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
The United States has never invaded Norway. It has never bombed Oslo. It has never rounded up Norwegians and thrown them in Guantanamo. Perhaps some U.S. diplomats have referred to the country as a “shithole” — because the food’s rather bland and the nightlife rather staid — but the important thing is that the United… Continue reading A Foreign Policy of Sticks and Stones
In talks this week at the DMZ, South Korea welcomed the participation of North Korea in the upcoming Winter Olympics. The two countries also discussed restarting reunions of divided families and reducing tensions on the Korean peninsula. Earlier, both sides reestablished their hotline. All of this adult conversation is a welcome change from the war… Continue reading Walking Back War in Korea
The last time Iranians went out onto the streets in large numbers, they were protesting what they thought was a stolen election. It was 2009, and hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had convincingly won the presidency with roughly 63 percent to reformer Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s approximately 34 percent. Adopting their campaign’s green color, Mousavi’s supporters thronged the streets… Continue reading Trump and the Iran Protests
Review of Sunset: A Ch’ae Manshik Reader, edited and translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 210 pages In his novel An Artist of the Floating World, the British writer Kazuo Ishiguro explores the moral conflicts of a painter who places his talents in service of the Japanese imperial… Continue reading Sunset: A Ch’ae Manshik Reader (Review)
Review of North Korea’s Juche Myth, B. R. Myers (Busan: Sthele Press, 2015) With his latest book, Brian Myers attempts to prove that North Korea’s juche ideology is not an ideology at all. Because it does not actually drive North Korean policy, Myers argues, juche is nothing more than a myth that North Korean… Continue reading North Korea’s Juche Myth (Review)
President Donald Trump now finds himself, not even two years into his term, besieged by congressional opponents, a special investigator, numerous lawyers, the mainstream media, protesters in the street, and even anonymous critics within his own administration. Many of these opponents hope that the president will resign, be impeached, or be rendered politically impotent by… Continue reading House of Trump, House of Putin (Review)
Review of Nuclear Blues, Bradley Martin K. Martin (Great Leader Books, 2017, 321 pages) It’s not easy to write about North Korea. It’s tough to get there, and it’s even tougher to talk to North Koreans freely if you do manage to visit. A good deal of material about the country is speculative, anecdotal,… Continue reading Nuclear Blues (Review)
Donald Trump is contemplating wars that would dwarf anything that his immediate predecessors ever considered. He has dropped the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan, and he’s considering the mother of all wars in the Middle East. He is abetting Saudi Arabia’s devastating war in Yemen. Many evangelicals are welcoming his announcement of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem… Continue reading North Korea: The Costs of War