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.

Portugal could avoid Greece's horrible fate if it were to draw the right lessons from the Greek experience.

Three considerations make it likely that Greece, Ireland and Portugal will choose to default before the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism in 2013

Emerging-market economieswill foot the bill for Argentina's spectacular triumph over its foreign creditors.

Twenty-first century economists blithely talked of the "risk-free debt" of governments, and European bank regulators set a zero-capital requirement on the debt of their governments. The manifold proof of their error is that banks and other investors are now taking huge credit losses on their Greek government bonds. The only question is why anybody would be surprised by this.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) policy has varied over time and among countries. For example, Latin American growth in the 1980s was stalled for years as countries in debt, bank creditors, and the IMF delayed various debt restructuring plans. After a decade of lost growth opportunities, the Brady Plan was...

History shows us that sovereign governments often default on their loans, particularly in times of war or economic upheaval. Europe finds itself in this situation now and would do well to examine past sovereign debt crises—particularly, the European sovereign debt crisis of the 1920s—for lessons.

While there might be symbolic appeal to the idea of China riding to Europe's rescue, the reality would be less romantic: a relatively poor country would be sending its savings to a collection of wealthy ones.