Social media is a story in itself - it can draw attention to a story that might otherwise not be picked up.

Crisis situations such as the protests in Iran and the Haitian earthquake have started to legitimize the use of social media by mainstream media outlets, blurring the boundaries between professional and citizen reporting. And some of the key challenges associated with access and language barriers are beginning to be addressed. But the problem of global attention span will be hardest to solve. So many situations never receive coverage and for those that do, the media cycle rarely allows them to stay in the spotlight beyond a few weeks. We have developed long standing bad habits in our understanding of what constitutes news. Social media has dramatically changed who is able to speak; but will it change how we choose to listen? This remains a major challenge.

November 9, 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. For most, the historic event has come to symbolize the end of the Cold War, but for the Germans living there then and now, 1989 represents a turning point in an era that continues to shape their culture. Modern European historian and Stanford history professor James J. Sheehan and Amir Eshel, a Stanford professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature, reflect on the consequences of this important anniversary through their distinct research perspectives. Professor Eshel is Director of the Forum on Contemporary Europe at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His research focuses include German culture, comparative literature, and German-Jewish history and culture from the Enlightenment to the present. Professor Sheehan has written widely on the history of Germany, including the relationship between aesthetic ideas, cultural institutions, and museum architecture in nineteenth century Germany. His most recent book, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: The Transformation of Modern Europe, considers problems in European international history.

Which facets of Cold War history do you find most compelling?

JS: A great deal of work has been done on the origins of the Cold War, but I am more interested in two other questions: Why did it last so long? and Why did it end when (and how) it did? The Cold War could have ended (along with a great deal else) if there had been a military conflict between the superpowers. And while there were some close calls, this did not happen. Instead, there were a number of proxy wars that created a great deal of damage in their immediate environments, but did not lead to a U.S.-Soviet war. Why not? In large measure, I think, because both sides created and sustained a stable order in Europe, the one part of the world where their land armies faced one another.

The Cold War ended, and ended peacefully, when Gorbachev decided to allow this European order to collapse. He based this decision on an extraordinary miscalculation: that the Soviet regime could survive in a new Europe, taking advantage of Western Europe's economic resources and dynamism without abandoning the Communist Party's leading role in the state. By the time it was clear that would not happen, it was too late to go back. The Cold War ended the way most wars end, with the defeat of one side, a largely peaceful defeat to be sure, but a defeat nonetheless.

AE: I am fascinated by those cases in which people living under totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe stood up against their oppressors, often knowing that their own political actions were bound to fail. The cases of the 1953 uprising in the GDR, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the 1968 Prague Spring will always inspire us and force us to acknowledge that even in situations that seem to exclude human agency, individuals and groups can exercise their ability to act and their wish to live freely.

Why is it valuable to examine how both the rise and fall of the Wall impacted culture in Germany and even throughout Europe?

JS: Obviously the Wall shaped East German culture and, to some extent, continues to do so. I am less convinced that the Wall was of central importance for the West. Many West Germans tended to forget about the East, the possibilities of unification seemed remote, the attractions of Western Europe much more compelling. A major impact of the Wall's fall on both Germanies was to reveal how far they had grown apart.Many West Germans tended to forget about the East, the possibilities of unification seemed remote, the attractions of Western Europe much more compelling. A major impact of the Wall's fall on both Germanies was to reveal how far they had grown apart.

AE: It’s valuable because the building of the Wall was not only the result of the communist regime’s will to stop the flight of its own people to the West but also the result of the West’s inability to effectively counter what is now universally acknowledged as an unbearable crime. The Wall is a lesson in the history of tyranny but also in the inability to face up to tyrants. The mistakes of those who allowed the Wall to be built may be repeated in the future. Learning what happened before, during and after the building of the Wall in 1961 may help us avoid the emergence of similar repressive artifacts in the future.

The fall of the Wall, on the other hand, gives us many lessons regarding the ability of political actors – on both sides of the East-West divide – to overcome, by way of decisive actions, decades-long tyranny.

How do you approach such a far-reaching era of history in a research project?

JS: It is important to see the end of the Cold War in the light of long-range trends, especially changes in global economic institutions. At the same time, we should try to understand the human impact of these events. In her recent book on 1989, Mary Elise Sarotte describes how East Germans fleeing to the West in the fall of 1989 threw away their Eastern currencies as they reached the border. It seems to me that this episode captures the intersection of deep structural transformations and immediate human experience. Money, including the physical appearance of East German coins, the "welcome money" given to East German arrivals in the West, and of course, the 1-1 exchange of East for West Marks, had an extraordinary symbolic and practical significance for this story.

