Listen to Rep. Paul deliver this address. Last week President Obama made a surprise pre-dawn trip to Afghanistan to mark the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden and to sign a document further extending the U.S. presence in that country. The president said, “We’re building an enduring partnership. … As you stand …
Continue reading “Enduring Commitments Abroad”
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, interest groups supporting empire continue to tout “American leadership” in “strategic” regions of the world. For example, …
Continue reading “Save Money by Ending Costly Alliances”
“The land and sea aren’t something you bought,” explained Kang Ae-Shim. “Why are you selling something that was there long before you were born?” Kang Ae-Shim is a haenyo, one of the legendary Korean women sea divers from Jeju Island who can hold their breath for up to two minutes while foraging the ocean floor …
Continue reading “Naval Base Tears Apart Korean Village”
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. North Korea is a mostly isolated, totalitarian, unpredictable, and downright weird regime. Its only “friend” …
Continue reading “US Policy Toward the Koreas Is Unrealistic”
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 nuanced story came out: it seems the South Koreans were conducting military “exercises” near the …
Continue reading “Korean Conundrum: Is There a Way Out?”
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, but the war …
Continue reading “End the Korean War”
The more one learns about North Korea – its unconscionable human rights violations, its gulags and summary executions, the way it locks its citizens in and tortures or kills them when they try to escape over the Chinese border, the way every foreign visitor must follow a strict itinerary and be accompanied by a government …
Continue reading “Resist the Urge to Confront Kim Jong-Il”
Amid rising tensions with North Korea, U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday assured visiting South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak that Washington was firmly committed to their nearly 60-year alliance and their mutual determination not to yield to Pyongyang’s demands that it be recognized as a nuclear power. "We have not come to a conclusion that North …
Continue reading “Obama Affirms Alliance With S. Korea Amid Rising Tensions”
Thomas Gale Moore proposes a new approach to Pyongyang
No, but let’s not provoke Kim, says Justin Raimondo
