Donald Trump loves to tell the following story. You go to a bank and borrow $3 million. If you can’t pay it back, you have a problem. But say you go to a bank and borrow $300 million. Then, if you can’t pay it back, both you and the bank have a problem. In other words, the bank… Continue reading Trump’s Investment in North Korea
Right-wing populists are all the rage these days. Donald Trump and his spleen control the White House, while his counterparts have taken over in Italy, Hungary, Poland, Colombia, India, and elsewhere. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former Svengali, hopes to inspire a worldwide revolution of nationalism-inflected right-wing extremism. But what about left-wing populists? Bernie Sanders made an epic run… Continue reading Bernies of the World, Unite!
It’s a famous story, though perhaps not famous enough. The 1939 voyage of the MS St. Louis, a German ocean liner, was recounted in a 1974 book and a 1976 film (both titled Voyage of the Damned) as well as a 1994 opera. This history is not forgotten. Yet so many unfortunate people around the world are… Continue reading World to Refugees: Go to Hell
In the wake of the disastrous G7 meeting in Canada and the successful summit in Singapore, it’s hard to know what to call U.S. foreign policy these days. It’s not just unilateralism, where Washington acts alone and allies be damned. Nor is it merely unipolarism, in which the United States targets all hegemonic challengers in… Continue reading Trump’s Unileaderism
In 2012, Roseanne Barr ran for president. The actress/comedian received the nomination of California’s feminist-socialist Peace and Freedom Party. She chose Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist, as her running mate. Barr took strong positions on environmental sustainability. She wanted the United States to withdrawfrom Iraq and Afghanistan, and she opposed any war with Iran. She criticized the right-wing… Continue reading Dear White People
If the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un doesn’t happen, it’s easy to finger the culprit. National Security Advisor John Bolton, who started in his position after the U.S. president agreed to meet with the North Korean leader, has never concealed his desire to effect regime change in Pyongyang. In February, he published an… Continue reading The Real Obstacle to Peace between Pyongyang and Washington
Conmen always keep up a patter. While they’re extracting the wallet from your pocket, they maintain a nonstop monologue so that you focus on their mouth and not what they’re doing with their hands. Beware the voluble stranger. Donald Trump has always been a talker. Even before he discovered Twitter, Trump was constantly bending people’s… Continue reading The Korean Shell Game
Imagine a trio of tech-savvy and entrepreneurial souls on the prowl for the next killer app. They’re staying up late in their dorm, or perhaps they’re celebrating at a nightclub after finishing their MBA program. They want to make money. They want to change the world. They want to create something that gets snatched up… Continue reading The Disrupters-in-Chief
When, in early March, Donald Trump agreed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the Washington foreign policy elite nearly suffered a collective heart attack. For one thing, the announcement came as a complete surprise. Trump had telegraphed his other foreign policy bombshells well in advance: leaving the Paris climate accord, ripping up the Iran… Continue reading Playing Trump for Peace
For a man with a reputation for venting spleen and flying off the handle, John Bolton bided his time before finally rising to the position of power he now occupies. The former U.S. ambassador to the UN spent much of the last decade consolidating his political base through stints at right-wing institutes like the American Enterprise… Continue reading Thus Begins the Bolton Administration
In South Korea these days, a popular dish at trendy restaurants is budae jjigae—an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink stew full of noodles, red pepper paste, Spam, sausages, kimchi, American cheese, baked beans, tofu, and whatever else the chef might want to throw into the mix. Budae means “battalion” in Korean, which points to the stew’s origins in the Korean War.… Continue reading Left Behind by Korea’s Success
Korean reunification is, for the most part, an ideal rather than a concrete plan. But that hasn’t always been the case. In the 1950s, reunification was a military goal: the forced absorption of one side by the other. Neither side was able to achieve that goal. In the 1960s and 1970s, when the two Koreas… Continue reading What Would Korean Reunification Look Like?
