The Trump administration has done a laudable job handling the North Korea crisis it inherited. The Obama administration had neglected the gathering North Korean threat under a policy called “strategic patience.” This followed a negotiated “deal” at the end of the Bush years that lifted important…
At the top of our next president’s task list will be rescuing American foreign policy from the wreckage of the Obama years. The prevailing headlines detail a grim litany of new threats, each one emanating from an Obama administration policy failure. From the expansionist barbarity of the Islamic…
“Inspectors knew when North Korea broke to the bomb, but that didn't stop anything. North Korea turned off the cameras, kicked out the inspectors. Within a few years, it got the bomb.”
Great power competition and the machinations of revisionist states have returned to international politics with a surprising ferocity. The end of the Cold War was supposed to have ended such anachronisms, but the first decade of the 21st century awoke Americans to the danger still menacing the…
In recent weeks, all eyes have been on a revisionist regime dissatisfied with the post-Cold War status quo, convinced of the geopolitical necessity of and historical right to a hegemonic self-centric regional order, dedicated to the long-term job security of its political leaders, and driven by…
Inside the beltway, there is a pervasive sense of impending doom. The rest of the country may not much care, but sequestration is here. According to warnings by the Obama administration, failure to avert these automatic spending cuts will lead to planes falling from the skies, bridges collapsing,…
President Obama, envious of China’s economic model, proclaimed his admiration for the high-speed railways, bridges, skyscrapers, and solar panels that China is building. (“That used to be us,” he famously said – a line apparently so powerful it became the title of a book.) But even the Chinese…
The blind, barefoot lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, imprisoned for exposing the morally repugnant practice of forced abortion and sterilization, just evaded one of the world’s most sophisticated state police. It’s a shrewd move: figuring out how to get a sick blind man from his house arrest to Beijing—a…
The idea that China is practicing a new form of capitalism, and may even be “doing capitalism better than America,” is reaching a fever pitch in policy and business circles. Two arguments buttress the claim of “Beijing Consensus-ers.” The first is that there is a “Beijing Model” of authoritarian…
Last week, Beijing decided that Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s fence-mending trip to China was the perfect time to unveil new military capabilities. In the lead-up to Gates’s trip, Admiral Robert Willard, the commander of U.S. Pacific forces, revealed that China’s “carrier killer” antiship…
What if you could prepare for a state visit in Washington that boosts your public image while at the same time humiliating your rival and intimidating your neighbors?
Of the many items on President-elect Obama's foreign policy to-do list, one of the most important long-term tasks is repairing America's relationship with its key Asian ally, Japan. Though often taken for granted by American policymakers, Japan is the linchpin of America's strategic position in…
For Beijing, Russia's invasion of Georgia has been a mixed blessing. Vladimir Putin stole China's limelight during the Olympics' opening ceremonies with a fireworks display of his own in the Caucasus and embarrassed his Chinese hosts. On the other hand, Putin's Olympics offensive has a long-term…
Among the pieces of unfinished business that the Bush administration will pass on to its successor is a now five-year-old effort to denuclearize North Korea. Whoever takes office in January 2009 will inherit a process and a set of understandings that supporters claim have finally brought that goal…
The State Department is engaged in heavy-duty spin to keep alive the clearly failing Six Party Talks on North Korean disarmament. But no amount of spin can hide the fact that whoever becomes president in 2009 will face a North Korean problem worse than that which Bill Clinton bequeathed to George…
The China Fantasy
Karl Marx famously observed that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. The deal that the Bush administration appears to have entered into with Pyongyang is no joke, but it does have eerie echoes of the one signed 13 years ago by President Bill Clinton. Although, at…
HERE WE ARE AGAIN. Kim Jong Il is doing what we have come to expect of him: threatening the world and engaging in nuclear brinkmanship. And this time the Dear Leader is declaring his regime's intention to test an actual nuclear weapon.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM is that the ascension of Japan's Shinzo Abe to the prime minister's post is bad news for Japan and, by extension, the United States. Abe is an ardent nationalist who, the thinking goes, will unleash the country's lurking militarism, thus isolating Japan and, indirectly,…
ALTHOUGH U.S. POLICY toward North Korea is ostensibly about "keeping the most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous regimes," the reality is that we haven't even come close to doing that. North Korea almost certainly has nuclear weapons, and it is slowly developing the missiles…
DEFYING AMERICAN, Japanese, and even Chinese warnings, North Korea test fired at least seven missiles on July 4 and 5. One of these, the Taepodong 2, is capable of hitting the United States. Though the Taepodong test failed, North Korea's behavior is a clear provocation and threat to American…
THE SINO-AMERICAN AGENDA includes the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, trade, energy, simmering disputes over Taiwan and Japan, and democracy. Why, then, was the most newsworthy event of the Bush-Hu summit last week the protests of a Falun Gong member on the White House lawn?
MONTHS OVERDUE, THE PENTAGON'S annual report to Congress on China's military power is a mix of happy talk, flabby strategic musings, and sobering facts. No doubt this analytic confusion explains the quite divergent news accounts of the report when it was released on July 19. The New York Times, for…
A COLLECTIVE SIGH OF RELIEF could be heard in Washington last weekend, as returns from the Taiwanese legislative election found President Chen Shui-bian's ruling "Pan Green" coalition gaining less than had been expected--a net of just one seat. Much of President Chen's agenda may well be blocked by…