Opinion: In today’s pages: Better diplomacy -- Myanmar, ‘The Godfather,’ pronunciation
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European policy experts John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell look to ‘The Godfather’ for diplomatic pointers:
[Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Godfather’] is also a startlingly useful metaphor for the strategic problems and global power structure of our time. The don, emblematic of Cold War American power, is struck by forces he did not expect and does not understand, as was America on 9/11. Intriguingly, his heirs embrace very different visions of family strategy that approximate the three schools of thought -- liberal institutionalism, neoconservatism and realism -- vying for control of U.S. foreign policy today.
Freelance writer Lionel Beehner has another proposal for smoother diplomacy: pronouncing foreign dignitaries’ names properly. Columnist Tim Rutten tells an L.A. version of ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ and contributing editor Erin Aubry Kaplan explores why poet and long-time Watts resident Eric Priestley is fighting City Hall to keep his home.
The editorial board praises a California Supreme Court decision voiding the death sentence of Adam Miranda, presses for a shield law, and says now isn’t the time to scold Myanmar’s leaders:
It has been clear for more than a decade -- and especially since last year’s suppression of the would-be Saffron Revolution -- that Myanmar’s odious junta cannot be shamed into reform. It is too isolated and xenophobic to worry about its image, too paranoid to learn from outsiders and too blood-drenched to believe it can survive any loosening of control over its hapless people. The contradictory combination of U.S. sanctions and an engagement strategy adopted by its neighbors has failed to produce any improvement. Attempts to use the catastrophe of Tropical Cyclone Nargis as leverage to pry open the country will almost surely fail as well.