Asia

The states of Southeast Asia are on the front lines of competition not only in regard to the balance of military and political power, as analyzed in Section I, but…

North Korea and Russia are seen as posing an increasingly dangerous military threat as we enter 2015, and the responses of other states to them are widely perceived as realist…

Over the past sixty years, the two Koreas have embarked on completely different paths in almost every respect. One developed into a successful example of democracy with remarkable economic growth,…

Moving from the powerful and abstract construct of ethnic homogeneity as bearing the promise for unification, this chapter instead considers family unity, facilitated by the quotidian and ubiquitous tools of…

June 25, 2020 marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. The conflict on the Korean Peninsula has been going on for so long that we sometimes…

2020 is starting off dramatically with the escalation of tensions in the Middle East – The world held its breath while the United States and Iran exchanged both blows and…

While it is frustrating to see North Korean projectiles flying out to sea and Pyongyang’s erratic, unpredictable reactions in negotiations, we cannot forget where things stood in 2017 – the…

30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people’s aspiration to establish a pluralistic liberal democracy appears to be under scrutiny around the world – anti-immigration policies dominate political…

By Linda Butcher Known as the “Political Super Bowl,” the 2013 State of the Union Address by President Barack Obama did not disappoint. In the hours leading up to it, people guessed what would be discussed, which SOTU game they would partake in and who would be seated in FLOTUS’s box. But, in just less…

By Chad O’Carroll The DPRK’s nuclear weapons test today appears to act as a bandage for a number of wounds that have somehow yet to kill the Pyongyang regime.  As the last outpost of quasi-Stalinism in the world, North Korea remains in a Cold War mindset when it comes to its increasingly acrimonious relations with…

By Troy Stangarone In the aftermath of Pyongyang’s third nuclear test the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, issued a story on the needs to address the root causes of North Korea’s nuclear concerns. According to the story in Xinhua: "At a superficial level, it was Pyongyang that has repeatedly breached UN resolutions and used its…

By Chad O’Carroll With North Korea’s recent satellite launch highlighting the progressing state of Pyongyang’s long-range rocket capabilities and prospects of a third nuclear weapons test likely to show further advancements in that area, it is easy to forget about the DPRK’s conventional weapons technology. While the North Korean rocket and nuclear programs no doubt…