Michael Courts, The Conversation e Amanda Dunn, The Conversation
2017 has felt like a chaotic year in Australian politics, and one in which policy progress has been swamped by other distractions. We can only hope that 2018 is calmer and more productive.
An anti-war protester wears a mask showing US President Donald Trump in Berlin, Germany.
AP Photo/Michael Sohn
A former diplomat and foreign policy expert explains just how easily the president could bypass objections to war, from Congress to dissenting generals.
Donald Trump seems to have a passion for cruelty, often publicly celebrating his investment in violence as a source of pleasure. Those tendencies represent symptoms of a broader American sickness.
Fears about nuclear annihilation have come and gone over the years until the threat was all but forgotten. Then Kim Jong-un started flexing his nuclear muscles
Over time, the Kim family has become adept at coup-proofing its rule in North Korea.
Reuters/KCNA
We should interpret the threat posed by North Korea from an informed perspective based on demonstrable strategic logic, rather than on caricatured misrepresentations of its leadership.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un called Trump a ‘dotard.’
KCNA via Reuters
The latest salvo of insults and threats between President Trump and North Korea’s Kim brought the region a little bit closer to war. China, North Korea’s closest trading partner, may be the only way out.
As despotic personality cults go, Stalin’s example still leads the pack. But North Korea’s ruling family have taken it to a new extreme.
In this April 15, 2017, file photo, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a military parade in Pyongyang, North Korea.
(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)
China could win unprecedented global credibility by emerging as the champion of an international effort that fixes the North Korea problem once and for all. Does it have the moxie?
North Korean soldiers participate in a target-striking contest in August this year.
EPA/KCNA
North Korea’s legitimacy derives almost wholly from its subjects’ perception of perfect strength and resolve. This makes it harder for Pyongyang to back down.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping speaks at the BRICS summit in Xiamen.
Reuters
China is probably no more fond of the North Korean regime than the Americans are, but it is walking a fine line between managing both nations and ensuring its own continued rise.
A Japanese man watches a TV news program on a public screen in Tokyo showing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amid reports the North Korean leader has inspected a hydrogen bomb meant for a new intercontinental ballistic missile.
(AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
North Korea wants the security and prestige of nuclear weapons. It won’t give them up.
Assumptions, authoritarianism and errors are just a few of the ways in which the world could be confronted by a nuclear disaster, physicist and disarmament expert MV Ramana suggests in his book reviews.
Shutterstock
A week ago, the leaked transcript of the January telephone call between Malcolm Turnbull and Donald Trump revealed Turnbull had told the president, “You can count on me. I will be there again and again…
By promising ‘fire and fury’, Donald Trump actually plays into North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s hands.
Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
The issue with Donald Trump’s ad-hoc response and commentary on North Korea is the inconsistent messages this sends to an already paranoid and isolated regime.
The news of an exchange of threats between the U.S. and North Korea is reported in Tokyo on Aug. 9, 2017.
AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi
While some countries were taking a major step toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, the US and its allies were focusing on ineffective, counter-productive sanctions against North Korea.