[Eli Lake] Biden makes Afghan problems worse

When President Joe Biden took office, he inherited a foreign policy disaster in Afghanistan. A year ago, his predecessor‘s envoys negotiated an agreement with the Taliban that said the last US troops would leave the country by May 1. That’s just six weeks away, and leaving then would mean the collapse of the elected government the US helped create. And yet a decision to stay past May would put remaining US forces at risk of renewed Taliban attacks. The wise course for Biden would h

March 25, 2021

[Pankaj Mishra] Joe Biden’s own culture war

Comparisons of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill to the New Deal are flourishing. They obscure the fact that Biden’s achievement -- passing reform legislation against an intransigent opposition -- is very fragile. Republicans are already waging an extensive culture war on issues cherished by progressive Democrats, starting with freer immigration. And though Biden and his colleagues are taking to the road this week to sell the administration’s plan, victory in w

March 24, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] Parental love takes various forms

A week ago the world was horrified to learn that a 21-year-old American opened fire in three massage parlors in Atlanta and killed eight people, four of whom were Korean women. Many Koreans and Korean Americans were appalled at this apparent hate crime stemming from a xenophobic reaction to COVID-19, despite the shooter’s claim that a sex addiction motivated the shootings. Yet, according to a witness, the suspect shouted, “I am going to kill all Asians!” It was especially absur

March 24, 2021

[Elizabeth Drew] Can Biden show America is governable?

The most significant thing that President Joe Biden said in his first prime-time address, on March 11, was that in recent years, “We lost faith in whether our government and our democracy can deliver on really hard things for the American people.” It was now up to the slim, seemingly unassuming Biden, after decades of seeking the Oval Office, to show that America is governable. Biden not only has to restore faith in federal programs, but rescue the country from the deadly virus tha

March 23, 2021

[Clara Ferreira Marques] How to conquer vaccine skeptics

Ask on the street in Hong Kong if passers-by will get the COVID-19 vaccine, and you may hear what I did: “Sometime.” “Maybe.” “No.” Combating this hesitancy here and elsewhere will take more than opprobrium and exhortation. It requires tuning in. A combination of deep-seated distrust in government, ignorance and lack of urgency -- in a territory that has kept coronavirus cases low -- means Hong Kong is now struggling to get enough residents inoculated. This

March 23, 2021

[H.R. McMaster, Jonathan D.T. Ward] Look to Reagan administration for the answer to the China challenge

Among the best remembered summits of the 20th century are those of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan’s commitment to dialogue with America’s primary adversary and what then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz called his “personal chemistry” with his Soviet counterpart were hallmarks of his presidency. But even more important was the fact that Reagan had a clear strategy for victory in the global contest with the Soviet Union. Reagan’s approach -- applying

March 22, 2021

[Mary McNamara] If killing of six Asian women isn’t hate crime, what is?

If anyone was still “uneducated” about the insidious and brutal nature of racism in this country, the recent contemptible slaughter of eight people, including six Asian women, in the Atlanta area, along with the early police statements and media coverage of the crime, should clear everything right up. On Tuesday, eight people were killed and others wounded at three day spas in the Atlanta area. Police apprehended Robert Aaron Long, who officers said later admitted that he was respon

March 22, 2021

[Contribution] The Korea-US alliance: A bona fide comprehensive partnership

A linchpin holds the various elements of a structure together. The Korea-US alliance is often referred to as the linchpin of peace, security and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and the Indo-Pacific. Simply put, the Korea-US alliance is indispensable to this region. On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III touched down in Seoul ahead of a series of meetings with their Korean counterparts. It was the first time in memory that the top US

March 19, 2021

[Serendipity] Listen to what COVID-19 patients have to say

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. By then, the novel coronavirus first reported by China on Dec. 31, 2019, had spread to 114 countries and been given the official name of SARS-CoV-2. A year later, COVID-19 has left virtually no corner of the world unscathed and continues to rage on in many countries. In Korea, where the third wave of the spread has continued unabated since mid-November with daily totals of new cases reported in the 400s in rece

March 19, 2021

[Tyler Cowen] Vaccine passports don’t have to work to be effective

As more Americans get vaccinated, there is increasing talk of “vaccine passports.” There are strong emotional reactions to this idea, positive and negative, but my attempt at a more analytical view leads me to a conclusion that is not entirely satisfying (even to me): America should work to develop vaccine passports but never actually require them. First, I am not impressed by the criticisms that vaccine passports will create an unfair two-tier society. COVID-19 already has done tha

