North Korea has just pulled off an impressive dual feat -- the successful test both of an intercontinental ballistic missile and an atom bomb in the 6-kiloton range. Pyongyang's ruler, 30-year-old Kim Jong Un, said the tests are aimed at the United States. So it would...
Continued U.S. economic sluggishness, induced by a massive national debt in excess of $15 trillion, should be causing soul-searching in the American foreign policy community about which unnecessary alliance commitments can be shed to save money. Yet, predictably,...
In a momentous about-face, Japan has revamped her defense strategy to address Chinese threats to Japan's southern islands rather than Russian threats to Japan's northernmost islands. The change comes as tensions between North and South Korea have caused Prime Minister...
Why does the U.S. government's foreign policy often hinge on the naïve and moralistic expectation that other countries should act against their own interests? Wouldn't a more realistic U.S. foreign policy be better for everyone concerned? Let's take an example....
Given all the other foreign policy challenges he is dealing with, the last thing U.S. President Barack Obama needed three weeks after Republicans swept mid-term elections was the outbreak of a major new crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Yet the revelation that North...
Initial reports were unequivocal: those crazy North Koreans had once again broken the longstanding ceasefire and attacked the South, this time at Yeonpyeong Island, shelling civilian quarters, and killing two South Korean marines. A few hours later, however, a more...
With apologies to my readers, there is no column from me today. I've got to go to a Major Medical Appointment -- heart stress test, prostate stuff, etc. -- and there's just no way I can continue to avoid and/or delay it, in spite of my strenuous attempts to do so....
We're at war – old news, you say? Well you don't know how old – because I'm not talking about our eternal "war on terrorism," but the Korean war. Yes, in case you didn't know, it's still on, at least in the formal sense: a truce was signed, on July 27, 1953,...
