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… North Koreans Watching Fox 24 May 2018 This post operates on sanity-preserving ground rules: No referring to: think-pieces, think-tank analyses, journalistic hot takes, outraged or absurd Tweets (other than those thumbed out by POTUS), Chuck Schumer's courageous…
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… Resources on North Korean Music Diplomacy 21 Jan 201821 Jan 2018 One strand of my ongoing academic work as a historian of Northeast Asia concerns music and cultural diplomacy in and by North Korea. My published online work on this…
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Policy… Hillary Clinton and the Taxing Friendship: China and North Korea 22 Aug 201720 Aug 2017 This essay, previously unpublished, was written in Seattle on 27 May 2010.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…
China… Wartime History and Beijing’s Response to the New Defence Minister in Tokyo 5 Aug 20165 Aug 2016 In the wake of the Upper House elections in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has completed a reshuffling of his cabinet. As described by Japan hand Michael Cucek, it was…
American Foreign Policy… Second-Hand Stories: East Asia in the Bill Clinton Autobiography 18 Jul 201617 Oct 2016 This essay was written in Seattle on 24 February, 2009; a shorter version was published at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma that spring. This past weekend I took a long…
