Paula Briscoe is the National Intelligence Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

China’s current and planned investments in Greenland raise concerns, not only about Chinese access to more of the world’s resources but also about China’s longer term objectives and the foothold in Europe that a strong partnership with Greenland could provide for Beijing. Read more »

In a previous post from last month, I asserted that South Korea’s efforts to launch its own satellite would likely enrage North Korea, which is banned from conducting similar launches under UN Security Council Resolutions 1695, 1718, and 1874. That post highlighted an essay by Clay Moltz of the Naval Postgraduate School that we posted last month. Read more »

South Korea tries for the third time to successfully launch its own satellite into earth orbit using Russian technology this Friday, October 26, 2012. A new essay by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Clay Moltz analyzes South Korea’s space strategy in a new U.S.-Korea program essay. The essay analyzes South Korea’s program achievements and strategic challenges in the context of rapidly advancing Chinese, Indian, and Japanese programs. Moltz also analyzes opportunities and challenges to enhanced U.S.-ROK cooperation in space as part of my edited volume released earlier this year entitled The US-South Korea Alliance: Meeting New Security Challenges. Read more »

News this week that Myanmar president Thein Sein had reshuffled his cabinet, removing several key ministers, seems to suggest that Thein Sein is for real, that he is indeed committed to the long-term economic and political reforms the country desperately needs. All of the appointments to the posts in the president’s office are reformers and at the same time he seems to have demoted hard-liners in this reshuffle. Thein Sein’s moves, and his commitment, do not mean that Myanmar might not regress; just because he is committed to reform, the military still remains a critical player, and as we have seen in other countries in the region, such as Thailand, if democratization coincides with weak growth or the alienation of critical interest groups (i.e., the Thai upper class), these interest groups can wind up turning against the democratic process altogether. Read more »

The murder trial of Bo Xilai’s wife Gu Kailai ended with a local Chinese court delivering a suspended death sentence for her killing of a British citizen Neil Heywood. While Gu only received a two-year reprieve for the execution, anybody with some knowledge of the operation of the Chinese officialdom knows that this is tantamount to life in prison. Provided “good behavior” during her imprisonment, Gu could be released after serving fewer than a dozen years. Gu was apparently satisfied with the verdict. It is ironic, of course, that she demonstrated no respect for the law by taking another person’s life, but is now praising the court for showing “immense respect for the law, reality and life.” Read more »

Elizabeth Leader is a Research Associate for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

The visit of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to Southeast Asia last week reaffirmed the Obama administration’s commitment to an expanding U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific.  Although the administration has remained relatively mum in recent weeks about the so-called “pivot” (leading some to speculate that the strategy’s political viability was undergoing reassessment), and despite the looming threat of massive cuts to the U.S. defense budget,  Panetta asserted the position in a June 2 address in Singapore: “Make no mistake — in a steady, deliberate, and sustainable way the United States military is rebalancing and bringing an enhanced capability development to this vital region.” Read more »

Park Cheol-hee is an associate professor at Seoul National University.

NHK live broadcasts on the tsunami that swept coastal villages in Eastern Japan on March 11, 2011, were a shocking scene to the South Korean people. Japan now confronts the aftermath of triple natural disasters—an earthquake of a record 9.0 magnitude, a devastating tsunami, and the threat of radioactive contamination—that have left 11,417 dead, 16,273 missing, and more than 350,000 people struggling to survive at crowded shelters. Read more »

Michael Finnegan is a Senior Research Associate at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

The Republic of Korea (ROK)’s pledge to return to Afghanistan, after more than two years of absence, can be viewed in several ways—as a domestic political breakthrough, recognition of Korea’s interests in the world, or reflection of an evolving alliance with the United States. Perhaps it is all of these and more. The full motivation for the decision and specific plans to implement the mission will not be clear until the Lee Myung-bak administration explains its rationale and plans for deployment to the South Korean people. As he does so, President Lee Myung-bak should avoid the mistakes of past administrations by clearly articulating South Korea’s national interests and strategic rationale for the deployment. Read more »