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The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a watershed moment not of a European, but also of a global aspect. Far greater in importance than the 9/11 attacks. Books will be written, and history will use it as a marker for the onset of a new (who knows if it will be cold) war.  Coincidently, in one of my IR classes yesterday we were talking about the Berlin blockade and the onset of the previous, thankfully Cold war. So my students tried to use some system theories to explain the conflict and to draw parallels with the current situation. But, they were running into a problem. Taken over time, realism seemed to explain well the Cold war conflict, but was falling short to provide a satisfactory explanation for the behavior of the US since its end, while liberalism with its emphasis on cooperation, interdependence, etc. was failing to account for Russia's and Ukraine's behavior in the immediate runup to the Russian aggression.  Then, it dawned on me, that the two main great powers in this...

“The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl” – wrote former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the nuclear disaster – “even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the main cause of the Soviet Union’s collapse five years later.” He went on to write that “the Chernobyl catastrophe was a historic turning point: there was the era before the disaster, and there is the very different era that has followed.”While the outcome from the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic is still unclear for both China and the rest of the world, there is no doubt that already the magnitude of the impact from the virus represents a Chernobyl-like historic turning point for the Chinese leadership and its ability to command political legitimacy. Undoubtedly, in the 21st-century history of Chinese authoritarianism, there will be an “era before the disaster” and a “very different era that has followed.” But how far can we go with the Chernobyl historical analogy?

--> Nuclear weapons are primarily defensive in nature and represent the ultimate insurance against foreign invasion. This must be the backdrop for the future of Trump-Kim meeting for which the expectations seem to have been hastily heightened and not the much-exaggerated “historic” meeting between the leaders of the two Koreas. No less “historic” meetings were already held twice before––in 2000 and 2007––and the 1992 Joint Declaration for the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula literally stated that “The South and the North shall not test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.” We are at the very beginning, not at the end, of a long road that may lead to nuclear-free peace with North Korea, but quite realistically may not. Even worse, with the exaggerated expectations now, the Trump Administration has actually increased the risk of a large-scale conflict.

Why Shinzo Abe Visited Serbia The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe greeted by the Serbian President, Alexander Vucic on January 16, 2018 On January 17, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wrapped up a five-day trip to northern and southeastern Europe. After visiting Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, he went to Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania. His trip to the Baltic and the Balkan regions fits within Tokyo’s decades-long attempts to establish itself as a global economic and political leader, and to increase its sphere of influence via the use of soft power and the employment of its financial prowess as a diplomatic lever. On his Balkan leg of the trip, a few points require attention. The least important one, but also perhaps the most entertaining, was Abe’s visit to Romania, which would have been a boring diplomatic success for both sides complete with even more boring press communiques — had the Romanian prime minister, Mihai Tudose, not resi...

2016 was the year of the most missile tests conducted ever by North Korea, a total of 24. Since the beginning of 2017, the regime in Pyongyang had ratcheted up the tests, currently at 17, with the promise to reach a new all-time high, and surpass the last year’s record. The last test, conducted symbolically on the 4th of July, marked a new milestone by introducing an intercontinental capability to the Pyongyang’s ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with a range that could reach Alaska and potentially Seattle. It is now believed that North Korea will soon be able to develop and mount miniaturized nuclear warheads to its ICBMs and become an even greater threat to its neighbors, and the United States. The urgency of the current developments, fast outpacing the expected timetable for acquiring such capabilities, has raised the stakes at Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow, and Beijing, prompting for fast new policies targeting the military belligerence of the rogue state. What are the main pol...

A year ago, on the eve of the Brexit vote, many went to bed confident that the referendum was one big showoff event for those who held a deep-rooted, but utterly misplaced, contempt for the political, social, and economic consequences for the UK’s membership in the EU. They expected that at the end of the day sanity would prevail. Their complacency did them in! Then in November, many went to bed in the US, believing that what happened in the UK half a year before was a unique event, Donald Trump's candidacy for the presidency was a joke, and he had virtually no chance of prevailing. Complacent again.  If voters - and more importantly, those among them complacent enough to believe that democracy would take care of itself without a robust get-out-the-vote effort - knew then what they know now, they certainly would have gone to the polls. But they didn’t. Instead, they bet on pollsters’ predictions. Their forecasts could not have been more wrong. In the Brexit refere...

Why Trump's Refusal to Commit Unconditionally to Article 5 is Such a Blow to the Alliance In international politics, talk is cheap, deception is a virtue, naiveté and missed opportunities cost dearly. These are among the lessons I learned years ago from my professor of IR, John Mearsheimer of University of Chicago. Certainly, Hobbes or Machiavelli would agree with such statements. But, unlike in the anarchic balance of power world, the micro-cosmos of collective security systems and is built on unconditional common commitments and mutual trust. Security alliances’ deterrent power rests, among other things, on the Musketeerian doctrine of “all for one and one for all,” as well as on the mutual resolve to apply it. NATO’s Article 5 plays that precise role and it has been the cornerstone of the alliance’s deterrence power for near seven decades. That is why Donald Trump’s speech on May 25th in Brussels to the heads of the member-states of the alliance, and his failure explic...

If Japan wanted to develop nuclear weapons, there would be no better moment than now to start. As the North Korean regime grows desperate to get a more generous ransom against its nuclear program, its threats to Tokyo grew multifold. Last week Shinzo Abe, the Japanese Prime Minister, warned that North Korea is preparing to launch missiles with sarin against Tokyo. The U.S. President, Donald Trump, further added to the turmoil by declaring last week that an “armada” of American military vessels is heading to the Korean peninsula, only to be contradicted by his own military, which broke the news that days later the “armada” was sailing nearby Singapore, over 3,000 miles away from the Korean peninsula, and reportedly has been travelling in the opposite direction. So much for the credibility of the American “extended deterrence”, which should guarantee the security umbrella over Japan, a policy in force since 1975. Now, both South Korea and Japan feel cheated and let down, while the U...

