Ever since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has maintained an aggressive and bellicose international security posture. Today, fully two decades after the end of the Cold War, North Korea's external defense and security policies look arguably more extreme and anomalous than ever.

Talks begin tomorrow between the P5 + 1 (the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) and Iran. Today, the P5+1 group is having a prep meeting. Talks with Iran are destined to fail, not because I want them to, but because every piece is in place for failure:

Turmoil in the Middle East has exposed the vulnerabilities of President Barack Obama’s listless foreign policy. As Iran closes in on its nuclear prize and props up Assad’s bloody regime in Syria, the United States has the opportunity to deal a crippling blow to its oldest, most dangerous enemy in...

The new government in Yemen has extracted several of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s cronies from the country’s power structure, including demotion of Saleh’s half-brother Mohammed al Ahmar and nephew Tareq Mohammed Saleh, the former heads of the Air Force and Presidential Guard, respectively.

The vote against Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council shows India can use its foreign policy to promote democracy in Asia.

Last week, Russia and China obstructed the Obama administration’s Syria policy by vetoing an anti-Assad Security Council resolution backed by the Arab League, Britain, France, and the United States.  As harmful as this defeat was in its immediate consequences, it may bode even worse for efforts to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

Jane Perlez's and William Wan's articles in today's papers (the New York Times and Washington Post, respectively) stand as a minor but important milestone in elite understanding of international relations in the 21st century. Though they provide only a summary of a Brookings monograph - the product...

For the first time in 20 years, Saudi Arabia has named an ambassador to Iraq. For years the Saudis resisted U.S. entreaties to take this step, and the current relationship between these two most important Arab countries in the Gulf has not been warm, so the timing is curious and...