East Asia Archive

During the past few weeks, the standoff between North Korea and the United States has cooled a bit. Pyongyang has not tested more ballistic missiles or nuclear devices, and U.S. President Donald Trump has not launched more insulting tweets at North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. That is good, but the crisis is no closer to resolution than it was months or years ago; there is not even a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. It remains the world’s most dangerous threat. It is hard to see a path to resolution at this point. In a recent […]

When he recently called for snap elections to be held on Oct. 22, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe likely viewed his rising approval ratings in recent opinion polls as creating opportune conditions for him to consolidate power. Despite what appeared to be a serious challenge from his one-time colleague Yuriko Koike, who now heads an opposition party but has decided not to run herself, any threat from the opposition to Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party has since dimmed. In an email interview, J. Berkshire Miller, a senior visiting fellow with the Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo and […]

When China’s top officials convene in Beijing next week for the Communist Party’s 19th Congress, President Xi Jinping could further consolidate his growing political power and advance his agenda. Xi has already dismissed two high-ranking generals, in his latest maneuver to reform the People’s Liberation Army and assert more authority over its ranks. In an email interview, Timothy R. Heath, a senior international defense research analyst at the RAND Corporation specializing in China, explains what further steps Xi will likely make at the Party Congress, what they mean for reform in the Chinese military, and if Xi could face any […]

Since the initial division of the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II, there has been a distant hope in diplomatic circles, as well as among many Koreans, that the split might one day be undone. American officials have supported Korean reunification for years, and even China, which benefits from the buffer North Korea provides between its border and the U.S.-allied South, has quietly favored the idea at times of heightened tensions. In preparation for a possible reunion, South Korea funds a Ministry of Unification that studies strategies for bringing the two states closer—and last month financed an […]

The North Korean crisis is turning into a laboratory experiment about how to avoid war: with words, or with more demonstrations of force? While many in Washington would like to believe that diplomacy works hand in hand with deterrence and other instruments of American power, President Donald Trump seems to see diplomacy as working at cross purposes with his strategy. U.S. diplomacy has been on the defensive lately, unable to move some new crises—such as the ongoing dispute between Qatar and other Gulf Arab states, or the contentious referendum on independence in Iraqi Kurdistan—toward a peaceful resolution. It seemed like […]