March 18, 2021

[Lee Kyong-hee] A piece of fiction can debunk denials of history

A Harvard University law professor’s recent article asserts that “comfort women” who served at Imperial Japan’s war-front brothels were “willing prostitutes” who worked under contracts and that their “sex slave narrative” is “pure fiction.” “The claims about enslaved Korean comfort women are historically untrue. The Japanese army did not dragoon Korean women to work in its brothels,” wrote J. Mark Ramseyer in his Jan. 12

March 18, 2021

[Robert Rector, Leslie Ford] Reversing welfare reform and returning to ‘welfare as we knew it’

Neatly tucked into the $1.9 trillion stimulus package is the second-largest welfare expansion in US history. President Joe Biden’s plan would increase child allowances -- cash welfare grants for parents with children -- from an annual $2,000 per child to a maximum payment of $3,600 for each child younger than 6 years of age and $3,000 for children aged 6-17. The result: $78 billion per year in new cash grants to families, on top of the nearly half a trillion dollars that government curren

March 17, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] K-zombies are ubiquitous in Korea

  In recent times, Korean zombie movies have enchanted foreign viewers. For example, “Train to Busan,” which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, enthralled international audiences as one of the finest zombie films ever produced. Its sequel, “Peninsula,” garnered comparable acclaim, as did the Netflix original series “Kingdom.” It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the Los Angeles Times headlined a recent article, “Zombies are everywhere in

March 17, 2021

[Kevin Pham, Robert E. Moffit] The end of the pandemic is in sight

When it comes to COVID-19 policy, President Joe Biden has clearly opted for a go-slow approach. If we “follow the science,” though, it’s apparent that he’s being too cautious. In his first prime-time address in office, he addressed the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in America. He expressed hope that, by Independence Day, family and friends could gather once again. But he immediately hedged, adding that this “doesn’t mean large events with lots of people toge

March 16, 2021

[Doyle McManus] Biden’s foreign policy neither Trump’s nor Obama’s

We’re starting to see the outlines of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, and you won’t be shocked to hear that it’s looking very different from President Donald Trump’s. But here’s something that may surprise you: Biden’s foreign policy also differs in significant ways from President Barack Obama’s. Trump declared his goal was “America First,” which often meant trashing allies and starting trade wars. It was a noisy way to interact

March 16, 2021

[Shang-Jin Wei] Why should Biden ditch Trump’s China tariffs?

Over the course of his presidency, Donald Trump raised US tariffs on imports from China several times, from an average of about 3 percent when he took office in January 2017 to over 20 percent by the end of 2019. As a result, the current average US tariff on Chinese goods is essentially at the same level that the United States imposed on the rest of the world in the early 1930s under the Smoot-Hawley Act, a protectionist measure that many economists blame for the severity of the Great Depression

March 15, 2021

[Ana Palacio] The Western Sahara time bomb

On Feb. 27, the Polisario Front marked the 45th anniversary of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which it declared in 1976 to be the rightful government of the territory of Western Sahara. During the celebration -- which took place in the refugee camps of Tindouf, in the Algerian desert, where the seat of the SADR government is located -- the Polisario decried the continuing political impasse over the territory, which Morocco also claims. The deadlock must be broken – and the European

March 15, 2021

[Digital Simplicity] Spotify’s deal with Kakao offers a positive signal

When Spotify made a debut in South Korea last month, a number of Korean users were disappointed because the service went online without the crucial library of Korean songs. The debacle stemmed from the fight between Kakao Entertainment, which controls about 40 percent of the domestic music service market, and Spotify, the worlds’ biggest streaming music provider. Speculation mounted over why they failed to reach a deal. One theory is that Kakao Entertainment, which runs the country&rsqu

March 13, 2021

[Robert J. Fouser] Gender-neutral approach to fertility rate

Since the rush to develop began in the 1960s, the South Korean government has paid attention to the fertility rate. In the 1960s and 1970s, the rate was too high, and the government focused its efforts on birth control. The rate fell steadily, dropping below 2.1 children per woman for the first time in 1983. According to the UN Population Division, a total fertility rate (TFR) level of about 2.1 is enough to sustain population levels, excluding immigration and emigration. After holding in a nar

March 12, 2021

[Bennett Ramberg] Is nuclear peace with North Korea possible?

North Korea’s recent public displays of new intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles have raised fresh concerns about the risks the regime in Pyongyang poses to the US mainland. As President Joe Biden’s administration reviews US policy toward the DPRK over the past four years and draws what lessons it can from Donald Trump’s nuclear summitry with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, it should consider a new arms-control approach. The failure of Trump’s effo

March 12, 2021