The time has come for the Clinton Administration to step back and seriously reappraise its policy towards North Korea. In light of recent serious events on the peninsula, including the Taepo Dong missile launch and the revelation of a suspected underground nuclear weapons facility, it is evident that the Clinton Administration’s current policies to engage […]

This Administration, working closely with our allies in the region, the Republic of Korea and Japan, along with Congress, over the past five years has hammered out a policy that seeks to address the perplexing and difficult problems we face with North Korea — including holding North Korean nuclear activities in check and curtailing its […]

As the world’s economic leaders prepare to gather next week for the annual World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings in Washington, D.C., all eyes scan the global economy for new surprises and perils. As countries wage old and new battles against jittery international investors, economic sages are sharpening their intellectual weapons debating the […]

The visit next week of Japan’s new prime minister will provide a good opportunity to review the key issues – the Asian financial crisis, North Korean missile capabilities and the U.S.-Japan security system – facing the two leaders. More important, it will also provide a chance to right the balance in our East Asian policy, […]

On Aug. 6, after months of debate and calculation, the Executive Council of the National Economic Action Council headed by Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (which is in charge of the crisis management of the economy) made a tough decision. The five members unanimously decided to adopt the Chinese model of currency convertibility and instructed […]

President Clinton will meet his sixth Japanese counterpart when Prime Minister Obuchi visits the United States next month. In his first meeting, in 1993 with Prime Minister Miyazawa (who has re-surfaced as Japan’s latest Finance Minister), the discussion was dominated by bilateral trade tensions. The stakes are substantially more serious today, as Japan’s deepening recession […]

In his article “Keeping the alliance alive” (The Japan Times; 7/27/98), former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa takes exception, both to my July 11 critique of his July 6 article in The Japan Times and to my review of his piece in the July-August edition of Foreign Affairs, which appeared in the Sankei Shimbun July 10. […]

Despite assurances to the contrary from Washington and Seoul, the Geneva Agreed Framework currently faces its greatest threat since its inception in 1994.

Surveys of Indonesia politics usually mention that there are two basic camps of pious Muslims, the traditionalists and the modernists, and that their rivalry is an essential feature in the history of the nation. As Indonesia prepares to hold its freest parliamentary elections in over 40 years (currently scheduled for mid-1999), concerned outsiders must pursue […]

A few weeks ago, almost a year to the day after he deposed First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh in a violent coup d’etat, Cambodian strongman (and Second Prime Minister) Hun Sen said that he did not plan to actively participate in the upcoming election campaign boasting that none of the other candidates can beat him. […]