Foreign Policy

In the wake of the recent news around the release of “The Interview” and our own discussions about how to treat nuclear states, we’ll turn our focus to the Koreas, North and South.

• What are the prospects for reunification? Over what time frame?
• What should be the US policy with respect to each country?
• What else can (or should) the US do to address the issues arising from North Korea?
• What does this mean of Sino-US relations and cooperation?

In last week’s discussion of Isolationism (as it relates to US policy), we spent some time comparing the geographic “land grab” of portions of Ukraine by Russia as distinct from the ideologically centered ISIS activities (even though they’re also grabbing some land). In that context, the question arose about whether the geopolitical, Cold War “chessboard” was becoming less of a factor / threat in our foreign relations.

As a possible counterpoint to this theory, we’ll re-visit the recent developments in Southeast Asia next week, in particular, China’s activities in the South China Sea.

Dick Jacoby has offered the following notes:

For the topic “South China Sea” an excellent reference is “Asia’s Cauldron” by Robert Kaplan. Unfortunately, it is not available at the library.  Google “South China Sea Disputes” in Wikipedia and others.

See you on Monday!