Returning to my hometown for Christmas, I brought with me two and a half feet of snow and NBA superstar Allen "The Answer" Iverson. Denver, Colorado, is a spectacular place to live in many ways and hopefully Iverson comes to appreciate that fact well. However, as A.I. landed in an airport flanked with five foot snow drifts and creeped along through the blanketed city in his limousine, arrived to his new home arena, donned a Denver Nuggets jersey for the first time, and hastily passed a requisite physical examination just in time to make the active roster for last Friday's game against the Sacramento Kings, he might have been thinking, "What the hell am I doing?"

Having attended that game, I witnessed a hallmark moment of professional sports. Indeed, although the exuberant and welcoming crowd flattered Iverson with a roaring standing ovation upon his entrance and cheers virtually every time he touched the basketball, I couldn't help but notice that he was playing a little reservedly at times. He still posted 22 points, but I was expecting a more selfish player to debut that night. Iverson was working hard to make plays for his teammates and spread the ball around; he earned 10 assists for the game and would have had more, had the Nuggets shooting percentage from the field not been so abysmally low (.371). My expectation was likely the result of the sports media's tendency to dwell on the controversial side of players such as Iverson, who has certainly had his share of melodrama in the league. However, the A.I. that played in a Denver uniform on Friday was magnanimous and relatively humble, even while displaying the characteristic daring and skill on the court that has made him a star. Iverson himself admitted that he was more nervous for the game than he had been in years. But was his selfless play and gracious demeanor just a product of nerves? I think not.

What many people, media-types included, seem to often forget is that although professional athletes like Allen Iverson are extraordinarily gifted and have unusually lucrative high-profile jobs, they are, first and foremost, just people. Iverson is world-famous and skilled in a way few have been or ever will be, but he is after all just a man. He dreams, hopes, fears, laughs, loves, hates, and desires just like any of us and his arrival in a new town, to a new job, and even a new home signals for him likely a time of reflection, anxiety, and promise. This is nowhere more evident than in not only his self-professed nervousness and his generous play, but also in how genuinely touched he seemed by the warm reception he was given in Denver. Allen Iverson is uprooting from Philadelphia, where he thought he would spend his career, and making a new start on a team with more talent than he has played with since starting on the U.S. Olympic team. He could not reconcile differences with the management of the 76ers, where he began his professional career, but has been given a new start on a team seemingly determined to achieve excellence. Denver fan support for Iverson is something of a warm pat on the back at the beginning of his promising but somewhat lonely new journey.

In this way, Iverson's move is a bittersweet reminder of the decisions that we all face, especially in this, the Christmas and New Year's season. I reflected on Iverson's performance and his comments, as I too battled the elements and the uncertainty of a new life to come home for the Holidays. It's been several years now since I graduated from University and began adventuring around the world, taking risks, betting on my own skill, luck, determination and positive spirit to find a better fulfillment in this life. My sisters also now both live outside of our home state and this was the first Christmas I spent in my father's home without them. I think we all are looking for The Answer in our own way, trying to find a path to achieve something more, oftentimes at the expense of that which means the most to us: our loved ones. Time inexorably pushes forward and we must make the best of the turns that life takes, or in a leap of faith we must turn our lives in a different direction ourselves. We cannot all be as blessed in ability or fortune as Iverson, but we can remember to treasure those that are most dear to us and to embrace new opportunites, rebirth, the promise of a New Year and a new start. In taking a new adventure, we can push through to be something better than we might have ever been, and hopefully, if we're lucky, those that mean the most to us will be along for the ride.

So it's been awhile since my last post and that should be no surprise, given my historical inability to maintain any kind of personal journal. This time around I blame midterm examinations and essays; they definitely have had me frazzled. In timely conjunction, I've been grudgingly settling into the diminished social life that seems to accompany graduate school. My recent life as an expatriate in Seoul is a fairly extreme lifestyle by which to gauge social activity, so I've certainly been trying to keep the adjustment in perspective.

Despite the sullen effects of reverse culture-shock, being up to my eyeballs in reading, writing, and research, and the realization that my days of weekday evenings spent swilling back draft beer and throwing darts are essentially long gone, I've managed to remain pretty upbeat. Sure, I wake up some days with less than a full tank of motivation, and find myself subject to bouts of grumpiness from time to time, but I'm getting an advanced education in a subject I'm passionate about and live a blessed and lucky life, so who am I to complain? I'm not, is the answer, so I try to keep a pretty even keel about things and not let little things rile me up, lest I forget my overall good fortune and health. What's bothered me nonetheless, is my perception that I tend to deal with my little feelings of discomfort in a different fashion than many Americans seem to.

