North korea

 Washington, DC It was a petulant Donald Trump who appeared at a White House press briefing on Tuesday with the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in. When a reporter asked if Trump had confidence in the deputy attorney-general, Rod Rosenstein, given the latest complicated twists in the investigation into collusion with Russia, Trump snapped that Moon didn’t want to hear about it. But it won’t be easy for Trump to dismiss these questions as piffle for long. Even as the old boy tries to pose as a great statesman, tales of his past shenanigans keep mounting. The latest is an exposé in New York magazine that suggests the Republican fund-raiser Elliott

Donald Trump’s critics waste little time in condemning him. Whether it’s an ill-judged gaffe or a spelling mistake in a tweet, pointing the finger at a president some love to hate is a popular exercise in virtue signalling. But those who shout the loudest about Trump’s misdemeanours seem to be curiously quiet when The Donald does actually get things right – not least when it comes to North Korea. After all, it’s no coincidence that today’s historic summit on the Korean peninsula has happened on Trump’s watch. While Barack Obama prevaricated over what to do about North Korea, making little headway in dealing with Pyongyang – and arguably making things worse

Given the mutual bluster, threats and sabre-rattling we got used to from Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, it may be hard to credit the air of sweet reasonableness that has spread over the Korean peninsula in recent weeks leading to the weekend announcement of an end to weapons testing by the North. The potential for a reversion to confrontation is all too evident. Pyongyang has a long record of reneging on agreements and its announcement contained no mention of a reduction in its arsenal that includes missiles which can hit Japan and South Korea even if it stops development of ICBMs aimed at the USA. But, for the moment at

Donald Trump’s acceptance of Kim Jong-un’s invitation to meet is a master stroke. It’s exactly the kind of thing Ronald Reagan liked to do. Reagan, you may recall, announced his pursuit of a missile defense system in March 1983 on national television without alerting his advisers beforehand. Liberals went crazy. Then he decided to end the Cold  War by reaching out to Mikhail Gorbachev. Conservatives went bonkers. Reagan, we were told, had become a useful idiot. Today he is hailed as a visionary by all and sundry. Whether Trump’s move will work depends in part on how eager the North Korean regime is to escape the increasingly draconian sanctions that have

Fake news of the week, I suggest, was the sudden warming of relations on the Korean peninsula following the visit to the Winter Olympics of cute little Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korea’s nuke-waving Kim Jong-un — not only attracting positive coverage for the games but driving a splinter between South Korea and the US and nudging Vice President Mike Pence towards a tentative offer of direct talks with the North. But is the thaw for real? As a long-time student of prospects for Korean unification, I suspect not. The world’s media seem to have forgotten the last such rapprochement, in 2000, when the then northern leader Kim Jong-il (father

Among the many new political maladies of our age, one has been left largely undiagnosed. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome, a condition whereby intense dislike of the 45th president renders sufferers unable to understand what he is trying to do or allow that he is capable of success. Trump is hard to admire, it’s true, and seems to revel in his ability to appal. But therein lies the secret of his power: with a few tweets, he can set the world’s news agenda and drive his critics to distraction. Take this week, when he tweeted that his nuclear arsenal is larger than that of Kim Jong-un. His comments were seized

The first election day since Donald Trump was elected president a year ago brought a funereal mood to Washington that you could feel on the streets. The swamp, apparently, remains undrained. Elections for governor in Virginia and New Jersey and for mayor in New York City cheered the locals a bit, producing the expected victories for Democrats. Virginia was the most consequential of these. It seemed a harbinger of the next presidential race. The moderate, decidedly un-Trumpian Republican Ed Gillespie was accused of making ‘ugly racial appeals’ — this for expressing the opinion that the statues of Virginia’s Civil War heroes should not be razed in a frenzy of revisionism.

In recent months, North Korea have fired missiles over Japan, tested a hydrogen bomb and boasted of expanding their nuclear programme to the extent that they could destroy parts of America. So, with that in mind, Mr S was grateful for the chance to hear the sound figures at Stop the War discuss ethical foreign policy at a fringe event on Monday night. Andrew Murray – Corbyn’s close ally and Unite official – spoke (in a strictly personal capacity) at the event. he used his appearance to blast a leader who ‘could plunge the world into unimaginable catastrophe’. Only he wasn’t talking about Kim Jong-Un. No, he meant Presient Trump – natch: ‘Trump’s

Donald Trump’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly was both an echo of George W. Bush and something original. At times, one expected the president to lapse into a Texas drawl and warn about ‘nuclear weapons’; at others he was distinctly The Donald. Despite the seeming contradiction, it was a fairly cogent and consistent address; it also overflowed with the customary bombast. Trump began firmly in carrot-top mode, gloating about how well the American economy had done since he was inaugurated. Then came an abrupt escalation: ‘Rogue regimes represented in this body not only support terrorists,’ Trump warned, ‘but threaten other nations and their own people with the most