Nuclear weapons expert and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), David Albright, recently published a damaging report about Shenyang Machine Tools Company. The large Chinese company, which builds military aircraft among other commercial products, allegedly supplied North Korea with banned technology
When peaceful protests against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, began in 2011, they were met with violent oppression, which eventually led to the current civil war. By the United Nations' definitions, Bashar al-Assad is a war criminal through his “intentionally directing attacks against the civilian
In much of the world, the political current has changed course from globalization towards nationalism. While military spending and sharp upticks in nationalism are not always entirely related, one often follows the other. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, ran on a campaign of,
The largest trade deal in history died before it could live. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) took years to negotiate and the finished product was going to cover 12 countries, an array of economies and resources, and about 40% of global trade. Led by the big
All eyes are on Vietnam. A country that exactly two decades ago had 51% of its population living under the World Bank’s poverty line, now finds itself at the center of Southeast Asian affairs and great power politics. It was in this hallmark year of
Over the past 30 years, China has undergone an immense economic and social transformation. For centuries, China was predominately an agrarian society where the vast majority lived in rural villages. However, in the beginning of the late imperial period a shift began to emerge as
The Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) has been a lightening rod for western analysts, think-tanks and media that believe China represents a threat to not only the US and its allies’ interests, but also the broader post-World War II international order. The China-led AIIB,
Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen, Tenzing Norgay, Edmund Hillary. All are names of explorers famous for reaching places considered unreachable. Peary reached the North Pole in 1909, and Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911, just beating Robert Falcon Scott’s British expedition by five weeks. Norgay
In recent years, tensions between Asian countries over hotly contested waters, rocks and manmade islands have become impossible to ignore. For this issue, I had the opportunity to talk with Professor Alexis Dudden, who is teaching at Yonsei GSIS for the year while working on
