KEI Contributor – Mark Tokola

On February 14, KEI Vice President Mark Tokola was quoted in several print and broadcast news outlets in South Korea regarding the assassination of Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia. The quotes…

On February 14, KEI Vice President Mark Tokola was quoted in an Associated Press story about the assassination of Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia. The quotes were based on Mark's analysis…

A February 6th article by the Observor cites KEI Vice President Mark Tokola, who noted that North Korean can still incur heavy losses on South Korea and Japan even without…

On October 28, online news site the Observer ran a story about the North Korean nuclear threat and quoted KEI Vice President Mark Tokola. The story, which was titled "Can…

Does the forty-fifth president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, have a foreign policy, not least of all inclusive of the vital Northeast Asian region? The question is not…

With an outbreak of diplomacy under way for the Korean Peninsula, a review of North Korea’s approach to negotiations is timely. A summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and…

For the proverbial visitor from Mars, the political situation in Northeast Asia is inexplicable. Sitting amidst a group of relatively stable, wealthy, and powerful countries, is a small, poor, belligerent…

Today’s relationship between the United States and China is more varied, complex, and cooperative than the accumulation of headlines would lead one to believe. The news media and commentators spotlight…

By Mark Tokola There were startling headlines on March 6 that North Korea is prepared to enter into talks, to freeze its nuclear and missile testing, and is willing to abandon its nuclear weapons.  This would be welcome news, but of course there are caveats and questions.  The first caveat is that this is North…

By Mark Tokola The Trump Administration announced a new set of economic sanctions against North Korea on February 23, which senior administration officials have described as the “largest ever tranche.”  Rather than being a grab bag of measures, they are tightly focused on cracking down on North Korean maritime activities that the regime is attempting…

By Mark Tokola Similar to the U.S. “Worldwide Threat Assessment,” published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service has published its 2018 report, “International Security and Estonia.”  It is an estimable report because, as Bloomberg reports, the Estonians have rich insights on Russia.  The report also has…

By Mark Tokola Foreign affairs commentators and journalists can be depended upon to address two topics: (1) is American influence declining, and (2) are there rifts between America and her allies?  On the former, there is a rich vein of declinism literature, pro and con, going back at least sixty years.  The rift stories generally…