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...