If US President Donald Trump wanted to discredit the West, he could hardly be doing a more thorough job of it. The hostility he directed at ostensible allies in the G-7 last weekend was bad enough, especially when contrasted with the obsequious praise he lavished on North Korea’s murderous Kim Jong-un in Singapore.　Worse perhaps was the visual contrast between the G-7 and a third, recently concluded summit -- a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Qingdao. There, Trump’s counterpa

Viewpoints June 14, 2018

If the record cost of the Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014 was the embodiment of Russian government wastefulness, the soccer World Cup, which starts on Thursday, appears far more restrained. Yet, despite its best efforts to bring expenses under control, President Vladimir Putin’s regime still hasn’t learned how to be parsimonious.　 The most-often quoted cost assessment for the Sochi Olympics is $51 billion, $11 billion more than the second most expensive Olympics, the 2008 Beijing summer games. The

Viewpoints June 14, 2018

President Donald Trump says many things that aren’t true, but following his historic meeting Tuesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, his repeated assertion during a press conference that “it does take a long time” to “pull off complete denuclearization” stacks up pretty well. It will probably take a decade at the very least.　 It’s not hard for a nation to dismantle or destroy its nuclear weapons, as well as the technological infrastructure used to create them. North Korea may have as many

Viewpoints June 14, 2018

I should have been excited as I watched a historic event unfold in Singapore. The summit meeting of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un held out hope that the last ugly conflict of the Cold War could be brought to a close, alleviating the threat of nuclear war in Asia and possibly opening up the vicious North Korean dictatorship to the world.For me, the matter is more personal. I lived in South Korea for several years in the 1990s, and I’m forever connected to the peninsula by bonds of family and frien

Viewpoints June 13, 2018

President Donald Trump could never be accused of underestimating the impact of Chinese economic espionage and technology transfer on the United States. “We’re talking about big damages,” he said when discussing retaliation for intellectual property theft in a January interview. “We’re talking about numbers that you haven’t even thought about.”His tariffs and a recently floated proposal to restrict certain Chinese researchers in the US are calibrated to be equally tough. But will they work?To ans

Viewpoints June 12, 2018

UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson reportedly once said that he enjoyed trying to change the course of history, even if that meant “throwing rocks into glass houses and listening to the shattering of glass.” So it’s no wonder he thinks that US President Donald Trump would be a great Brexit leader.“Imagine Trump doing Brexit,” Britain’s chief diplomat told a room of 20 Conservative Party guests at a private dinner Wednesday night, in an off-the-record talk leaked to Buzzfeed. “He’d go in bloody h

Viewpoints June 12, 2018

Almost any foreign official, businessman or journalist visiting Beijing has heard the mantra that China can’t be expected to open up its markets or meet more stringent international standards because it’s still a developing economy. Maybe that argument was valid 20 years ago. Now it’s increasingly tenuous. More importantly, it’s damaging to China and the world.Pleading poverty ignores the tremendous economic progress China has made in the last few decades. When China joined the World Trade Organ

Viewpoints June 12, 2018

Once upon a time, Congress had the lead role in trade policy. Think back to the “tariff of abominations” of the 19th century or Smoot-Hawley of the 20th in your high school history class. So how did the presidency come to take charge of trade to the extent that it’s news when a bipartisan group in the Senate and some House Republicans move to reclaim that power? And why is that objective probably unachievable?　Jennifer Delton, at Made by History, describes how trade-supporting liberals, beginnin

Viewpoints June 11, 2018

Many Republicans felt that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton made no attempt to be president of the whole nation -- and many Democrats believed the same about George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. They were wrong. Those partisans were projecting their own antipathy towards one or another president onto those presidents.　It’s true that all presidents do sometimes talk directly to only part of the nation, and when they do that they are most likely to speak to their supporters. It’s also true that all pres

Viewpoints June 6, 2018

Every year millions of Americans receive an asset that, based on past performance, promises to nearly double their lifetime incomes: a bachelor’s degree. Earning one is an achievement to be proud of. For the vast majority of young adults, however, this prize is increasingly out of reach. One answer is to make college more affordable -- by lowering tuition, increasing financial aid for poor students, and reducing the time needed to graduate. Such reforms deserve support. But a different answer is

Viewpoints June 6, 2018