The reason this is news, of course, is that last week it was suggested that the University had vetoed a proposed talk by the Dalai Lama, possibly due to its heavy reliance on Chinese students and consequent cosy relationship with the Chinese government. The University issued what was not quite a denial of the suggestion, saying that he would instead be speaking at a hotel where he could “address a wider group of students from across a number of universities.”

This is, of course, an all-too-familiar pattern. No-one who values their relationship with the Chinese government wants to be seen with the Dalai Lama, but no-one who cares about their public image wants to be seen to be turning him down. It’s a delicate balancing act.

Recall back in 2007, for example, when both prime minister John Howard and opposition leader Kevin Rudd initially refused to schedule a meeting with him. But when it became a matter of public controversy Rudd changed his mind, and Howard eventually followed suit, after apparently spending four weeks checking his diary.

I wrote at the time (in a blog post that I can no longer find on the Crikey site) that “As usual, the exiled Tibetan leader conveys an air of serene acceptance of all this. But keeping him hanging for almost a month is surely much more offensive than a simple refusal would have been.”

But rudeness has been completely bipartisan: since Labor returned to office, both Rudd and Julia Gillard have declined opportunities to meet the Dalai Lama. Last year, Gillard rather embarrassingly won praise from the Chinese media on that account.

Officially, the Nobel laureate no longer has any position in the Tibetan government in exile; in his travels he presents himself simply as a religious teacher, and organisations like Sydney University are only too eager to deny any political content to his message. But at the age of 77 he remains the heart and soul of Tibetan nationalism, and China’s well-attested paranoia about him is testament to his continuing relevance.

It’s particularly interesting because of the last fortnight’s hysteria about North Korea, drawing attention to the contrast between its nuclear program and the allegedly similar ambitions of Iran. Capsit quotes Netanyahu telling Obama “Look at how [the North Koreans] are sticking their tongues out at you … The fact that you are restraining yourselves and letting them go wild and do whatever they want reverberates all the way to Tehran.”

I have no idea whether Caspit’s sources are as good as he claims, but I’ve never placed a lot of reliance on insider accounts. In most cases, you get just as much (or as little) information from listening carefully to what politicians say in public and then thinking about their motives. If they’re lying to the public, they’re quite probably lying to their intimate sources as well (usually because they’re also lying to themselves).

Capsit’s account is plausible because it fits with what we already know. Here’s his concluding summary:

On the Iranian issue, Netanyahu said that there is no time, and that we have to act now, while the Americans told him to calm down. They said that there is time, and that they will only act when the conditions are ripe, and they have no other options on that. As for the Palestinians, it was the exact opposite. The Americans say that there is no time, that we have to act now … In contrast, Netanyahu says, “Calm down. There’s still time. We’re not ready yet. I will act. I want peace, but only when the conditions are ripe.”

But note the asymmetry here. Capsit, like the rest of us, assumes that Netanyahu is insincere when it comes to the Palestinians; that he doesn’t really want peace and simply aims to put everyone off indefinitely. But he seems (apologies if I’m misinterpreting him) to be inviting us to take Obama more or less at his word when it comes to Iran.

My take on it is that the two issues are rather more on a par: that while Obama wants to keep his options open, he has no intention of ever countenancing an attack on Iran, just as Netanyahu has no intention of ever giving up control of the West Bank. And that while each would like the other to act, neither is willing to force the issue.

For more on the North Korea analogy, have a read of Michael McShane’s piece yesterday at Informed Comment. His argument is that the United States has let North Korea get away with what it won’t tolerate in Iran because it gives a higher priority to the Middle East, due to its ties with Israel and its concerns about oil.

There’s probably some truth in that, but to my mind the important thing is the simple fact that there’s a difference between real nukes and projected ones. Once a country has actual nuclear weapons, attacking it becomes a much less attractive option. Deterrence works. (That of course is also the moral of Israel’s nukes, which no-one is supposed to talk about.) The focus shifts to containment, as it has with North Korea.

