Vandalism or Terror, North Korea is Obama’s Responsibility
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Nation,” President Obama set off a minor controversy by referring to the North Korean cyber attack on Sony Pictures as an act of “cyber vandalism” rather than one...
View ArticleWhy Was North Korea Removed from the Terrorism List?
I’ve been offline for about two weeks because of work-related travel, and so I wasn’t able to chime in on the debate with regard to North Korea and its alleged hacking of Sony. But, while according to...
View ArticleThinking Long Term on North Korea
Pyongyang is spluttering with predictable outrage over the sanctions announced last week by President Obama in retaliation for the hack attack on Sony, claiming it had nothing to do with the huge data...
View ArticleAnti-Israel Feeling in Britain Reaching Dangerous Levels
Beyond Europe, the only country the British now dislike more than Israel is North Korea. That is the finding of a new survey by the foreign policy institute Chatham House. Even Iran is viewed more...
View ArticleThe U-2 Flies Again: The Pentagon Keeps the Dragon Lady
The Pentagon has released its budget request for 2016, and among the items being digested by the D.C.-based defense community is the reprieve of the storied U-2 spy plane. First built in 1955, the U-2...
View ArticleHow to React to Algeria’s Diversion of Humanitarian Aid?
Within both the United States and Europe, foreign aid has become a feel-good operation more successful at creating jobs for bureaucrats and consultants in Washington and Brussels than in achieving real...
View ArticleUpdate the State Sponsor of Terrorism List
At the rate President Barack Obama is going, the State Sponsor of Terrorism list will be empty by the time he leaves office. Today, only Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria remain on the list, and Obama seems...
View ArticleNorth Korea Evades More Sanctions While U.S. Pursues Yet More Talks
As the endgame for America’s nuclear negotiations with Iran looms, I hope that Washington is paying attention to the critical flaws in both its failed agreements with North Korea and the ineffective...
View ArticleObama Must Explain Why the Iran Deal Isn’t North Korea Redux
As the Obama administration rushes into a nuclear deal with Iran, it pays to remember the last time the United States struck a deal with a rogue regime in order to constrain that state’s nuclear...
View ArticleWhat South Africa Teaches Us About Suspect Nuclear Programs
Just as two decades ago in the run-up to the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, enthusiasm for a nuclear deal has trumped good sense and careful consideration about the implications of some of the...
View ArticleIran Tests Obama’s Desperation Again
As the last weekend before the deadline for its nuclear talks with Iran wound down, administration sources were talking as if a deal was a foregone conclusion. But as they have throughout this process,...
View ArticleRepercussions from Bad Iran Deal Go Beyond Region
It’s become conventional wisdom—rightly—to assume that a bad Iran deal will unleash a cascade of proliferation across the region. Saudi Arabia has made no secret that it will purchase a nuclear weapon...
View ArticleNorth Korea’s Nuclear Breakout: Canary in the Coalmine
Even a few months ago, nuclear war still seemed passé, an artifact of the Cold War, or derided as a fading dream for neoconservatives who want any excuse to increase defense budgets and meddle abroad....
View ArticleIs Iran the Next North Korea?
Yesterday Foreign Affairs posted an article I had written with Sue Mi Terry, once the CIA’s foremost North Korea analyst, arguing that the experience of the Agreed Framework was an inauspicious...
View ArticleNorth Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal Is Bigger Than We Thought
A few weeks ago, I wrote about North Korea’s nuclear breakout, and that the U.S. government was finally beginning to acknowledge the degree to which North Korea’s nuclear capabilities could no longer...
View ArticleThe Future of the U.S.-Japan Alliance
With Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Washington and getting ready to address a joint meeting of Congress, the long-awaited “revised guidelines” for the U.S.-Japan Alliance were released...
View ArticleThe Ominous North Korea Precedent
At the Wall Street Journal, Aaron David Miller, who during the 1990s was one of Bill Clinton’s top negotiators for the “Middle East peace process,” offers an important warning about the tendency of...
View ArticleObama Gets Iran and North Korea Wrong
According to the Obama administration, they’ve learned their lessons from the disastrous American diplomatic effort that failed to stop North Korea from becoming a nuclear power. According to a feature...
View ArticleRegime Change Works Better Than Trusting Dictators
For some reason naïve Westerners expect that every new dictator who takes over just about anywhere in the world will be a closest liberal and a reformer and an all around good guy. Remember in the...
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Ignoring Iran Cheating is North Korea Redux
The Joint Plan of Action was meant to be so easy for Iran to comply with that it could not possibly run afoul of it. In effect, it was the equivalent of giving a field sobriety test and demanding the...
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