Predicting the experience of his successor Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, President Harry Truman said this: “He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike — it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.”Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have promised to get rid of a whole host of executive actions from the Barack Obama administration. (If the Republican convention produces a different nominee, expect similar promises.) But there’s good reason to doubt h

Viewpoints April 7, 2016

Armenia and Azerbaijan have announced a truce after three days of fierce fighting in the secessionist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, but the flare-up is proof that the post-Soviet frozen conflicts are not really frozen. At any moment, they can be ignited by the realignment of international alliances and loyalties, and people will start dying again.There are four post-Soviet frozen conflicts. Three smolder around the Black Sea: Transnistria, a separatist region of Moldova; the Georgian regions of Ab

Viewpoints April 6, 2016

Asia-Pacific is recognized for its leadership in global output, trade and development. The region has a new opportunity to lead on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development -- a multidimensional, multisector and multiagency undertaking.In 2016, the first year of implementation for the agenda’s sustainable development goals, our region faces significant challenges: prioritizing implementation of the goals; pace and sequencing; meeting the massive data and statistics requirements; as well mobili

Viewpoints April 6, 2016

The conviction by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, for crimes against humanity and genocide filled many, including me, with a sense of deep satisfaction. The verdict has not only brought some semblance of closure to the most brutal European conflict since World War II; it has also demonstrated the international community’s commitment to ensuring justice and accountability in such matters. Not even the not-guilty ve

Viewpoints April 6, 2016

We all knew the rich and powerful play by different rules than the rest of us. Some are willing to bend or break the law to enrich themselves, and some bankers and lawyers are more than happy to help them.Yet, the level of venality revealed by what are being called the Panama Papers is mind-boggling -- and infuriating. It’s the globalization of corruption, and even more contemptible are political leaders who loot the public treasuries of their poor nations.We can only hope that the worldwide att

Viewpoints April 6, 2016

Dog bites man may not be a news story -- but in nine western states, it’s grounds for a constitutional case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has allowed a lawsuit by a woman who fell asleep in her office after a hard night’s drinking, accidentally tripped a burglar alarm, and was bitten in the lip by a San Diego police dog responding to the alarm.What makes the case so interesting is that the San Diego Police Department trained Bak, a service dog, to enter a room and bite the first

Viewpoints April 5, 2016

When voters in the United Kingdom go to the polls on June 23 to decide whether their country should leave the European Union, the issues they will have to reckon with will include the impact of their decision on unemployment, trade flows, and the stability of financial markets. But there are other less quantifiable considerations that must also be weighed in the balance.The economic arguments against a British exit from the EU -- or Brexit -- have been well rehearsed. Many have suggested that if

Viewpoints April 5, 2016

Americans live their lives on their phones now. So wrote 15 prominent technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon and Snapchat, in a legal brief supporting Apple in its now-moot fight with the Justice Department over unlocking the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone. Our phones have become “an extension of our memories,” the companies argued, and “to access someone’s cellphone is to access their innermost thoughts and their most private affairs.”Although the companies are right, their ea

Viewpoints April 4, 2016

I am a 24-year-old, Korean-American post-grad, and I have been reading about every turn of this year’s presidential campaign entirely on my phone, mostly right before bed. Yes, it is a bad habit, and yes, the blue light is suppressing my pineal gland from releasing delicious melatonin into my brain, but I wouldn’t want to get my news any other way.If in my late-night reading I am not being smothered in “Make America Great Again” Donald Trump Sauce, I am usually consuming article after article ab

Viewpoints April 4, 2016