 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Considerable attention focused last week on the visit to Pyongyang by Isao Iijima, special assistant to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. As I observed in a post last week, the Japanese public places marginally greater concern on abductees than on the North Korean nuclear program and the abductee issue has been a focal point of [...]
I do not know what motivated the North Koreans to repeatedly threaten the US over the last couple of months, but I do know what the effect has been: the threats greatly narrow the Obama Administration’s options going forward, especially with respect to any action that would require Congressional approval. It is particularly difficult for [...]
Thanks to the generosity of the Japan Foundation, I spent last week in Tokyo meeting with government officials, academics and journalists. Among the many issues of interest to the security and economic environment of Northeast Asia were discussions about the revision of Article 9 and the prospects for Japan’s entry into the TPP negotiations. The [...]
Bahng Tae-seop and his colleagues at SERI have released the 2013 first quarter report on the Korean peninsula security outlook. It may come as no surprise that the experts surveyed forecast heavy weather. The index of current conditions fell for the fourth consecutive quarter to 42, approaching the all-time minimum of 41 at the time [...]
Economists have a disconcerting habit of studying their own models for so long that they lose track of reality; one such tendency is to focus on “efficiency” to the exclusion of all other values in human relations. Political scientists do the same thing with concepts like “regime preservation.” But understanding that all professions suffer from [...]
London calling: News reports that the BBC was contemplating initiating a broadcast service aimed at North Korea got me thinking about a Clash-themed slave to the blog post. Obviously the more outside information that reaches North Korea the better, and given the US fiscal situation, it would be surprising if RFA got a big boost. [...]
Bahng Tae-Seop and his colleagues have released another edition of their quarterly survey of expert opinion on Korean peninsula security matters. (It can’t be that expert—I am one of the respondents). The responses to this survey, like similar ones, tend to be myopic, and overweight recent events; this particular edition suffers from the fact that [...]
Americans care about nuclear weapons, like working with allies, and self-identified Independents are more dovish than either Republicans or Democrats. These are among the main takeaways from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs report on American attitudes toward foreign policy. Sixty-three percent of those polled consider the possibility of unfriendly countries becoming nuclear powers a [...]
Is some combination of Chinese assertiveness, Japanese anxiety, the American pivot and North Korean loutishness fueling an arms race in Asia? Over at CSIS, a team headed by David Berteau and Guy Ben-Ari has put together a useful summary of recent trends in defense spending for five major players: China, India, Japan, South Korea, and [...]
When I first moved to Washington in the mid-1980s, Logan Circle was a scruffy neighborhood of street prostiution and drug dealing. Residents used to complain about waking up in the morning and finding on their lawns used hypodermic needles and the detritus of the sex trade. A decade of gentrification has changed that picture however, and now the neighborhood might be described [...]
