When Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, it focused on embedding the civil rights of the formerly enslaved in the Constitution. But the framers of the amendment also included a clause meant to keep those who served the Confederacy from holding public office. This “insurrection clause” of the U.S. constitution —Section 3 of the… Continue reading How to Deal with an Insurrectionist
The Korean War ended more than 70 years ago, and a tense peace has reigned ever since on the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas have exchanged artillery fire, battled in the economic and diplomatic arenas, and even covertly dispatched spies to each other’s territory. But the threats of a resumption of conflict, disproportionately coming from… Continue reading Are North Korea’s Recent Threats Rhetorical or Real?
It would be funny if it weren’t so potentially tragic — and consequential. No, I’m not thinking about Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign but a related development: the latest decisions from the European Union (EU) about Ukraine. As 2023 ended, European nations failed to agree on a $54-billion package of assistance for Ukraine at a… Continue reading The End of Europe?
Much of international relations is pretense. The leaders of countries pretend to like each other, shaking hands with smiles and manufactured bonhomie. International treaties, which countries solemnly ratify, are often honored only in the breach. Then there are borders, the cement that holds together the international order. Nation-states are the building blocks of that order,… Continue reading What’s Going to Happen to Taiwan?
Making a transition away from fossil fuels is going to require a lot of work. But there’s a real concern that it will also require a lot fewer workers. All of the workers in fossil fuel industries, for instance, are acutely aware that their jobs are at risk, if not immediately then at some point… Continue reading Labor and Green Colonialism in the Global South
Not much is known about Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. She might have been born in 1987 or perhaps 1989. She studied in Switzerland as a child, along with her brother, but no one has reported on her studies there or whether she developed a love of… Continue reading Twisted Sister?
The greatest horror of the war between Israel and Gaza is that it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Israeli intelligence received a 40-page document a year before the October 7 attack that provided precise details of the plan of the militant Hamas organization to breach the security wall between Israel and Gaza. Although… Continue reading The Horrors of Gaza
Henry Kissinger wrote his doctoral dissertation about Europe’s “long peace” after the defeat of Napoleon, focusing on how conservative statesmen negotiated the Concert of Europe through a mixture of diplomacy and military power. Kissinger was enamored of this approach to achieving an “equilibrium of forces.” The lesson he absorbed, and later applied as a presidential… Continue reading Rescuing Realpolitik from Henry Kissinger
Panic does not produce prudent politics. Panic produces provocative populists. And it reduces pundits to Seussian spluttering. How can voters choose such…panic-peddling panderers?! The defeats of Donald Trump in the U.S. elections in 2020 and Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian elections in 2022 were supposed to prove that the wave of right-wing politicians had crested… Continue reading The Return of the Far Right
On the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the twisted wreckage of a train sits on a set of rails that end abruptly before they can proceed northward. The wreck, what remains of a train bombed during the Korean War, rests outside Woljeong-ri train station, the northernmost station on the Gyeongwon line before… Continue reading Telling the Complex History of Korea’s Occupation