Category: General

North Korea has been wanting attention. Now, it seems like it will get some. The President will speak to the nation about North Korea’s nuclear test at 9:45 a.m. this morning.

Stephen Handelman has an insightful article on Ban Ki Moon this morning in the Globe and Mail — and not because he quotes some of my blog commentary on Ban. Handelman writes: “I may look soft from the outside,” he has said. “But I have inner strength when it’s really necessary.

Well, the North Koreans have had their test. John Bolton has a lot of new fuel for his bluster at the UN, but I hope one of these days, folks take a step back and ask how this happened.

So much for those “Mission Accomplished” and “Victory” speeches. Things are tilting very bad directions in Afghanistan.

The North Korea problem needs management. . .now. While this may sound like a modest incident, it’s very scary. Miscommunication, misunderstanding, escalation, and violence in an already tense situation given North Korea’s seeming determination to hold a nuclear test are possible triggers for a regional conflagration in Northeast Asia.

Yesterday, I hosted a meeting with European Parliament Member Alexander Graf Lambsdorff (and Deputy Chairman of the Free Democracts in the European Parliament) who gave a talk titled: “Europe’s Evolving Stakes in the Middle East.” The meeting was assembled by the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

Vice President Cheney’s disregard for America’s system of checks and balances and his huff-and-puff advocacy of unilateral military responses to complex national security challenges has really harmed America’s portfolio of interests. He should be challenged every time and every where he speaks.

The unilateral thing is failing — so time to consider alternative options. Michael Lind, in his new book The American Way of Strategy puts a proposal out that international stability and prosperity will best be pursued in the future through regional concerts of power. Here is an excellent summary of the book.

(FEMA Director Michael Brown, President George W. Bush, and Florida Congressman Mark Foley) What was it about a picture being better than a thousand words? One wonders if Scooter Libby, Paul Bremer, and Don Rumsfeld have been cropped out of the shot.

Kremlinology may be anachronistic, but observing and interpreting Bush-world has taken its place as one of my extra-curricular activities. I can hardly believe that George Bush 41 throttled his son so harshly in a speech he gave last night at the home of the German Ambassador to the U.S.