"While it remains to be seen how the Moon administration's nuclear energy and security policies will materialize, it is too early to conclude that Seoul is renouncing the option of nuclear hedging. Uncertainty over the US commitment to security alliances under President Trump, combined with the election of a South Korean president who is promoting more independent national security, makes it unlikely that South Korea is abandoning the hedging option altogether."
For a century, the geopolitics of energy has been synonymous with the
geopolitics of oil and gas. However, geopolitics and the global energy economy
are both changing. The international order predominant since the
end of World War II faces mounting challenges. At the same time, renewable
energy is growing rapidly. Nevertheless, the geopolitics of renewable
energy has received relatively little attention, especially when considering
the far-reaching consequences of a global shift to renewable energy.
The paper starts with a discussion of seven renewable energy scenarios
for the coming decades: the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2016, the EIA’s
International Energy Outlook 2016, IRENA’s REmap 2016, Bloomberg’s
New Energy Outlook 2016, BP’s Energy Outlook 2016, Exxon-Mobil’s Outlook
for Energy 2016 and the joint IEA and IRENA G20 de-carbonization
scenario.
"During his first 100 days in office, US President Donald Trump reversed many of the major positions on defense and trade policy that he had advocated during his presidential campaign. And these reversals have yielded some positive results."
An approach that requires the United States to accept what it longed deemed “unacceptable” will strike many people in Washington as irresponsible.
After spending much of the last two years offering virtually unadulterated praise for Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump finds himself with limited options as he prepares to confront the Russian president for the first time Friday.
A look at the upcoming G20 Summit in Germany with Nicholas Burns, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
"Is war the natural condition of mankind? That question drives a deeper story line in the summer blockbuster 'Wonder Woman.' While she is stopping a massive German gas attack, Princess Diana also finds herself grappling with a fundamental question about the relationship between mass violence and human nature.
Wonder Woman's first face-off against a World War I villain, German Gen. Erich Ludendorff, takes a dark philosophical turn. 'Peace,' Gen. Ludendorff sneers, 'is only an armistice in an endless war.' Wonder Woman immediately identifies the author of the quote: the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. But she disagrees, arguing instead that war is a seductive spell on mankind, not a reflection of our inherent corruption."
Graham Allison writes that the dangerous dynamic of a rising power that threatens to displace a ruling power is Thucydides’ Trap. "It is one of history’s deadliest patterns. Over the past 500 years, this has occurred 16 times. In 12 cases, the outcome was war. Today, the contest between an irresistible rising China and an immovable America is the 17th case."
President Donald Trump's decision to remove the U.S. from the Paris climate agreementis yet another manifestation -- alongside the budget submitted to Congress and the president's speech at NATO headquarters in Brussels -- of how he continues to see U.S. interests as narrowly economic, and U.S. influence as exerted solely through hard power.
A look at the upcoming G20 Summit in Germany with Nicholas Burns, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
President Trump promised voters that he would strike “a great deal” with Russia and its autocratic president, Vladimir Putin. Now nearly six months into his presidency, Trump is set to finally meet Putin at a summit this week in Hamburg — severely constrained and facing few good options that would leave him politically unscathed.
Ambassador Nicholas Burns discusses Russia, NATO, and Trump with MSNBC.
Ambassador Burns says it was "unwise" for Trump to question Russian meddling during a joint news conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Poland on Thursday. Burns states that in doing so, Trump was "out of step with his own political party" and failed to defend the United States.
Nicholas Burns, professor at Harvard Kennedy School, discusses power dynamics at the G-20 summit and what it may mean for investors.
Donald Trump came home from Europe feeling pretty good... until his eldest son began raining on his parade. Donald Trump, Jr., tweeted four pages of emails describing how a meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised incriminating information on Hillary Clinton came to be.
The meeting was facilitated by Rob Goldstone - a publicist with ties to the Trump family - and eventually took place at Trump Tower with Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chair Paul Manafort included.
In light of the developments, former U.S. ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns joined Jim Braude to survey the president's international standing.
"The biggest hole in the Tory battle plan should have been obvious: Whether or not one thinks Brexit is a good idea, it is plainly not about stability, or continuity. It’s potentially the most radical change in U.K. domestic and foreign policy in half a century, a step that will change the daily lives of everyone in this country and that of their children."
"From the vantage point of contemporary readers, it may be surprising to learn that the US–Israeli relationship was actually quite limited and even cool until the late 1960s. It then evolved into a more classic patron-client relationship in the 1970s, and only in the 1980s started to become the institutionalised, strategic relationship that we know today."
"Instead of relying on U.S. guidance and (generally) supporting U.S. policy initiatives, states that lose confidence in America's competence will begin to hedge and make their own arrangements. They’ll do deals with each other and sometimes with countries that the United States regards as adversaries."
President Donald Trump feels his recent trip to the Middle East was a great success, and the actions by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies to isolate and punish Qatar this week were the first fruits of his new policy. In reality, the schism between Gulf Cooperation Council allies is a setback for U.S. interests, and the reset between Washington and Riyadh, heralded by the administration and many observers, if not a farce, is clearly far from complete.
Washington must think the unthinkable to credibly deter potential adversaries such as China.
"The biggest hole in the Tory battle plan should have been obvious: Whether or not one thinks Brexit is a good idea, it is plainly not about stability, or continuity. It’s potentially the most radical change in U.K. domestic and foreign policy in half a century, a step that will change the daily lives of everyone in this country and that of their children."
