[Robert J. Fouser] Going beyond US-China tensions

In the first month of his presidency, Joe Biden has worked hard to reach out to longtime allies of the US that were slighted during the Trump years. The US counts South Korea and Japan as two of its most trusted allies and has signaled to them that it hopes to work with the two nations to develop a trilateral strategy to deal with North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Biden also hopes for more trilateral cooperation in dealing the with growing power of China on the world stage. For

Feb. 26, 2021

[Doyle McManus] How to end a very long war

On paper, the United States is committed to withdrawing its last 2,500 troops from Afghanistan less than 10 weeks from now, on May 1. That’s under a deal the Trump administration made last year with the Taliban, the Islamic guerrilla group fighting the Kabul government. But it’s far from certain that will happen. Neither the Taliban, the Afghan government nor the United States have kept all their commitments under the year-old agreement. The Taliban promised to reduce attacks on gov

Feb. 25, 2021

[Kim Myong-sik] Pure motivation desired for academic research

Academic freedom is universally recognized and constitutionally protected here like the precious freedom of expression and the freedom of movement. Then what about an academic paper on the World War II “comfort women” written by a Harvard University professor, who defined them as “willing prostitutes who carefully negotiated the terms of their contracts.” Whenever there arises controversy over the past and present plights of those old Korean women who were sexually abuse

Feb. 25, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] Hamlet and Don Quixote tactics in diplomacy

People say that there are two contrasting types of personalities in the world. One is the Hamlet personality type and the other resembles Don Quixote. The Hamlet type is the one who is lost in thought and discreet, and thus gives in to vacillation. The Don Quixote type is foolhardy and indiscreet, and thus brash and unbridled. Both have upsides and downsides, depending on the situation. Indeed, there are times when you should be discreet like Hamlet and there are times when you should act audaci

Feb. 24, 2021

[Trudy Rubin] Biden’s foreign policy success

Earlier this month President Joe Biden went to the State Department to pump up a demoralized foreign service corps, and to tell the world, “America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.” That pledge was echoed Tuesday by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who told NPR, “We’ve reengaged with allies and partners around the world. I think I’ve made myself maybe 50 calls already.” So there’s no doubt the Biden approach is diametri

Feb. 24, 2021

[Ana Palacio] Europe’s misadventure in Moscow

When the European Union’s foreign ministers convene on Feb. 22, they will have to confront the political fallout from the ill-fated visit to Moscow by Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. One hopes that the reckoning catalyzes much-needed progress toward developing a coherent European Russia policy. The timing of Borrell’s visit to Moscow -- the first by an EU official since 2017 – was odd, to say the least. In the weeks be

Feb. 23, 2021

[Josef Joffe] Germany’s empty logic for Nord Stream 2

Nord Stream 2, the almost-finished pipeline running directly from Russia to Germany, is not really about securing cheap natural gas. It is about personal gain and these two countries’ national interest. The pipeline across the Baltic has pitted the United States and the European Union against Germany, and a swelling chorus of domestic critics against Chancellor Angela Merkel. If it were just a matter of gas molecules, the project might never have seen the light of day. So, why did it? Go

Feb. 23, 2021

[Minky Worden] China is escalating human rights abuses in runup to 2022 Olympics. Will IOC look the other way?

Last September, five international labor auditing firms declared they could no longer help companies audit their supply chains in China’s Xinjiang region because the Chinese government’s controls and repression made it too difficult to determine whether factories are using forced labor. The Better Cotton Initiative, a consortium to monitor sustainability -- affiliated with companies such as Adidas, Nike and Gap -- called Xinjiang an “untenable operating environment.” Thi

Feb. 22, 2021

[Doyle McManus] How the pandemic is helping Biden advance his broader economic agenda

When Joe Biden launched his campaign for the presidency in 2019, his economic proposals were relatively modest updates of the middle-class-oriented agenda he championed as vice president under Barack Obama. “It doesn’t require some fundamental shift,” he said, pushing against the sweeping proposals of rivals like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Then came the pandemic. Today, Biden’s economic message, retooled to address current needs, has real urgency. “We c

Feb. 22, 2021

[Serendipity] Keep indie scene alive

Seollal, or Lunar New Year’s Day, typically means staying up until late at night the previous day and waking up at the crack of dawn to prepare the family breakfast. In our family, which does not hold ancestral rites, the big family breakfast has evolved into a brunch with more than 10 dishes topped by the requisite tteokmanduguk, eating of which marks getting a year older. Because of all the cooking involved, the days leading up to Seollal are filled with growing anxiety and dread. I am