I can't help but notice, these past three or four months since I returned to the US, a regularity of people flipping their lid in public over what appear to be relatively minor grievances. Ultimately, why do people argue over position in line at fast-food restaurants, berate others for not trying to make more room on the bus when there clearly is no more room to make, or nitpick over miniscule rules of conduct in inconsequential situations? What is it that makes people soil their figurative shorts and come to unpleasant public confrontations over such trivial things? This, what one might call, road-rage effect has me fascinated and repulsed. "Don't stand in the doorway!" "Walk on the right!" "Don't you think your girlfriend's skirt is too short?!" "Excuse me, I ordered this with extra lemon!" It's everywhere. But is it just America? Do Parisians come to blows over the size of their camembert wheels? Do Indians in Bangalore scuffle over spilled Vindaloo? Are there shoving matches in Johannesburg over parking spaces? What happens if this phenomenon extends to gangs, to racial groups, or even to nations and states?

To find the answer to this question, one needn't look very hard. The conflict over a group of islands called Dokdo to Koreans and Takeshima to Japanese demonstrates that this human trait extends all the way to the international political level. The Koreans have been claiming for years, although the disagreement has gained prominence recently, that these territorially worthless islands have historically been Korean, pointing to maps centuries-old that dilineate them thus. The Japanese took possession of the islands near the turn of the 20th century in their post-industrial Mejii Restoration expansion on the road to a subsequent annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910. This dispute is by no means an anomaly. Japan has been locked in a similar heated debate over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands with both China and Taiwan. The most intriquing case of all might be the Spratly and Paracel Islands, a long chain of rocky, naturally uninhabitable specks in the South China Sea that have been alternately claimed in part or in total by Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, China, and Taiwan. These Islands collectively cover no more than 13 km sq. of land, and yet many have suggested that they may be the greatest possible flashpoint for international military conflict in Southeast Asia.

So the question comes again: why so much, as the great bard penned, "ado about nothing?" For the Spratlys and Paracels, it's resources and strategic positioning. Oil reserves are said to lie around the islands, and fishing is certainly an industry that would prosper in these waters. More importantly, however, the South China Sea is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, connecting the oil-rich Persian Gulf states through the Indian Ocean, between the Straits of Malacca, to the devouring economies of Japan, China, and North America. Whoever controls this stretch of sea controls a great deal more than just a few scant rocks in tropical waters. Strategic power interests also dictate the tone of the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute, as Japan and China vie for dominance in East Asia, although historical and cultural issues surrounding Japan's wartime aggression and the split of Taiwan from the mainland also figure a key role. Dokdo/Takeshima is a disagreement almost entirely based on this kind of historical issue, although fishing rights play a nominal part. Despite Japan's steps, which many in the region deem insufficient, to apologize for its aggression in WWII, Korea often invokes this history to counter Japan's claims to the islands. Japan, for its part, seems more and more content to stray from its diplomatically passive post-war strategy and assert its interests regardless of history.

One is left to wonder, then, why states risk so much on the premise of so little. Are such conflicts, between both people and states, more evidence of Hobbes' State of Nature, further proof that left to our own devices, we will inevitably engage in a "war of all against all?" Peaceful relations between countries seems too great a wager to stake on territory which no person would ever wish or be able to live. But as with two moms who shout obscenities at each other over their children's soccer match, there is much more to the conflict underneath the surface. It's just, as the saying goes, the tip of the iceberg (or in this case, the island). All too often, it seems that we forget who we are, what we stand for, and how we would really like to interact with the world when a build-up of angst and frustration over personal issues is finally set off by a disagreement so peripheral, it seems almost comical in hindsight. Comically trivial though it might seem, I shudder at the thought of a war in the South China Sea, or the oft predicted final showdown over Taiwan, sparked by controversy surrounding the paltry crags of Diaoyu/Senkaku.

As disastrous as this would be, regionally and globally, the scenario is for the moment forestalled by the auspices of international agreements and non-state actors. It is in these arrangements that Hobbes' prediction begins to fade. After more than two decades of Spratly's skirmishes, China and its ASEAN counterparts have forged a tentative agreement to share the administration and exploration of resources around the islands. This may indeed point to a trend in Asia toward regionalist cooperation, with the understanding that as a collective, everybody wins. In conflict, no one does. With patience and keeping an eye on the bigger picture, it benefits everyone for you not to punch the guy next to you because he wouldn't stop humming aloud. I suppose I desperately cling to the hope that it is not merely an imposed social contract that prevents us from acting on angry impulses, but that it is the logical extension of the natural human state to quell these impulses so as to focus on larger, mutually beneficial goals. Now if this woman sitting next to me would just stop talking so loudly on her cell phone so I could focus on what I'm writing...

Me during more peacefully reflective times in Vietnam...

