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North Korea
As the crisis with North Korea has intensified, the focus almost exclusively has been on that country’s ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Recently, the regime in Pyongyang successfully tested a space launch vehicle, demonstrating progress on the path towards building an intercontinental ballistic
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Date:
4/8/2013
Recent North Korean threats to launch nuclear attacks against the United States will undoubtedly renew interest in U.S. missile-defense efforts. Washington has spent about $170 billion on such defenses since Ronald Reagan enunciated the need for a "strategic defense initiative" 30 years ago. Today,
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Date:
4/5/2013
It takes a crisis to concentrate the mind. Faced with unusually bellicose rhetoric from the regime in Pyongyang, the Obama Administration reversed course on National Missile Defense (NMD) and is rapidly bolstering its theater air and missile defenses in the region. The Department of Defense will
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Date:
4/5/2013
The new millennium isn't working out the way Republicans had hoped, in large part because of two wars that have distracted the political system from domestic concerns. So you'd think the GOP would be eager to avoid new conflicts. Well guess again. House Republicans are sending all the wrong messages
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Date:
4/2/2013
China and North Korea’s seemingly unwavering friendship goes back many years. In the Korean War it is estimated that China lost 110,000 soldiers on the battlefield and another 35,000 died from wounds and disease. The friendship did not stop there. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, China has
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Date:
3/22/2013
April was an unusually active month for foreign missile tests, with India, Pakistan and North Korea all launching their latest, longest-range ballistic missiles. The Indian and Pakistani missiles worked fine, the North Korean one did not. North Korea has now failed three times in a row to demonstrate
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Date:
5/1/2012
In his now infamous "open mike" moment with outgoing Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, President Obama expressed the not too surprising idea that he would have greater negotiating flexibility after the November elections. It is assumed that the President was addressing the subject of missile defenses,
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Date:
4/10/2012
The death of Kim Jong Il has triggered the beginning of what may be a protracted filial succession crisis in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Were it not for that country’s possession of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles the death of one petty dictator and the prospective
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Date:
12/20/2011
This weekend two very different men died. This in itself is not an uncommon occurrence although it is ironic that these two should both pass away on the same day. Both had been leaders, albeit of rather small nations. Both exerted influence in the world far greater than the size or power of their
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Date:
12/19/2011
The latest round of State Department cables released by Wikileaks have hardly been surprising to anyone who follows foreign affairs. North Korea is a crazy state that everyone in the region wishes would collapse. Iran is the problem that dominates the security concerns of all its neighbors. State Department
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Date:
11/30/2010
What everyone feared was the case has now been proven to be fact. North Korea deliberately sank a South Korean patrol boat, killing 46 sailors and risking a war between these two countries (and by extension the United States). This is not simply North Korea, as usual, behaving badly. It is the predictable
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Date:
5/19/2010