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Donald Kirk

America's proxy wars

The last thing the Americans can afford is involvement in a significantly wider war in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, two regions where the combatants are fighting limited but bloody proxy wars. America is in no mood to offer more than multi-billion dollars worth of arms, along with advice, either to Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza or to Ukraine, fighting off the Russian invasion with highly mixed results.

2023-11-30 16:35

Risking war from Europe to Asia

The specter of pressure points from Ukraine to North Korea raises a disturbing question. Is the U.S. prepared for a multi-front war?

2023-11-16 17:03

Waging war without end

There are no winners and no losers in the war in Gaza. Sure, the Israelis, fighting with massive infusions of American funds and arms, can rampage through Gaza, exterminating the hideouts, the tunnels, the lairs of the evil Hamas. No, the world won’t applaud their victory.

2023-11-02 16:35

World at war, almost

Certain parallels between the North-South confrontation on the Korean peninsula and the response to the Hamas attack on Israel are more than a little disquieting.

2023-10-19 16:35

Images of hard times long ago

A photo exhibit on the first floor of Seoul City Hall provides graphic evidence of how Seoul and the area up to Panmunjeom looked in that bleak period before the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed on July 27, 1953. The exhibit is all the more remarkable because the images were taken on old-fashioned Kodachrome film that’s long since fallen into disuse in an era of digital cameras and mobile phones.

2023-10-05 16:35

Kim's dubious deal with Putin

Kim Jong-un’s magical mystery tour through the Russian Far East may have added a frightening dimension to the standoff between alliances in Northeast Asia. Russia appears poised to shower North Korea with fighter planes, warships and the technology to put satellites into orbit while North Korean factories, hidden around the country, pump out millions of artillery shells for Russia's beleaguered forces in Ukraine.

2023-09-21 16:42

Summitry takes center stage

History is playing games. Who, as Saigon was falling to the forces of “North” Vietnam in April 1975, would have looked into a crystal ball and seen an American president 50 years later talking with Vietnam's top leaders about aiding their Communist regime?

2023-09-07 16:35

Don't count on Camp David

President Biden should be credited with a terrific public relations success. In less than one day, he got the leaders of South Korea and Japan to appear in full accord on mutual defense against all the bad guys in the region, mostly North Korea but also China.

2023-08-24 16:35

Jeju cherry trees: force for peace

Australian anthropologist Grant McCall had a vision for peace that extended from the south Pacific to the Korean Peninsula. A symbol of his quest for goodwill and tranquility in Korea was the Jeju King Cherry tree. And his dream of the way to pursue peace was to plant some of them in and around the resort area of Wonsan on North Korea's southeastern coast.

2023-08-10 16:35

Korea's quest for 'peace'

Anniversaries ending in zero or five are likely to focus special attention on the lessons of history. None is more portentous than the 70th anniversary this week of the signing of the truce that halted the Korean War on July 27, 1953.

2023-07-27 16:35

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