Search Results for: The Death of an Alliance

Before I go any further, let me clear the air about something. Back on the First of July, after reading this New York Times story, among others, I wrote that “if these new reports are correct, I see little to criticize in President Obama’s current Syria policy.” Unfortunately, most evidence now suggests that those reports were wrong, even allowing for what ordinary citizens don’t know about CIA activities in Syria. Whatever support we’re giving the Free Syrian Army is modest...

I’ve been looking forward to Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard’s new book on North Korea, refugees, and public opinion for a long time now. I don’t have a copy of my own yet (ahum! – not that I’d find the time to read it these days). But thankfully, Evan Ramstad interviews Noland at the WSJ’s indispensable Korea Real Time. __________________________________ It’s a diplomatic breakthrough: The Onion reports. Love those jackets. __________________________________ A Different Kind of Different Kind of War: Uriminzokkiri,...

Just what does a psychotic despot have to do to get on the list of state sponsors of terrorism?  Since President Obama’s inauguration, Kim Jong Il has — been caught twice shipping weapons — reportedly including man-portable surface-to-air missiles — to Iran, apparently for the use of its terrorist clients; sent a hit squad to assassinate a prominent defector in South Korea; threatened civilian air traffic to and from South Korea; threatened to turn the capitals of various neighboring states...

You know, it’s as if Michael Gerson reads this blog or something: There are limits to the policy of isolation. Given that North Koreans did not revolt when millions were dying of starvation in the mid-1990s, it is difficult to imagine that economic pressure alone will bring down a committed, completely ruthless regime that cares nothing for the opinion of the world or the lives of its own people. The most fragile thing about the North Korean regime is the...

A South Korean lawyer sits down to dinner with a group of North Korean defectors and has an epiphany: “Listening to such painful stories, I naively wondered why the rest of the world is not doing more to help these desperate people. They are not some criminals or fugitives. Their only crime was to be born into a nation which is ruled by a dictatorship that cares more about the survival of its regime than the wellbeing of its people.”...