Obama can ward off potential N-E Asia crisis

FORMER deputy foreign minister of Japan Hitoshi Tanaka made a startling observation during a briefing in Tokyo last week - that fully 50 per cent of the audience at a presentation he gave in South Korea recently expected "conflict" to erupt between their country and Japan and also between Japan and China in the not too distant future.

This is alarming because it means that if intelligent and informed people such as those in the audience have now the possibility of military conflict between North-east Asia's biggest powers in their calculations then we could be on the brink of a calamity. There are numerous "experts" from outside the region who are ready to brush off such dangers as overblown, but the reality of what is happening within the region does not justify su…