Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com North Korean rocket launches and nuclear tests risk getting boring. The pattern is familiar: expressions of outrage, loud condemnation ― then nothing. Has the latest one-two punch of nuclear test and rocket launch changed a thing? The easy answer is not really ― but think again. The lines […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — While recessionary winds continue to buffet the world economy, many countries are still prospering due to innovative policies which have embraced economic growth and expanded economic opportunities and grown the middle class in places as disparate as East Asia and South America. Yet, the United […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com MANILA ― No city suffered more in World War II than this sprawling metropolis of more than 10 million people. No enemy was more cruel, more hostile, more destructive than the Japanese after defeating U.S. forces in the Philippines at the outset of the war in the Pacific. […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Liam Fox We live in new world. A world of interdependence where risk in one part of the globe quickly spreads to the rest. Contagion – whether economic – such as the 2008 banking crisis, natural – such as SARS or terrorist – such as 9/11, will ricochet around the globe. […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Jeffrey T. Kuhner Donald Trump has just made the first big mistake of his campaign. Looking to maintain his huge lead in New Hampshire, he has warmly accepted the endorsement of former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown. It is a poisoned chalice, and Mr. Trump drinks it at his peril. Mr. Brown is […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Five years after the onset of the pro-democracy revolts against authoritarian rulers in much of the Middle East, the heady warm breezes of the Arab Spring have been replaced with swirling ill winds sweeping the region from Tunisia to Iraq. Governments were toppled, chaos ensued, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Sol W. Sanders Largely ignored by the mainstream media, the Jan. 15 Taiwan elections have enormous implications not only for the Island’s 25 million people, but for China – and the U.S. Ironically, the election of the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] leader, Tsai Ing-wen, a woman at that — reinstalled a […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com Donald Gregg, U.S. ambassador to Korea as the country was making the transition to democracy in the early 1990s, did not take kindly to my column [A former U.S. diplomat’s inexplicable defense of Kim Jong-Un] in which I quoted him, accurately, as praising Kim Jong-Un “for improving the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Sol W. Sanders The Shale Revolution continues to wreak havoc as revolutions are wont to do. The abundance of U.S. natural gas, in many ways a more satisfactory fossil fuel than either coal or oil because of its lesser emissions, has dynamited the whole worldwide energy market. Whether or not the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler NEW YORK — Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates slammed both the Obama Administration and the presidential primary candidates calling for long-term realism in America’s fight against the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) terrorism. “I think that the president has all along underestimated ISIS, has underestimated the degree […]