Feb. 19, 2021

[James Stavridis] Keeping troops in Afghanistan makes US safer

Over the four years I led the Afghan war effort as supreme allied commander at NATO, I was lucky to have four superb generals working for me as the in-country commanders of the International Security Force, Afghanistan. Generals Stanley McChrystal, Dave Petraeus, John Allen and Joe Dunford all performed superbly during their one-year assignments in Kabul. I relied on their military advice every day as I reported to the senior civilian leaders of the 28 NATO nations, from President Barack Obama

Feb. 18, 2021

[Lee Kyong-hee] Dilkusha – a romantic link to colonial past

After years of delays, the house of Albert Wilder and Mary Linley Taylor by a famous ginkgo tree in central Seoul will finally open to the public next month. The opening of this storied residence of the American gold mining businessman and his British actress wife will commemorate the March 1 Independence Movement of 1919. That is when the lives of the couple intersected with a seminal event in modern Korean history. The Associated Press asked Taylor to cover the funeral of Emperor Gojong, who

Feb. 18, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] What do Americans fear most?

It is widely known that Americans value individuality, independence, and self-sufficiency. Indeed, Americans do not want others to interfere with their lives and thus resist when the government tries to restrict their freedom or regulate them. Tony Tanner, a renowned British professor at the University of Cambridge, pointed out what Americans fear most: “There is an American dread that someone else is patterning your life, that there are all sorts of invisible plots to rob you of your auto

Feb. 17, 2021

[Fred Bronstein] The fine arts grapple with COVID-19

In August, the Brookings Institution published a study on the impact of the pandemic on the arts and culture industry across the United States. The study painted a devastating picture of the immediate loss of jobs, revenues and artistic talent. Since the Brookings study, there have been numerous other studies, articles and blogs written about the performing arts industry -- its recovery, and the best ways to get from here to there. Clearly, it is essential for us to individually and collectivel

Feb. 17, 2021

[Storer H. Rowley] How Biden can fix America’s tarnished image

In the shadow of his predecessor’s impeachment trial, President Joe Biden is taking up the challenge of restoring America’s tarnished image in the world by making this case: The nation has survived an attack on its own democracy and actually emerged from it stronger, not weaker. This may sound like a rationalization, given his presidency is living now with a violent, abusive partner in the domestic opposition, but Biden actually is smart to be tackling the GOP elephant in the room.

Feb. 16, 2021

[Slawomir Sierakowski] Will Russia’s future be Belarus’s present?

The biggest wave of protests in years has swept Russia, raising hopes that popular pressure will persist and intensify, gradually eroding an autocratic regime, as is happening in neighboring Belarus. But we should be wary of allowing the two countries’ similarities -- which include history and language, religion and repression -- to obscure profound differences. In Belarus, protests erupted in August 2020, after President Alexander Lukashenko -- Europe’s longest-serving leader -- ri

Feb. 15, 2021

[Robert J. Fouser] Pandemic leadership needed

Positive news about vaccines at the end of 2020 raised hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic would soon end in 2021. Less than two months into the new year, those hopes are slipping away. Mutant variants that first appeared in the UK, South Africa and Brazil are even more contagious, and in the case of the South African mutant, vaccines are less effective. This turn of events has caused a new round of lockdowns and border closings as public health experts and vaccine makers race to assess the situati

Feb. 15, 2021

[Noah Feldman] Impeachment doesn‘t violate Trump’s rights

The extended trial brief filed by Donald Trump‘s lawyers advances three defenses: that Trump did not incite the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol; that the Senate can’t try a president who is no longer in office; and that the First Amendment protects Trump from being impeached for words that, they say, don‘t meet the requirements for criminal incitement conviction laid down by the Supreme Court. The factual defense is highly unconvincing, as anyone who watched Trump’s speech

Feb. 11, 2021

[Kim Myong-sik] Lying chief justice abandons public trust in court

During the past four years, President Moon Jae-in anxiously pushed reforms in South Korea’s law enforcement system, whether for the sake of social justice or for the security of his leftist rule. In the area of prosecution, the campaign has faced significant obstruction from Prosecutor-General Yoon Suk-youl and most mainstream prosecutors. In the court, Moon has had far better cooperation from the top leader of the judiciary, if not from the entire benches of law. The National Assembly&r

Feb. 11, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] The Divided States of America vs. divided Korea

I have always thought that South Korea was radically different from America. In recent history, however, I have found striking similarities between the two countries, albeit in opposite ways. I am not alone: American political analysts, too, have argued that there are many common factors between the Moon administration and the Trump administration. They point out, for example, that both administrations adopted populist policies, disregarded democracy and favored conspiracy theories. Both governm

Feb. 10, 2021