If Iran ever reaches that stage, the Americans and even the Israelis will learn to live with it. Israel’s priority is trying to ensure that it doesn’t reach that stage, precisely because the deterrent would then be effective against future Israeli action. That’s a worthwhile objective for Obama as well, but I’m not convinced he thinks it’s worth going to war for.

North Korea actually repudiated the Korean War armistice four years ago. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time:

If you’re developing a weapon to use in a surprise attack on your enemies (or surreptitiously on-sell it to terrorists), you’d be crazy to advertise the fact. But if your purpose is to deter, then you want everyone to know about it. Kim Jong-Il’s openness about his nukes supports rather than detracts from his claim that their purpose is defensive. …

Kim is most definitely eccentric, but there’s no evidence that he’s behaving irrationally. His nuclear program is an entirely rational response to the incentives he faces; if we want him to give it up, we’re going to have to change those incentives.

Since then, Kim the third has succeeded Kim the second, but otherwise the fundamentals remain the same. Nuclear weapons and the associated fiery rhetoric serve two obvious purposes for North Korea: firstly as a deterrent against any American attack, and secondly as blackmail to try to extract concessions – mostly aid – from the west. Neither raises any likelihood that they would actually be used.

It may also be that Kim Jong-un, being still relatively young and untried, is trying to build credibility with his generals and party stalwarts (but for a long time people said the same thing about his father, stressing his need to measure up to the belligerent standard set by his father). Crossing the line that would result in his country being wiped out would not, however, be a good way of doing that.

In fact, while Kim’s rhetoric sounds alarming, it’s entirely consistent with past practice. As the White House press secretary put it overnight, “this pattern of bellicose rhetoric is not new, it is familiar.” There’s no evidence of actual willingness to start a war: “we are not seeing changes to the North Korean military posture, such as large-scale mobilizations and positioning of forces.”

For those who missed it, it’s worth having a look at last night’s 7.30 on the ABC. Professor Andrei Lankov, a world expert on North Korea, patiently explained the logic of Kim’s actions, the way they follow a predictable pattern and are best simply ignored. Until the last question, when Tracy Bowden asked him if Kim might have to “walk the walk” on going to war and he seemed to lose patience a little:

Why? Is he stupid? Is he suicidal? Is he a zealot? Does he believe in any ideology? Does he want to destroy the world in the name of God or whoever? Of course not. He loves his life. He loves his wife. He loves his cars and his toys. He’s not going to start a war he has no chance to win.

For all the stories about North Korea’s million-strong army and its artillery trained on Seoul, this is the fundamental point: its chance of military victory against the US is zero. No high degree of reasoning or military know-how is required to realise that. Kim and his cadres are insulated from reality, but not that insulated.

The only thing that could prompt a decision to go to war would be if Kim believed an attack from the west was imminent. That’s why escalating the rhetorical conflict carries risks.

It would be better for the west to treat Kim’s latest provocations as no big deal, to offer comprehensive guarantees for North Korea’s security, but make no aid concessions for anything short of verifiable nuclear disarmament.

And in the meantime it would probably help if the media shuffled this story down towards the bottom of the pile.

I’ve been prompted to this exercise by an article in this morning’s Fairfax papers by former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, who draws attention to material on the dispute published by New York Times correspondent Nicholas Kristof. You can read the competing Chinese and Japanese scholars here, here and here (if Fairfax was interested in joining the twenty-first century it could have provided the links in the article), and there’s plenty more in the relevant Wikipedia article.

Since Fraser and I have something of a history, I should say first off that I agree with him on what I take to be the central contention of the article: that the Senkaku dispute should be resolved peacefully and according to international law, and that Australia should not automatically sign up to the Japanese (or American) position – and, a fortiori, that we should not go to war in support of it.

I think Fraser is absolutely right to say that  “We should not follow a superpower into war, merely because it wants us to, or because of ANZUS,” and that if we think “that is the only way we can guarantee one day, that if we need help, it will help us,” then we are badly mistaken.

But I disagree with his pessimistic assessment that war over the Senkakus is a realistic prospect. For the very reasons he gives why containment of China is quite different from containment of the Soviet Union – that China “is heavily entwined in the economies of nearly every Western country” – I think all parties will ensure that their sabre-rattling stops well short of actual hostilities.

