Victor Cha

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Chinese President Xi Jinping delivering a speech, Shanghai, November 2021. Andrew Galbraith / Reuters

It took just seven words for the National Basketball Association to get canceled by Beijing. As pro-democracy protesters swarmed the streets of Hong Kong in October 2019, Daryl Morey, then the general manager of the Houston Rockets, one of the NBA’s 30 teams, posted a simple message to his Twitter account: “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong”. Chinese broadcasters and streamers quickly announced that they would no longer show his team’s games. The league, which has more viewers in China than in the United States, immediately tried to distance itself from Morey’s tweet, writing that the general manager didn’t speak for the NBA and issuing a statement that implicitly rebuked him.…  Seguir leyendo »

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walking near a reported intercontinental ballistic missile, North Korea, March 2022. Korean Central News Agency / Reuters

In the early months of 2022, as the world was transfixed by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un seemed to sense an opportunity. Since the invasion began, he has tested a slew of ballistic missiles, including hypersonic and long-range weapons, with relatively little international scrutiny. Kim’s objective is clear: he aims to develop weapons capable of overwhelming U.S. national missile defense systems. U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security team has been understandably preoccupied with Ukraine, but North Korea’s nuclear missile technology is rapidly advancing and demands urgent attention. Absent a change in U.S. strategy or an unexpected diplomatic breakthrough, Kim could eventually achieve his goal of being able to strike the United States with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile, with grave implications for U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun with his wife Ri Sol Ju in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Sept. 9. (Str/AFP/Getty Images)

We are stuck in a rut on North Korea. The absence of any forward progress on denuclearization diplomacy is the result of a unique intersection of American distraction and North Korean disinterest. Now, by test-firing two short-range ballistic missiles and a long-range cruise missile, the North Koreans have signaled that they aim to shake things up, confronting President Biden with a predicament he’s so far been able to dodge. There are two paths out of it — one that the United States and its allies can control and another that they cannot.

The Biden administration has kept its North Korea policy deliberately low-key.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Donald Trump with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as they headed to a meeting at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Thursday. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

Having participated in nuclear negotiations with North Korea, I know what failure smells like. The truncated Hanoi summit, which concluded abruptly without an agreement between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, carried an awful stench.

There were high expectations for this second meeting of American and North Korean leaders after the lack of progress on denuclearization commitments made at their first summit, in Singapore last summer. And yet, not only did Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim fail to offer more empty promises, they even dispensed with signing a joint statement, canceled their planned ceremonial lunch, and skipped the joint news conference.

This outcome shouldn’t necessarily be a surprise.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea meet for the first time on Sentosa Island, Singapore.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

There is a phrase in Korean: “Begun is half-done.” It means when tackling a difficult task, half of the battle is getting started.

Despite the many warts in President Trump’s unconventional diplomacy toward North Korea, we have to give him credit. Only five months ago, based on my conversations with this administration, I thought we were headed down an inexorable path toward a devastating war.

A military attack would not have ended North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Instead, it would have resulted in a war — with hundreds of thousands of deaths in Japan and South Korea, including thousands of Americans — that the United States would have won but with horrible costs.…  Seguir leyendo »

Many will criticize the Bush administration's decision to remove North Korea from the terrorism blacklist last weekend, over the objections of close U.S. ally Japan, as a Hail Mary pass by an administration desperate for good news. Did President Bush, reeling from the U.S. financial meltdown and still struggling to achieve success in Iraq, finally relent to North Korean saber rattling and prematurely "delist" a country he once deemed part of the "axis of evil"? Perhaps so. But other factors may have been at play in this controversial decision. In any case, a McCain or Obama administration is likely to reap the benefits of this move.…  Seguir leyendo »