Asia & the Pacific

"The Obama administration has released a report formally charging Russia with violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. This comes in the midst of a drumbeat of negative Russia news, from arming rebels in Ukraine and annexing Crimea to propping up the brutal dictatorship in Syria and hosting Edward Snowden. To some, the INF issue will be seen as more evidence that it’s impossible to deal with Vladimir Putin’s Russia."

"Washington needs to make a decision about its foreign-policy priorities, if tensions in eastern Ukraine are not reduced. Giving the events in Ukraine priority over all other international developments is a hazardous strategy. Negotiations have gotten us nowhere, and way more assertive steps against Russia are not likely to make Putin give in, since he seems to be determined not to lose his influence over eastern Ukraine and eager to demonstrate Russia's power."

A nuclear North Korea makes it crucial that all countries in Northeast Asia work hard at maintaining a stable security environment that avoids the dangers of a crisis while encouraging North Korea to adopt a nuclear strategy that retains its "no first use" pledge, a strong command and control system, and a stable nuclear weapons posture. Given its relationship with North Korea, China is best positioned to encourage DPRK leaders in these directions.

"President Barack Obama and Kim Jong-eun could end up confronting each other 'eyeball to eyeball', each with nuclear weapons on hair trigger, as president John F Kennedy and Nikita Khruschev did over five decades ago during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. However, the younger and less-experienced Kim of the smaller and isolated Kingdom might not behave as rationally as Khruschev."

John S. Park, Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Project on Managing the Atom Associate, argues that cooperation between North Korea and Iran has been a critical—yet underexamined—enabler of North Korea's recent success. He concludes that the time has come for the United States to view the two previously independent missile programs as two sides of the same coin and recommends strategies for disrupting the procurement channels between Iran and North Korea.

"Africa's national diversity is becoming a burden for diplomatic interaction. It is more efficient for the United States to work with regional groups in Africa than with individual states. This means that efforts to foster regional integration by creating larger markets, simplifying trading rules, reducing corruption, and investing in regional infrastructure to promote movement of goods will go a long way toward strengthening US-Africa relations."

"The tools available to India in the 1960s are not sufficient to address the challenges that African agriculture now faces. These include a rapidly-growing population, productivity loss due to ecological disruption, environmental decay, droughts, climate change, and conflict. Biotechnology offers additional tools that can help Africa address some of these challenges. It is another moment that calls for the kind of political courage that led to the adoption of the Green Revolution."

"Amid setbacks and chronic challenges in almost every major region, Washington views South Korea as a linchpin on a global scale. From hosting the G20 summit in 2010 to preparing to host the next Nuclear Security Summit in 2012, South Korea has been establishing itself as a global partner in addressing common challenges, ranging from rebalancing the international economy to preventing the use of nuclear materials for terrorist attacks. For President Lee, the state visit is an important opportunity to demonstrate South Korea’s unique role as a bridge between the developed and developing countries."

The United States' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are unlikely to come to an end, even after the death of Osama Bin Laden. These wars which were initiated and continued based on the sacred and ideological aim of the complete destruction of world terrorism (Al Qaeda) will simultaneously provide the grounds for local and opposing forces to justify their resistance in the form of a sacred ideological war against foreign occupiers. In the case of a bilateral ideological war, with no possible winner, therefore the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have mostly local and regional roots, will not come to end in the near future.