Barack Obama’s presidency has had profoundly negative consequences for our national security. From debilitating cuts in defense budgets, to gutting national missile defense efforts, to his unwillingness to acknowledge a continuing war against terrorism, to his inability to stem the nuclear proliferation threats posed by North Korea and Iran....the picture is bleak.

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.

The European Union-or at least its feisty climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard-seems determined to take on the whole world by demanding that all airlines pay a carbon tribute for the privilege of crossing EU airspace and landing at EU airports.  

Blowing up North Korea's missile would help achieve a durable peace.

Washington is already in mini-crisis mode over North Korea’s planned launch of a “satellite” (actually, an intercontinental ballistic missile)...Now comes word from South Korea that Pyongyang may also be planning another nuclear test.

“What happens next?” is not really the question we should be asking. More important is to ask what the United States wants to happen next, and what it can do to bring about that outcome.

The smallest and oldest Air Force in U.S. history needs to get bigger and newer, quickly. Without an Air Force capable of responding to multiple crises around the world—and almost every major conflict in history has played out on more than one front—the Obama administration’s new strategy is a recipe for decline. 

Kim Jong-il’s death came like the line from Fletch: He’d been dying for years, but when it came it was very sudden. Now the world waits to see what will happen to the most repressive and secretive regime on earth.