American Foreign Policy… George H.W. Bush in Mao’s China 1 Dec 20181 Dec 2018 With the death of George H.W. Bush, it is an opportune time to look back at his time as the top U.S. diplomat in Beijing in the immediate aftermath…
American Foreign Policy… On Think Tanks, or, What Trump Didn’t Get in Helsinki 17 Jul 201818 Jul 2018 The Trump administration has brought with it a dark winter of discontent to US think tanks. Institutions stocked with the analytical rosters of former Clinton and Obama appointees with North Korea-related expertise…
Art… Walls as Multivalent Icons in Early People’s Republican Cartoons, 1946-1951 13 Apr 2018 The rise and ultimate victory of the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese civil war, and Mao's galvanizing intervention into the Korean War, was accompanied and supported by a wave…
American Foreign Policy… New Book Reviews: Espionage in Republican China, and Britain’s Role in the Korean War 30 Mar 201830 Mar 2018 My two new book reviews engage with the intelligence history of two chaotic decades in China, and the British role in the Korean War, respectively. Review of Panagiotis Dimitrakis, The…
Art… Cruel Resurrection: Chinese Comics and the Korean War 19 Mar 201819 Mar 2018 I wrote this article in the early 2000s under the direction of the ageless Chinese art historian Shen Kuiyi, with whom I did a "cognate field" during my doctoral studies…
Borderlands… Questioned Liberators: Guerrilla, Mobile, and Base Warfare in Communist Military Operations in Manchuria, 1945-1947 11 Oct 201711 Oct 2017 The years from 1945-1947 were a complex transitional period in the development of Chinese Communist military, political, and diplomatic strategy. While not yet facing the dilemmas of transforming wholesale an…
American Foreign Policy… Hillary Clinton and the Taxing Friendship: China and North Korea 22 Aug 201720 Aug 2017 This essay, previously unpublished, was written in Seattle on 27 May 2010. Hillary Clinton arrived in Beijing last weekend to send an urgent message to China: put pressure on North…
American Foreign Policy… Reflections on the History of Chinese-North Korean Relations, and US-DPRK Relations Today 12 Mar 201712 Mar 2017 Sometimes we need to modify the questions we ask. The question "Is the Chinese Communist Party going to cut off North Korea?" results in a fairly predictable string of analyses…
Chinese foreign policy… Comment on the North Korean Missile Launch 12 Feb 2017 I was on BBC television this evening (via the Leeds studio) discussing the North Korean missile launch with Celia Hatton, who, fortunately for me and the BBC, is a veteran 'China…
American Foreign Policy… North Korean Human Rights: Rex Tillerson as Blank Slate 11 Jan 201711 Jan 2017 Will the Trump administration maintain and extend US pressure on North Korea on the human rights front? Will the Executive Branch aim to extend and intensify US criticism of and dialogue…