So just going by the legal rights of the issue, who should we support? The undisputed facts are that Japan annexed the islands in 1895; that they were included in the Ryukyu Islands protectorate exercised by the United States after the Second World War; that since the Ryukyus were returned to Japan in 1972 they have been under Japanese control, but China has consistently disputed Japanese sovereignty.

In the instrument of surrender and subsequent peace treaty that ended the Second World War, Japan agreed to return all territories it had seized by force since the 1894-95 war with China. Japan, however, claims that the Senkakus were terra nullius at the time and therefore do not fit that description: China disputes that. Japan also argues that by making no attempt to assert its sovereignty in the period 1945-71, China effectively waived any claim to the islands.

I wouldn’t go as far as Kristof in saying that the Chinese case is “compelling”, but it’s certainly arguable. In fact it’s exactly the sort of case that the organs of international law are equipped to adjudicate – somewhat reminiscent of the Clipperton Island arbitration of 1931. Instead of arguing about alliances, all nations should be trying to prevail on both China and Japan to take the case to the International Court of Justice.

Well before the recent acrimony over the islands, William Heflin analysed the competing claims in a 2000 law journal article. He was sympathetic to China’s moral claims, but concluded that the legal precedents would favor Japan if the issue were to go to court.

He may be right. I’m not at all sure, and while I find it a very interesting question, I don’t feel any stake in the outcome. Other things being equal my inclination would be to back Japan, a (flawed) democracy, over China, a dictatorship. But we should all know by now that a personal preference for one side doesn’t entail that they’re in the right.

Nor, of course, does it justify going to war. Like many international disputes, just which way this one gets settled is much less important than that it be settled peacefully.

Despite that connection, there’s no confirmation that any of the new data comes from official North Korean sources. Google’s own announcement just refers to “citizen cartographers” who have improved the mapping piece by piece using the company’s “Map Maker” tool. And there’s probably a fair bit that the North Korean government won’t be very happy about revealing to the world – specific items such as the baldly labelled “Yodok Gulag”, but also the general amount of detail on the whereabouts of railways, ports, airfields and other items of strategic significance.

Yet Schmidt’s visit shows that Google has at least some sort of relationship with the North Korean authorities, so it seems unlikely that it would have gone ahead if it thought they would throw a major tantrum as a result. And realistically, anyone who had military designs against North Korea would already have better data from satellite photography and on-the-ground espionage.

But if you haven’t already done so, spend some time playing with the newly lifelike North Korea. It’s remarkably good. Pyongyang looks like a real city, and even what seem to be just medium-sized provincial towns have quite a bit of detail. Not nearly as much as you’d get for a western country, of course (not surprisingly, there’s no sign of any “street view”), but it compares favorably with large parts of Africa or even Russia.

It even has Google’s usual eccentricities, like the inconsistent mix of native names and latinised versions. But the fit between the maps and the satellite images is very good – better than it often is in Australia – presumably because so much of them has been compiled from the imagery in the first place. (The downside of that is that street names are few and far between.)

Just as Google Maps generally gives us a wonderful ability to recapture the sense of being in foreign places, this new mapping must be an amazing gift for the thousands living in South Korea who fled the North as children or young people 60-odd years ago, and now can again see images of the places they grew up in. It will also of course be helpful to the North Koreans themselves, or at least the small number who have access to the internet.

Schmidt’s message to North Korea, it’s reported, was that it should “end its self-imposed isolation and allow its citizens to use the internet,” and that “it would lag behind economically unless it embraced internet freedom.” No doubt there are other sorts of unfreedom that also hold North Korea back, but the message is a sound one. Just possibly this is a sign that someone there may be listening.

It’s also an incredibly vivid reminder to the rest of us that the North Koreans are fundamentally people just like us. Although we should do what we can to help consign their dreadful government to the dustbin of history, we should never fall into the trap of demonising the people themselves.

