Last week China expressed concern that the U.S. decision to destroy an errant satellite (which was a success) was actually a thinly veiled missile defense test. The official U.S. explanation was that the satellite contained a potentially toxic fuel that was never used due to a malfunction soon after it was placed in orbit. […]

Update: Via the Nomad, an interesting theory on Syria’s relatively mild protests to Israels attack:
Notice how far away Dayr az-Zawr is from Israel. An F15/16 attack there is not a tiptoe across the border, but a deep, deep penetration of Syrian airspace. And guess what happened with the Russian super-hyper-sophisticated cutting edge […]

Update: Angry Chinese Blogger covers the anti-satellite issue.
Original post: It is no secret that China poses a challenge to American hegemony in East Asia, and for Korea watchers it has been painfully apparent that China is best positioned to at least attempt to force North Korea to denuclearize - as its largest trade partner […]

Today Japan installed and deployed a ballistic missile defense system, which is separate from the U.S. PAC-3 system deployed on Okinawa last year and ship-based Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) missile interceptors at Yokosuka:
“We had initially planned to complete the deployment by March next year, but we accelerated the plan following North Korea’s missile launch,” the […]

In his latest op-ed, Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, says that Japan can become in East Asia what Israel is in the Middle East, a “wildcard”:
In part, that’s because Israel acts as a kind of wildcard in the Middle East. The United States can decide what it is (and is not) prepared to […]

This months talks are running into the same roadblocks that halted negotiations in September 2005 – the timing of CVID and LWR – but with the added bonus of North Korea petulantly demanding a) to be recognized as a nuclear power and, b) that Banco Delta sanctions be dropped. North Korea is once again […]

The gap between what the U.S. requires and what North Korean leadership is able to do without destabilizing itself was too wide even before the 09 October nuclear test.
North Korea, which had refused to return to the Six-Party Talks until the U.S. lifted financial sanctions imposed for its counterfeiting activities, now says it will […]

On 24 October the Agency for Defense Development tested a 1000 km range, domestically designed cruise missile able to hit a target within 5 meter. The range means it is capable of reaching all part of North Korea, as well as parts of China and Japan – including Beijing and Tokyo. However the missile […]

This should not come as a surprise considering that in the past the North Korean government has sold up to 50 percent of the food aid that was meant to be given to its citizens. Aid given after this years flooding has of course been handled in the same way:
A North Korean government-sponsored company […]

North Korea says that UNSC Resolution 1718 amounts to a “declaration of war.” One problem with that is that it was a unanimous UNSC vote, including China and Russia. A North Korean statement issued today states:
We will fulfil our duty to denuclearize the Korean peninsula as we have already declared, but if anyone tries […]