Gina Haspel is a consummate professional who has served the U.S. intelligence community with distinction for more than 30 years. As the Trump administration’s nominee to head up the Central Intelligence Agency, Haspel has received endorsements from six former CIA directors, three former directors of national intelligence, and two former secretaries of state. It would be hard… Continue reading The Banality of Haspel
The president giveth and he taketh away. Donald Trump is a stern and wrathful leader. He thinks nothing of raining down fire and fury upon the enemies of his “chosen people.” Indeed, he even flirts with ending the world if he doesn’t receive due respect and the requisite number of burnt offerings. But he can… Continue reading Two-Faced Trump: Peace in Korea, War in the Middle East
In geopolitics, everything is impossible — until, suddenly, it isn‘t. Wars that no one ever believed could happen flare into existence, and stable societies descend into chaos. On the other side of spectrum, peace agreements that only Pollyannas thought possible are suddenly on the table after months of secret talks, as wicked problems untangle themselves… Continue reading Korea and the Geopolitics of Impossible
By slapping tariffs on Chinese imports, Donald Trump has once again proven to be the Disrupter-in-Chief. This week alone, he’s brought John Bolton in as national security advisor over the objections of every sane person in the universe, threatened to go after Bashar al-Assad over the Syrian leader’s alleged use of chemical weapons, and revived disgusting characterizations of Mexicans as rapists.… Continue reading Trump’s Trade War Is About Trump, Not China
The gloves are off in the White House now that Mike Pompeo is slated to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. Whatever restraining influence Tillerson had on the president – and, frankly, it was minimal – Donald Trump is now about to veer headlong into the “dark side” of foreign policy, much as the… Continue reading With Tillerson Out, Trump’s Bringing Foreign Policy Deeper Into the Dark Side
Donald Trump has now assembled a cabinet of men that have elevated violence to a supreme virtue at home and abroad. Men like Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Trump himself. They are all firm believers in armed domination. In this respect, they share an unlikely bond with Erik Killmonger, the villain of the movie Black Panther.… Continue reading Killmonger’s World
Donald Trump has a plan to solve America’s drug crisis: kill the drug dealers. “We have pushers and drugs dealers, they are killing hundreds and hundreds of people,” Trump said at a recent White House summit on opioid abuse. “Some countries have a very, very tough penalty — the ultimate penalty — and by the way, they have much… Continue reading Trump to the International Community: Drop Dead
Five hundred years ago, a popular test to flush out witches was called “ordeal by water.” Dunk an alleged witch into a lake. If she sinks, she’s innocent. If she floats, her guilt is plain for all to see and she can be safely burned at the stake. By this ancient form of waterboarding, witch… Continue reading Hunting Witches in Washington
In a surprise announcement in early March, President Donald Trump said that he would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un within two months. The preparations for the meeting were hampered by the lack of North Korea expertise within the administration, the short-staffed State Department, and the mercurial temperament of the president. The North Korean… Continue reading How Those Trump-Kim Talks Might Go: A Transcript
In the Stockholm syndrome, the victim starts to identify with the captor. In one of the most famous examples, the heiress Patty Hearst took up arms on behalf of the radical group that abducted her. She denounced her old friends and began to make speeches in praise of the Symbionese Liberation Army. To a certain… Continue reading A Nobel for Donald Trump over Korea?
When an epoch ends, as the Cold War did between 1989 and 1991, it takes some time to come up with a name for the new order. For some years, the world lived in a “post-Cold War” era. That phrase was supposed to capture the optimism of a new beginning as well as the uncertainty… Continue reading The New New Cold War
Welcome back, Gog and Magog. I can’t say that I’ve missed you. You might remember the Gog and Magog story from 2003, when George W. Bush was making plans to invade Iraq and assembling a “coalition of the willing.” French President Jacques Chirac was quite unwilling, so Bush went to great lengths to break down… Continue reading Oh, Magog!
Washington and New Dehli are having a mutual lovefest these days. Donald Trump is popular in India — where only 17 percent of the population considers the president “intolerant,” compared to a global average of 65 percent — and he has warmly welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House. Both leaders are eager to bump… Continue reading Trump’s Majoritarian Dream
The United States has not yet appointed an ambassador to South Korea. This shouldn’t necessarily be interpreted as an insult. A number of other important places still lack U.S. ambassadors: the European Union, Germany, Turkey. The Trump administration has been notoriously slow in filling these top diplomatic slots. In some cases, as with Germany, Democrats… Continue reading No Diplomacy for South Korea
When it comes to the Russiagate scandal, progressives usually take one of two positions. They either dismiss the scandal as a lot of hooey, a “nothingburger,” just a way for warmongers and the “Deep State” to revive a cold war between Washington and Moscow. Or they treat the scandal as just a means to an… Continue reading Russiagate or Deep State?
The discussion of the Russia file these days sounds like the review of a fast-food restaurant. Echoing that infamous catchphrase of Wendy’s that became a political meme in the 1984 presidential elections — Where’s the Beef? — the charges of cooperation between the Kremlin and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign have either been dismissed as a “nothingburger” or embraced… Continue reading Russiaburger: The Trump-Russia Scandal Unwrapped
As a candidate, Donald Trump enjoyed pillorying the globalists. “We will no longer surrender this country, or its people, to the false song of globalism,” he said in his first major speech on foreign policy in April 2016. By globalists, he first of all meant rival Hillary Clinton, who represented the face of American internationalism as a… Continue reading Big Surprise: Rich Globalists Love Trump
Evil is a popular topic in Hollywood, from The Evil Dead franchise to Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies. But evil makes only the occasional cameo in the U.S. policy realm. In the early 1990s, the topic of evil became buzz-worthy in the wake of the Cold War’s collapse as pundits and policymakers tried to understand the unfolding… Continue reading Dr. Evil’s First Year in Office