A Japanese diplomat once replied to an American counterpart asking him about the principles of the Japanese foreign policy by pointing, “Your country may be based on principles, ours is based on archipelago”. Geographic boundaries are rarely elastic, even when socially constructed. Cultural boundaries may seem more elastic, but like the physical ones, they too are rarely prone to fundamental changes. More importantly, the latter often determine the perception of the former. In “The Revenge of Geography” Robert Kaplan argued in a powerful way that ignoring geography may be a fatal mistake that could prevent us from understanding the nature of many political conflicts. What he ostensibly omitted from his paradigm is the difference between physical and human geography. A cursory look would show that when the two overlap, greater stability ensues. But when they don’t, a search of identity could take many paths, not all of them leading to stability. Turkey is a case in focu...

It is rather puzzling why the supporters of populist political actors seem not to care at all about obvious and undisputed facts (or their lack thereof) that concern their candidates, while mainstream supporters tend to withdraw their support at the slightest hint of an allegation of misconduct? Consider the following examples, although others abound: the U.S. president, Donald Trump, publicly accuses his predecessor in wiretapping his Trump Tower. The allegations are consequently officially disproved and rejected by the FBI director James Comey, and by both Republican and Democrat leaders in the House and Senate. Yet, Trump supporters continue to believe it is all a cover-up by “fake” media and “corrupt” establishment. No loss of credibility or love, it seems, for Trump by his supporters. Sticking to his claim might have even helped him consolidate further his base. During the same congressional hearing, the FBI director reveals that the Trump campaign ties with Russia are ...

“I couldn't wait to get to the most powerful position because I thought then I would be able to fix problems that only a leader can fix. But when I got there, I realized we needed a revolutionary change.” These are not the words of the just-inaugurated President Trump, even though they could easily be mistaken for his. These words belong to another president, long fallen into oblivion: the last Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its first and last president – Michail Gorbachev. Unlike Trump, Gorbachev presided over a true “empire of evil”, driven by ideological fanaticism, economic determinism, and political oppression – in a way, a complete opposite of the U.S.: USSR was a communist dictatorship, U.S. is a capitalist liberal democracy; Gorbachev was a career apparatchik and a sincere believer in the virtues of communism, Trump is a businessmen with no prior political experience, whose belief in capitalism is perhaps the only certain character...

The mid-December two-day visit of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to Japan raised high expectations among many about the prospect of signing a peace treaty that is now 60 years overdue. Among other things, there was also high anticipation for the return of at least two of the four islands that Japan calls Northern Territories, and Russia calls the Kuril Islands, which Japanese consider “stolen” by Stalin at the very end of the WWII. The Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, went out of his way to make this visit “special” for his Russian guest, by arranging the first day to be spent in his hometown, Nagato, in the southern prefecture Yamaguchi of the main island Honshu – place, famous for its exquisite sake, hot springs and delicious food. The carefully planned schedule, with a pronounced demonstration of a personal hospitality touch by prime minister Abe, listed “relaxing” time in famous hot springs, and a feast with exotic traditional local food, including exquisite d...

Why Japan’s Shinzo Abe Should Rejoice Over Trump’s Election Win COMMENTARY  by    Liubomir K. Topaloff @LuboTop   DECEMBER 5, 2016, 6:30 PM EST E-mail   Tweet   Facebook   Linkedin Share icons Japan just needs to play its cards well.  Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became the first head of government to visit the U.S. president-elect in his New York tower. It was a chance to establish a personal rapport, and to gauge more precisely where Donald Trump stands vis-a-vis Japan, China, North Korea, and issues surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In the months leading to the November election, Trump raised alarm in Japan by alluding that the country should arm itself with  nuclear weapons  in order to better protect itself against an unpredictable North Korea, and the regional  bulling  of a  rising  China. It may be premature to make any conclusions about the...

In one of the most memorable scenes in Black Mass, Johny Depp portraying the notorious South Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, demonstrates the extent of his personal and unpredictable power and control when in the middle of the dinner, he playfully and innocently asks his associate John Morris for the recipe of the steak he was just served. He then makes Morris and the rest of the company squirm in front of him in fear, until relaxing again and laughing out the tense atmosphere, but not without hinting that this might or might not be the last dramatic switch off his take on the situation. No one knows what he thinks, no one can predict what would be his next act. The fear that comes from the unpredictable behavior enhances his personal power. Not surprisingly, unpredictability is a frequent trait for characters in many fiction works, portraying how a leader establishes control in a zero-gravity environment. In an unstructured, anarchic environment, unpredictability ...

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How a Second Brexit Referendum Would Kill the EU COMMENTARY  by    Liubomir K. Topaloff   JULY 3, 2016, 7:00 AM EDT E-mail   Tweet   Facebook   Linkedin Share icons EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (L) and EU Council President Donald Tusk (R) talk prior to give a press conference during a EU Summit meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on June 29, 2016.  Photograph by John Thys — AFP via Getty Images Even if the “leave” campaign won with just one vote, the results should still stand. Liubomir K. Topaloff is an associate professor of political science at the School of Political Science and Economics at Meiji University. The Brexit referendum results provoked an unprecedented upheaval. Within hours last Friday, a  petition  to the British Parliament called for a second referendum, and in just a week, over 4 million people have signed it, raising the hopes that not all is lost for the “r...