Whether the Obama administration is willing to give all assistance to Tokyo or Seoul in shooting down this missile might turn out to be the crucial element.

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.

Today's most serious problems are in important respects the result of our prosperity--the characteristic problems of a super-affluent, mass-upper-middle-class society.

The American Enterprise Institute was founded fifty-seven years ago this week to promote the idea that a free, competitive economy would promote individual well-being and social progress. This work has been carried out, for the most part, by thinking and writing.

This is not easy work, since human...

Excerpts of the 2000 Francis Boyer Lecture, delivered by AEI President Christopher DeMuth.

Kim Jong Il was nothing less than an economic catastrophe for North Korea. His political ascent, in fact, tracks almost precisely with that ill-fated nation's shift to economic stagnation and then its frightening free-fall into abject mass misery.

The late New York Times columnist Bill Safire was known for channeling the “Great Mentioner,” the unseen oracle who launched political careers into the stratosphere simply by mentioning a person’s name. Today, a more malevolent oracle is at work in Washington — call him the “Great Whisperer” — seeking to...

A more powerful but unfriendly Russia could pose America and the West with plenty of problems. But there is a real chance in the years ahead that we may instead confront a *weaker* Russia: controlled by an ambitious and aggressive directorate surprised by the course events are taking, and not shy about resorting to nuclear diplomacy.