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
Don’t kid yourself: 2016 was a revolutionary year in the United States. Yes, I know, the United States is a deeply conservative country. Americans don’t engage in periodic attempts to overthrow the system. There is no viable political party that threatens the status quo. When protesters gather in Washington, they have no intention of storming… Continue reading The Insurrectionists
After 1989, Eastern Europe became the poster child for liberal democracy. One after another, the countries in the region replaced their Communist systems with new market economies, alongside democratic structures. After many years of difficult “transition”—high unemployment, industrial collapse, rural dislocation—the countries in the region all began to stabilize as they approached the close of… Continue reading Eastern Europe Marches Right
He was a rich businessman, an outspoken outsider with a love of conspiracy theories. And he was a populist running for president. In 1990, when Donald Trump was still beyond the furthest outskirts of American politics, Stanislaw Tyminski was trying to become the new president of post-communist Poland. He shared something else with the future… Continue reading Welcome to the Birthplace of Trumpism
In November, the Charles Koch Foundation announced that it would provide nearly $4 million in grants to Harvard University and MIT to train the next generation of foreign policy professionals. It’s part of the foundation’s effort to steer U.S. foreign policy away from its emphasis on military intervention and big Pentagon budgets. Yes, that’s right: Charles Koch.… Continue reading What Happens When Bad Money Supports Good Foreign Policy
As an ethnically homogenous and already divided nation, Korea might seem to be immune from all the fragmentation that seems to be happening around the world today. Far from the Korean peninsula, the European Union is negotiating the British exit and facing a possible withdrawal by the Spanish region of Catalonia. The Middle East is… Continue reading Korea and the Geopolitics of Division
As a candidate, Donald Trump rallied voters against a variety of enemies. He vilified Mexicans. He stereotyped Muslims. And he went after the Chinese for “raping” the United States. President Trump still wants to build that wall along the border with Mexico. He’s still trying to keep out Muslim immigrants. As for China, all signs have pointed… Continue reading Trump’s New Blame Game
There’s been precious little good news from Asia these days. Washington and Pyongyang continue to trade threats of war. Right-wing nationalist Shinzo Abe won reelection as prime minister in Japan last month. Major storms have hammered several countries in the region, most recently Typhoon Damrey in Vietnam. And now, in the wake of those typhoons… Continue reading Building On The Good News From Asia
North Korea has the worst human rights record of any country in the world except perhaps Eritrea and Syria. There is, however, a curious exception to this record: disability rights. This case offers a powerful counter-example of successful engagement in an arena where the country normally experiences nothing but universal condemnation. For nearly two decades,… Continue reading Engaging North Korea Successfully on Human Rights
When the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published his bestseller The Disuniting of America in 1991, he didn’t seriously entertain the worst-case scenario suggested by the title. At the time, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were imploding, while separatist movements in Quebec, East Timor, Spain’s Basque country, and elsewhere were already clamoring for their own states. But when… Continue reading Donald Trump and the Fourth Great Shattering
The Middle East today is enduring a replay of World War II — with the Islamic State in the role of Nazi Germany. Having seized much of Europe and parts of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany reached the peak of its expansion by the fall of 1942. Then, stopped at Stalingrad and unable to overwhelm… Continue reading The Fall of the House of ISIS
In the middle of September, Harvard University announced that it was inviting two controversial new fellows to the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School: former Trump administration spokesman Sean Spicer and whistleblower Chelsea Manning. At the august institution, they would be joining Corey Lewandowski, one of Trump’s campaign managers, along with several Democratic Party operatives. But it… Continue reading The Collaborationists
Democracy can be messy. In the northeast corner of Spain this week, democracy was downright chaotic. Catalans went to the polls on Sunday to vote in a referendum on whether to stay in Spain or go their separate way. The Spanish authorities, however, declared the vote illegitimate and sent in the national police to disrupt… Continue reading Things Fall Apart
Every few years — sometimes four, sometimes eight — America’s political mood swings from one pole to another. It’s a not-uncommon disorder for democracies. Voters get disgusted with one flavor of politics and opt for another. For better or worse, the United States doesn’t have a Baskin-Robbins democracy. So, the vacillations in Americans’ political taste… Continue reading The Semtex President
North Korea has the worst human rights record of any country in the world except perhaps Eritrea and Syria. There is, however, a curious exception to this record: disability rights. This case offers a powerful counter-example of successful engagement in an arena where the country normally experiences nothing but universal condemnation. For nearly two decades,… Continue reading Engaging North Korea Successfully on Human Rights
Germany got its very own electoral shock this week when the far right won 13 percent of the vote in country’s parliamentary elections. For the first time in more than half a century, the far right will be represented in the German parliament, with more than 90 seats. Although it’s now Germany’s third most popular… Continue reading Germany and the Rise of a “Fascist International”
The United States faces a new nuclear power ruled by a communist dictator. Washington is worried that the leadership of that country is crazy enough to use its new weapons — even against the United States. Meanwhile, other countries fear that the “madman” in the Oval Office might just launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack. This… Continue reading Time to Make a Deal with North Korea
They were Muslims, and they were leaving the country in droves. Their homeland, a remote corner of a multiethnic country, had become a warzone. Militants had taken up arms to fight for their rights, and the central government retaliated in force. Human rights abuses, mostly by the government, were rampant. Caught in the gunfire, hundreds… Continue reading The Rohingya and the Responsibility to Ignore
The storm inside the Republican Party has reached Category Four. At the end of August, as Hurricane Harvey tore through Texas and Hurricane Irma was poised to devastate Florida, the hard right was experiencing its own high winds and pelting rain. On the TV show Fox and Friends, conservative commentator Laura Ingraham took aim at the Trump administration… Continue reading Hurricane Donald Hits the Republican Party