Kim Jong Un is on a roll. After firing a second missile over Japan, successfully testing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and successfully detonating a larger-yield nuclear weapon, the North Korean threat has grown significantly more dire in just a few weeks. General John Hyten, who commands U.S. Strategic Command, recently stated that he assumes that North Korea has successfully test

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Shadow Government: Will the ‘One China’ Policy Survive the New Taiwan?

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Report: Exclusive: U.N. Docs Expose Assad’s Starvation Campaign in Syria

The Cable: Exclusive: South Sudanese Military Targets United Nations

Passport: Meet the Handsome Japanese Reporter Stealing the Show in Bangkok

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If Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is ever in the market for a presidential theme song, he should consider, "U Can’t Touch This." American rapper M.C. Hammer’s infectiously arrogant refrain aptly sums up a stunning power play by the Egyptian president on November 22 — a unilateral constitutional declaration that immunizes his decisions from judicial oversight and preempts legal challenges to an I

For the past week, Washington has been embroiled in an ever-escalating sex scandal involving Gen. David Petraeus, his biographer Paula Broadwell, and a third woman named Jill Kelley, and now, tangentially it seems, Gen. John Allen. The affair between Petraeus and Broadwell was discovered by the FBI and revealed late last week when Petraeus resigned as director of the CIA. But while the salacious d

This is a guest post by Rachel Lu, co-founder and editor of Tea Leaf Nation, an online magazine that analyzes Chinese social media; a version of this article is also appearing on Tea Leaf Nation. On Thursday Oct 26 The New York Times published a 4,700 word article on corruption among the members of Wen Jiabao’s family, alleging that they amassed a fortune of $2.7 billion through shadowy business d

Passport: Was there a conflict of interest behind the Nobel literature prize?

Lord Wellington depicted the allied triumph at Waterloo as “the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life.” Wellington’s verdict would describe the likely outcome should Chinese and Japanese forces meet in battle over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, or elsewhere off the Northeast Asian seaboard. Such a fight appeared farfetched before 2010, when Japan’s Coast Guard apprehended Chinese fishermen who

I have been fascinated by some of the findings of a massive new Pew Research Center global public opinion survey of Muslims in 39 countries in every region of the world. Pew conducted 38,000 face-to-face interviews in more than 80 languages between 2008 and 2012. What makes The World’s Muslims especially interesting is that it doesn’t ask questions mainly of interest to Americans, such as how Musl

There’s a revolt in the making in Sudan. (You can track it on Twitter at #SudanRevolts, and take a look here and here for background.) You’d think it would catch the world’s attention. The revolt is being led by an educated, young, polyglot class of people attempting to spread the message in half a dozen languages. Media-savvy bloggers and activists are being arrested; internet campaigns to free t

"The stupidest transition in history" is how my colleague Nathan Brown recently described the last fifteen months in Egypt.  Few would disagree.  At virtually every step, it seems that almost every player has made the wrong choice: the SCAF, the activists, the Muslim Brotherhood, the judiciary, political leaders… and even political analysts.  When I’ve been in Cairo, or talking to Egyptian friends