This World Politics in a Time of Populist Nationalism (WPTPN) guest post is written by Louis F. Cooper. His online writing includes “Reflections on U.S. Foreign Policy” at the U.S. Intellectual History Blog (July 16, 2014). His Ph.D. is from the School of...
A few days ago, I predicted there would be no war, probably because I’m lazy and predicting the future will be the same as the present is an easy way to protect my credibility. But I got some...
I know what you’re thinking, I’m being a show-off area specialist, Asian language names can be hard for anglophones (and vice versa), and who cares about KIS anyway, because this crisis is about Kim...
My own thinking on the current Korea flap is on The Diplomat. I argue it’s a faux crisis, which promptly got me accused of being an air-head academic in the comment section. Lovely. I was also...
Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Defense presented its latest Nuclear Posture Review Report. I haven't had a chance to read the entire document yet, but media reports have focused on a new policy declaration that is of great interest to states and scholars alike. The statement garnering the greatest attention is included in the "Executive Summary" of the NPR (p. viii): The United States will continue to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks. To that end, the United States is now prepared to strengthen its long-standing "negative security assurance" by declaring...
I suppose that in an era of Credit Default Swaps, massively over-leveraged firms, and other assorted lunacies in the financial industry, we shouldn't be surprised by much of anything. Still, I have to wonder which members of the "best and the brightest" thought insuring North Korean interests was a great business move?
Now this is pretty damn interesting:Researchers were scratching their heads earlier today at a meeting convened by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) over puzzling results from last month's nuclear test by North Korea. While the test produced a clearly recognizable seismic signal that was picked up by CTBTO's worldwide network of sensors, the organization's atmospheric detectors failed to pick up a whiff of the expected radionuclides in air. Even a deep underground test is usually expected to leak radionuclides, so their absence in this case caused quite a stir....
Tobias Harris over at Observing Japan, weighs in on the discussion regarding Japanese balancing (or lack thereof). Harris' post is an excellent addition to the discussion and includes some excellent points that require me to clarify my original post. And away we go...1) Tobias is correct that given the current and likely current state of the DPRK they are not exactly a Gilpin-esque revisionist power. However, I don't think that a state must have asperations and likely capabilities to match to be considered a revisionist state in general. A state that clearly is unhappy with the current...
Peter brings up an interesting question and one that we don’t yet have a final answer on: Under what circumstances will states balance against another? If shifts in the balance of power are not enough to provoke balancing, what does? I think the notion that Japan could be provoked into balancing by the DPRK rather than China certainly has merit. A few initial thoughts as to why this may be the case:1) Increased Economic Dependence: China’s military modernization has been and will continue to be fueled by its growing economy. Japan has become arguably China’s most important economic partner...
I was listening to a CFR podcast of a special conference call on North Korea's nuclear weapons test yesterday during my much longer than usual commute. One key part of the discussion centered around Japan's response to the nuclear test and missile launches. Japan, it seems, is taking steps to improve its military capabilities in response to North Korea's actions. Even the most extreme option--Japan going nuclear--seems to be lurking near the table. The conference call participants saw China as a key to the North Korean situation, with greater action possible this time in part because China...
Breaking news: North Korea has conducted a nuclear test, this one more successful and powerful than its initial test back in 2006.You can read some (very) instant analysis, but the short story is that this move seems puzzling, out of context, which is to say that it doesn't fit North Korea's existing pattern of telegraphing its moves and using its nuclear program to extract maximum bargaining concessions from the United States. An initial and early read might be that this test does quite the opposite, confronting a new US administration broadly committed to diplomacy and alienating other...
The Wall Street Journal reported today that hackers have breached classified data on the United States' Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program (the F-35). (For those without a subscription, here is the Reuters story). The scale and nature of information the hackers were able to obtain appears quite significant--however, the most sensitive data did not reside on servers connected to the web, which is good news.The default suspect is, of course, China (why you say? see here). However, given the value of the data for both potential adversaries and, frankly, countries that are not in some way privey...