It was again a mixed year, where the forces of change and the forces of stability both had their victories. Six of the G20 countries held elections in 2012, compared to four in 2011 (you can read last year’s review here). Three of them – France, Mexico and Japan – went against the incumbents, but none of the results were really unexpected. Of those contests that could be seen in ideological terms the left probably had a slight edge, but it’s hard to see much of a global trend.

Australia missed out on most of the action, with just one state election: in Queensland, where the ALP suffered a whitewash. Although its vote held up better than it had last year in New South Wales, its parliamentary representation was much more comprehensively destroyed – illustrating again the vagaries of the electoral system.

So here, in chronological order, are my top ten elections of 2012:

Taiwan (14 January): President Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang was re-elected reasonably comfortably, in what amounted to a referendum on his policy of closer engagement with the communist mainland. Voters evidently decided that the gains from better cross-strait relations justified the shelving of some of their national aspirations.

Russia (4 March): Former president Vladimir Putin, having spent four years as prime minister, returned to his old job after winning 63.6% of the vote in Russia’s presidential election. The impressive opposition protests from late 2011 failed to translate into a significant opposition vote – partly due, no doubt, to unfairnesses in the electoral system, but also to Putin’s genuine popularity in much of the country.

Senegal (26 February/25 March): In one of Africa’s more robust democracies, incumbent Abdoulaye Wade was permitted, on slightly dubious constitutional grounds, to run for a third term. But the voters decided that two was enough and although Wade led on the first round, he was comfortably defeated in the runoff by former prime minister Macky Sall.

France (22 April/6 May): Possibly the landmark election of 2012, in which the European left, which has had a shocking few years, signalled that it was on the comeback trail. Socialist François Hollande scored a clear victory over centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, with voters apparently seeing him as a safe pair of hands in Europe’s continuing financial crisis. Hollande went on to win a solid majority in parliament, and the left also took power in Slovakia and Lithuania, although it failed to topple the liberals in the Netherlands.

Egypt (23-24 May/16-17 June): For the first time ever Egypt gained a democratically elected president – Mohammed Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood. He wasn’t the president most democrats had wanted, but liberal and left-wing candidates had been eliminated in the first round, and Morsi faced off against a candidate of the old regime in the runoff, winning with 51.7%. Electoral systems matter.

Greece (17 June): This was Greece’s second parliamentary election for the year, after the first, on 6 May, failed to produce any workable majority. This time the voters decided that they could live with austerity as the price of remaining in the eurozone, and a broad coalition led by the centre-right New Democracy took office – helped by an electoral system that gave a bonus allocation of seats to the party with a plurality.

Mexico (1 July): The Institutional Revolutionary Party, out of office for 12 years, returned to power with new president Enrique Peña Nieto and a promise to wind back the deadly drug conflict. It was otherwise a quiet year for elections in Latin America, but Hugo Chávez overcame strong opposition to win re-election in Venezuela in October.

Georgia (1 October): In parliamentary elections the party of president Mikhail Saakashvili was defeated by an opposition coalition and Georgia’s richest man, Bidzina Ivanishvili, became prime minister – raising hopes for better relations with neighboring Russia. Saakashvili is a great favorite with America’s neoconservatives but has been less successful domestically.

United States (6 November): Democrat president Barack Obama was re-elected with a reduced but still reasonably clear majority. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone who had read and understood the opinion polls, but that category evidently didn’t include large sections of the Republican party. Democrats also increased their majority in the Senate, although Republicans (aided by widespread gerrymandering) retained control of the House of Representatives.

Japan (16 December): Once again, Japanese voters decided that life without the Liberal Democratic Party wasn’t such a good idea; after three years in office, the Democratic Party of Japan was defeated in a landslide (at least in seats – votes were a lot closer) and the LDP returned to power. But it wasn’t all bad for East Asian incumbents, as the centre-right held on in South Korea later the same week.

Dishonorable Mentions: As usual, there were a number of questionable, fraudulent or conspicuously non-existent elections. Kazakhstan, Iran and Syria all deserve mention, but at the bottom of the pile is China, the world’s second-largest economy and third-greatest military power, which changed leadership in a completely opaque process with essentially zero public input.

