In The News

Recognise China's Value in Defusing North Korea Crisis

Pei Min Xin January 8, 2003
Writing in Singapore's Straits Times, China scholar Pei Min Xin argues that the US is bungling its relationship with China in the current crisis with North Korea. As a major source of energy and food aid to North Korea, China could play a key role in convincing the reclusive communist country to cease its nuclear program again. Although the Bush administration claims it recognizes China...

Terrorism Fails to Halt Globalisation

Guy de Jonquiýres January 7, 2003
A study by A.T. Kearney and Foreign Policy Magazine has concluded that globalization has not been halted by terrorist attacks on the US and other countries. This summary in the Financial Times explains, "Rejecting suggestions that September 11 will halt globalisation, [the report] says terrorism has instead injected impetus by spurring closer international political co-operation, while...

Bush Plays Down Rift With Allies Over U.S. Stance on North Korea

David E. Sanger January 3, 2003
North Korea’s decision to re-start its nuclear program has much of Asia, the US, and others on edge. How to deal with the communist country’s ambitions is creating a degree of tension between the US and its allies. The US has been pursuing a diplomacy-centered route in handling the issue, a policy that has invited greater scrutiny of its attitude toward another “Axis of Evil” member, Iraq....

The Year After...

Tariq Rahman December 16, 2002
The global war on terrorism is creating less security on the local level and dimming the prospects for democracy in some areas of the world. That's the conclusion of Pakistani scholar Tariq Rahman in this year-end assessment of the violence and instability that characterized the world in 2002. "We in Pakistan have been affected very deeply," he writes. "Apart from the...

Bush and the Three Rogues

December 16, 2002
Iran, Iraq, and North Korea comprise the 'Axis of Evil' named by US President George Bush as the three most significant threats to world stability in general and the US in particular. With inspections of Iraq's weapons program not progressing in a clearly useful manner, pressure is building on the Bush administration. Now Washington must decide how to handle North Korea's...

Bush turns diplomatic in handling Korean crisis

Edward Epstein December 14, 2002
In a phone conversation on December 13 with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, President Bush said he won't allow "business as usual to continue," but promised to seek a diplomatic settlement to North Korea's decision to restart a nuclear program. The question of why the US is preparing to go to war against Iraq but seeking a diplomatic solution in North Korea underlines the...

North Korea Suspends Nuclear Moratorium

Kim Min-bai December 12, 2002
Already the focus of nations worried about the proliferation of nuclear and conventional weapons, North Korea announced Thursday that it will resume development of nuclear power facilities to meet its energy needs. The communist country and the United States had agreed in 1994 that if North Korea stopped its nuclear programs, the US would supply it with enough oil to meet its needs until a safer...