KEI Contributor – Mark Tokola

This article was published in United States Institute of Peace on March 25, 2024. The September 13, 2023, meeting between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un in Russia’s Amur Oblast marked a…

KEI’s Vice President  Mark Tokola was interviewed on VOA’s Washington Talk. This interview was published on June 10, 2023. https://keia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/01000000-0a00-0242-e308-08db6945ecad_Trim.mp4   To watch the full clip on VOA, please click here.…

Directly addressing the question of how the U.S. government should respond to China’s hostile economic behaviors, KEI Vice President Mark Tokola published an op-ed on National Interest that outlines how…

In his latest column for the Asia Times, KEI Vice President Mark Tokola notes that there are four assumptions that underpin the U.S. approach to North Korea. There is a…

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 Winston Churchill said, “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”  He was reported to have said this at a White House luncheon in 1954, so he by then had plenty of experience with both war and negotiation.  This sentiment, or something like it, is what people have in mind when they urge engagement…

By Mark Tokola Donald Trump’s upending of conventional political wisdom and political “business as usual” is a historic achievement and marks a realignment of American politics.  It will take months, if not years, to sort out the election’s ramifications for domestic policy and politics.  Foreign policy, however, does not allow for such a long-term assessment…

By Mark Tokola The decision to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system in South Korea has been controversial in South Korea, and predictably has been condemned by North Korea, but, judging by headlines and official statements, seems to have upset the Chinese more than anyone else.  China has been vociferous…

By Mark Tokola To be clear, the United Kingdom has not yet left the European Union.  The June 23 referendum in the UK was an expression of the will of the people (by a majority of 52 percent to 48) that the British government should begin the process of negotiating an exit from the EU. …