Must try harder in 2013. Happy new year, everyone.

Voting in South Korea (like most presidential elections – the US is the big exception) is very simple: it’s a single nationwide ballot, and the candidate with the most votes wins. That’s fine as long as there are only two serious candidates, as was the case this time. (Independent Kang Ji-won was a very distant third with only 0.17%.)

But at other times it brings problems. In 1987, at the first election after democratisation, the military’s preferred candidate, Roh Tae-woo, won with just 36.6% of the vote. If his two opponents had been able to exchange preferences, or consolidate their vote in a runoff, one of them almost certainly would have beaten him.

Ten years later, the shoe was on the other foot: the centre-left’s Kim Dae-jung, one of the losers in 1987, won with only 40.8% against two opponents who split the conservative vote. (Adam Carr has all of the figures.)

Despite such anomalies, South Korea seems to have matured into a stable democracy. Odd, then, that its new president will be the daughter of its longest serving dictator – Park Chung-hee, who seized power in a military coup in 1961, tore up the constitution in 1972 and ruled until he was assassinated by his intelligence chief in 1979.

As dictators go, you could do worse than Park. He is given much of the credit for rebuilding the country after the Korean War, and South Koreans remained a lot freer than their counterparts in the north. But opposition was routinely suppressed, and as with many similar Cold War leaders (including Ferdinand Marcos, whom Park is said to have copied), support for authoritarianism did much to discredit western policy.

One can’t help but wonder what lessons Park Geun-hye learned in her father’s household. Both sides have helped to build South Korea’s democratic institutions, but the party system still marks the difference between the respective heirs of the military rulers and of their opponents. In this case, the term “heirs” is more than usually literal.

With only a narrow mandate, and with some need to differentiate herself from her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, whose hard-line policies towards North Korea have failed to yield much progress, there are hopes that Park will take a more conciliatory approach than her family background might suggest. And the simple fact of electing a female head of state, the first in the region, should be taken as a sign of continued political progress.

The headlines are quite unequivocal: the opposition Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide, turfing out the Democratic Party of Japan after only a single term. The LDP will have a comfortable majority in its own right with 294 of the 480 lower house seats, and counting its ally the New Komeito Party it will have a two-thirds majority. But the votes cast tell a slightly different story.

Japan’s electoral system combines both single-member electorates (300 seats) and proportional representation (180 seats). Unlike, say, the New Zealand system, the proportional vote does not determine the overall results; it just provides an allocation of extra seats that mitigates somewhat the unfairness of the single-member seats.

The single-member seats, as always, tend to exaggerate majorities and disadvantage smaller parties. But they are also badly malapportioned: the rural seats that favor the LDP sometimes have only half as many voters as urban seats. (Adam Carr has the 2009 results here [ http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/j/japan/japan20092.txt ].)

On Sunday, the LDP won only 27.8% of the proportional vote and 43.0% of the electorate vote, but came away with more than 60% of the seats. The three main parties opposed to it (the DPJ, the Restoration Party and Your Party) comfortably outvoted it in the proportional vote and almost did so in the electorate vote, but could only manage 129 seats between them.

(The results are all available here, but if your Japanese isn’t up to scratch you’ll probably want Wikipedia’s summary.)

Since the anti-LDP vote is so fragmented (the liberal DPJ and the nationalist Restoration Party would be most unlikely to work together), it’s probable that even a fair result would have produced an LDP government. But it would have looked a lot more shaky, and certainly wouldn’t have the nerve to claim the sort of popular mandate that Shinzo Abe now boasts.

The truth seems to be that Japan’s electorate is unenthusiastic about any of the choices on offer (turnout was also well down on recent years), and having decisively thrown out the LDP only three years ago it has returned to it only reluctantly. The new government would do well to keep that in mind.

(For the policy implications of Sunday’s result, don’t miss Damien Kingsbury’s piece from Monday’s Crikey – although my hunch is that Japanese voters care less about nuclear power (whether for or against) than western commentators do.)