Column Archive

Last week’s China-South Korea summit confirmed the good relations between Beijing and Seoul under Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Park Geun-hye. When they met in Seoul on July 3 for their fifth personal meeting since Park assumed office in March 2013, the two leaders announced ambitious economic goals and reconfirmed their opposition to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Nonetheless, despite Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang’s pre-summit forecast that Xi’s trip would “take the strategic cooperative partnership between China and South Korea to a new level,” no breakthrough occurred, and their bilateral relationship remains essentially the same. […]

The Syrian war, currently overshadowed by its offshoot in Iraq, remains a ruinous blight on international diplomacy. Nearly half a year after the furiously hyped but fundamentally hopeless peace talks between the government and moderate rebels in Geneva, no end to the fighting is in sight. President Barack Obama has requested $500 million from Congress to train and equip rebel forces, suggesting that he is resigned to an extended proxy war with Russia and Iran, which continue to assist Damascus. Yet while the Geneva talks petered out in February, remnants of international cooperation over Syria have survived. Moscow and Washington […]

In retrospect, Venezuela’s shortage of toilet paper, which began in September 2013 and continues today, was an ominous sign. Venezuelans, even the most ardent admirers of the late President Hugo Chavez, now admit that it was a troubling metaphor for all that ailed the nation. President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’s anointed heir, has struggled from the moment his mentor named him as his successor. He faced countless crises: an economy circling the drain, crime rates skyrocketing and huge protests from the opposition. And that was just the beginning. Now his popular approval ratings have taken a sharp nosedive amid a worsening […]

Last week, the Stimson Center, an important Washington think tank that studies global security, released a major report on U.S. drone policy. This was noteworthy both because the topic is such a hot one and because of the stellar cast involved. The task force that produced the report was led by retired Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, and Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks, who recently served as counselor to the undersecretary of defense for policy. The other task force members also brought deep and wide-ranging experience in the military, security policymaking, law enforcement and […]

South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s high-profile six-day visit to Central Asia last week imparted further momentum to her “Eurasia initiative,” intended to deepen South Korean ties with that energy-rich but geopolitically volatile region. The trip also highlighted South Korea’s value to Washington at a time when the U.S. role and influence in the region is declining due to the ebbing U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and strained relations between the United States and the other two great powers active in the region, Russia and China. Park announced her Eurasia initiative last October. The declared goal is to remove physical and […]