Global Outlook

Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general, memorably described its mission as being ‘to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’. With the end of the Cold War, instead of disbanding, NATO became a military alliance in search of a new enemy and mission to justify its existence.

The claims Yoon Suk-yeol is making about Moon Jae-in’s North Korea policy need a fact check In both South Korea and elsewhere in recent years, subjective speculation appears to be prevailing over facts as the boundary between objective truth and public opinion blurs.

The Afghanistan war is over for the United States and its allies. But the suffering of the Afghan people has multiplied under the extremist, repressive rule of the Taliban in the name of Islam. No country today is in as much danger of losing half its population to starvation as Afghanistan. Who is responsible for this?

Every great power needs an organising principle of foreign policy; great powers rise and fall on the tide of history and no power remains great forever; no great power retreats forever; there’s no way to reliably judge whether a great power has begun its descent into permanent decline or is merely in temporary retreat; and geopolitical fault lines during periods of power transition are fraught with grave risks of war rooted in miscalculations of relative power.

When Kim Jong-un took power in North Korea in December 2011, many observers speculated that the young 28-year-old, politically inexperienced son of the late Kim Jong-il and grandson of the first president, Kim Il-sung, would hardly remain in power for long. The communist Kim dynasty was likely to end soon. Today, after ten years, the dictator is firmly in control. What is his economic and security record after ten years?

2022 may well be a decisive year that tests Korea’s resilience on all fronts. We’ve made it to 2022. While we faced considerable difficulties last year due to COVID-19 and other issues, the general view is that Korea’s international prestige has gone up a notch.