Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
U.S. and North Korean officials made no concrete progress after three days of talks in Malaysia. U.S. officials are hopeful that the next round would take place before the end of the year. However, no date has been set. The near-term goal of the talks is to solidify plans for a visit to Washington by Kim Yong-sun, who would be the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit the U.S. Capitol.
Democratic transformations are never simple, linear processes. If it wants to promote democracy, the international community will have to accept the messy, compromise–driven policymaking process with which the citizens of democratic countries are familiar.
The Russian economy has at long last make a decisive turn upwards. After a decade of decline, gross domestic product increased by 3.2 percent last year, and it is rose by an annualized 8 percent in the last quarter last year and first quarter this year. The numbers are clear enough, but everybody has become so pessimistic about Russia that nobody faces up to the positive facts any longer.
Political developments in Russia already have begun to impede the "development of the of the national economy," which, according to the new foreign policy doctrine, should be the "main priority in the foreign policy of the Russian Federation in international economic relations."
Does the United States still need to deploy thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert? Governor George W. Bush reflected the consensus view of experts across the political spectrum when he announced his plan last week to cut the nuclear arsenal and remove weapons from high alert status.
At the ongoing NPT review conference, Arab states have strongly expressed their resentment over Israel's barely concealed nuclear arsenal, and have signaled their displeasure at the "discriminatory" approach of the United States towards nuclear weapons in the Middle East.