So last week was a hell of a week - not that it was all that extraordinary in terms of weeks of personal events in my life. The week I spent on White Beach on Boracay in the Philippines was more sublime. My fraternity initiation week was more demanding (and absurd). I had several weeks in Paris that were certainly more spellbinding, and I'm sure that any number of weeks during my parents' divorce were more confusing. No, what makes this past week unusual was the high number of encounters I had with critical global issues. As a master's student of international affairs in Washington, DC, I'm sure this won't be the last one of these I'll have.

On Tuesday, I attended a free screening of Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth" for American University students, which I hadn't yet seen (I know I'm late in the game on this one, but give me a break; my first time setting foot on U.S. soil in 2006 came late July). I was impressed with Gore's personal conviction, knowledge, and delivery of the material he presents in his neverending, worldwide, and highly-paid speech circuit slideshow on the looming ecological crisis facing homo sapiens on planet Earth. It's clearly evident that Gore is using the facts to advance a personal agenda. But good on 'im. It would be nice if we could see all of our politicians with the candor and unabashed passion that Gore displays for his cause, and surely our opinions of them would change severely for the worst in too many cases if that were so. Furthermore, in the end, I'm convinced Gore's right: containing global warming is a moral issue, and the implications for our personal responsibility as citizens of the planet are undeniable.

On Wednesday, I attended the inauguration of SAIS's U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins. All of the current living former ambassadors to S. Korea were in attendence as speakers on a guest panel, and I made my first appearance as an audience member on C-SPAN. What were more remarkable than this, though, were keynote speaker Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill's hard-edged assertions on North Korea. He announced that, among other things, North Korea "can have a future or it can have [nuclear] weapons. It cannot have both." In the audience, I was impressed with Secretary Hill's resolute words, particularly as they marked a stark contrast from his lighthearted nature at the outset of his speech. The Washington Post called it "the toughest response yet [to N. Korea] from the Bush administration, coming two days after Pyongyang announced plans to conduct its first nuclear test." However, I didn't appreciate the weight that Hill's words would carry until they ran through the news cycle, whereupon I quickly learned a basic DC lesson : if an event is free and open to the public, show up. Policy is made everyday at these kind of events in Washington, and you never know when you'll witness something significant (and what's more, they're usually catered). Anyhow, as a nuclear North Korea now appears to be a reality, Hill's message keeps coming back to me as I wonder how far such a hardline U.S. position can hold, or if it ever could.

Later on Wednesday evening, one of my class discussions centered on of the historical divergences in Islamic thought, the shari'a law tradition, and international conceptions of human rights. More progressive literature on the concept of an "Islamic State" suggests that the relationship drawn by more conservative and fundamentalist Muslim leaders between shari'a, the Quran, and the concept of Islamic government is tenuously substantiated at best. Bassam Tibi, among other Muslim authors, has demonstrated capably that the connection between politics and Islam is primarily rooted in historical context, not scripture. The assertion that the Quran prescribes for the creation of an Islamic system of governance is misleading. The tradition for shari'a, Tibi contends, stems from the period following Mohammed's provincial governance of Medina, but not specifically from the core revelations of the prophet while in Mecca. He writes, "In fact, shari'a is a post-Quranic construction, initiated basically to regulate, as a kind of civil law dealing with affairs of inheritance, marriage, and the like...Today, fundamentalists invent the tradition of shari'a, as an Islamic consititution of the state."

This is troubling, essentially, because radicals' promotion of an Islamic state allegedly based on shari'a allows them to marginalize international conceptions of human rights and further legitimize militant diametric opposition to non-Islamic systems of governance and law. To compound this issue, the fundamentalist position is actually continuing to gain support not only in the Middle East, where the U.S.-Iraq debacle continues to polarize Muslims against the West, but also in Southeast Asia, home to the world's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia. I should clarify, the expansion of Islam is not the concern here, but rather the widespread propagation of a branch of any religion that seeks to divide cultures and promote violence, be it Islamic, Christian, or of any other faith. Moreover, it seems to me that the creation of a state along such lines should be disconcerting to anyone.

To summarize, I felt rather rudely awakened by this trifecta; the continuing spriral toward a planetary ecological crisis, the ever-escalating tensions over the North Korean nuclear standoff, and the proliferation of radical religious fundamentalism all pose major obstacles toward human progress and growth and taken in sum seem almost insurmountable. Yet, I'm still optimistic, probably because my goals demand that I be; if I didn't see the potential for change, I wouldn't be a student of international affairs. If major changes can be made soon in carbon emission standards and toward alternative fuel sources, perhaps we can stave off irregular climate change. If North Korea can be engaged carefully instead of provoked, then perhaps the Korean peninsula can be denuclearized (again). And if the U.S. and others can begin to retract their negative and contradictory presence in the Middle East and begin pursuing a more positive dialogue with Muslim leaders, stability can be pursued more realistically in the region, giving less ammunition for radicals who offer only disorder and betray the peaceful tenets of Islam. This all, however, depends on a change of leadership in the U.S., a subject about which I'm sure to have plenty more words come November....