AE: I study the ways in which literature and the arts reflect on the past. In the case of postwar German literature, the past consists of the two totalitarian regimes that dominated Germany in the twentieth century: Nazism and Communism. It is to a significant extent by way of revisiting the past, I believe, that cultures and socio-political institutions evolve. In telling and retelling what occurred in Europe during the twentieth century, postwar German literature (one of my main subjects of interest) made a substantial contribution to the creation of the modern, progressive Germany we know today.

Could you describe examples of how the Wall, and what it represented, influenced German cultural and aesthetic works created during its existence?

JS: East Germany had a vibrant literary culture and produced a great many novels that reflect the experience of the Wall. I especially admire Christa Wolf's Divided Heaven. Her career illustrates both the accomplishments and the limitations of culture in a society like the GDR. Since 1989, there has been a great deal of work reflecting on the meaning of the Wall. I just read Uwe Tellkamp's novel, Der Turm, which is set in and around Dresden in the late 1980s. It is a remarkable book in many ways, a sprawling family saga as well as a sharp political portrait of the regime's last days.

AE: The Wall played a crucial role in the writing of such significant writers as Christa Wolf (of the former GDR) and Peter Schneider (of the Federal Republic of Germany). In novels such as Divided Heaven (1963), Wolf gave us a lasting image of life in the shadow of the Wall. In The Wall Jumper, Schneider made the absurdity of an edifice such as the Wall painfully tangible. Yet, a novel like Ian McEwan’s The Innocent makes it clear that the Wall and the division of Germany also left a significant mark on European literature as such. In recent years, films like "The Lives of Others" began exploring the meaning of the East-West divide and the lasting impact of European totalitarian regimes on the lives of individuals and societies.

During the course of your work what kind of evidence have you encountered that illustrates how the Wall impacted the legacy of European Jews?

JS: East and West Germany dealt with the legacy of Nazism--and the meaning of the Holocaust--in quite different ways. East and West Germany dealt with the legacy of Nazism--and the meaning of the Holocaust--in quite different ways. In the GDR, Nazism was seen as a particularly toxic form of fascism, that is, an expression of capitalism's structural crisis. From this perspective, the racial dimensions of Nazism did not seem central: there was, for instance, very little about the Holocaust in the exhibitions on Nazism in the old East German museum of German History. Like the museum itself, this view of Nazism is now largely gone.

AE: The Jewish community of both the GDR and the Federal Republic was rather small when the Wall was built. While the Federal Republic accepted early on the German responsibility for Nazism, the GDR regarded itself as representing the legacy of the ‘better Germany’ that is of the German left. This has been as many scholars have since claimed, the foundational myth of the GDR. In the decades following the building of the Wall, the issue for German-Jewish relations was less the East-West divide and more finding ways to commemorate the dead of the Holocaust, acknowledging the crimes of the Nazis and developing a German-Jewish dialogue based on mutual respect and different memories. However, one of the most significant contemporary German-Jewish authors is Barbara Honigmann, who in her writing also reflects on what it meant for her and others like her to grow up and come to age as a Jew in the GDR.

From the perspective of your research, what do you feel are the most lasting implications of the Berlin Wall today?

JS: In the euphoric days after the fall of the Wall, many people underestimated the material and spiritual difficulties of unification. It is not surprising that, after 40 years apart, the two Germanies have only slowly grown together. Like parts of the American south after the Civil War, parts of the old GDR have a nostalgic view of the "good old days" before 1989. This has an impact on German culture, especially in Berlin. A more lasting implication is the Left Party, a somewhat improbable alliance of Western German leftwing Social Democrats and the former East German Party of Democratic Socialism.

AE: The Wall will always remain a symbol of tyranny. It will also continue to remind us what fantasies about a ‘perfect’ human society such as those that guided the Soviet Union and the GDR may end up producing: endless human misery and the creation of enclosed, repressive political systems.

Do you believe there’s still more to learn from this transformative period of history?

JS: Historians always believe there is more to learn. In the case of 1989, I think one lesson is how often history surprises us. No one expected the Wall to fall so suddenly and so peacefully, just as no one expected the Soviet Union to collapse with such speed. Nor has the post-Cold War world turned out quite the way many people expected.

AE: Absolutely. The learning about the nature and the challenges of totalitarian thought and totalitarian regimes has just begun. Contemporary totalitarian regimes across the globe such as Iran, Syria, Myanmar or North Korea make the study of the Wall and how we—those living in open societies may react to them—crucial for the freedom of millions who suffer by those regimes. The study of the Wall and of such regimes may also prove crucial for our survival given the fact that these regimes strive to acquire deadly military capacities.