The White House has confirmed that U.S. President Donald Trump is set to make his third large presidential foreign trip. This time, he will travel to Asia for the usual round of November summits, in addition to more than a few tense bilateral meetings with allied leaders who have grown increasingly concerned about U.S. policy towards the Korean peninsula.
The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has officially commissioned its first fifth-generation fighter aircraft into service, Wu Qian, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of National Defense said during a press conference on September 28.
The Washington Post broke an important story on Saturday: U.S. Cyber Command has been engaged in offensive cyber operations against North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), the country’s military espionage arm. The action was authorized by U.S. President Donald Trump shortly after North Korea’s first ballistic missile launches of the year in February and March, following the conclusion of the administration’s policy review on North Korea. The Post‘s account outlines the scope of the operation:
What a difference a year makes. In late summer 2016, there was some hope the July 2016 UN Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling in favor of the Philippine interpretation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea regarding the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal would curtail Beijing’s subsequent activity in the South China Sea (despite China’s refusal to even participate in the arbitration case or recognize the court’s jurisdiction, let alone accept the ruling). In fact, some optimists, like Lynn Kuok from the National University of Singapore, have pointed to small developments—such as China this year permitting Filipino and Vietnamese fishing around Scarborough Shoal for the first time since 2012—as encouraging signs that the Hague’s ruling is having a positive effect. But most observers see it much differently, and developments this past summer seem to support a much more pessimistic forecast./cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56884005/848823254.0.jpg)
The Cold War was marked by hysteria over the potential for nuclear conflict. School kids practiced getting under their desks and families built bomb shelters in case the missiles fell. Although there were moments of acute danger, most notably the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world seemed to enter a new age when the Soviet Union collapsed. Small wars continued, but the famed nuclear doomsday clock finally moved backwards.
For several years, Russia has been warning—consistently and clearly—that it tends to stop using Ukraine as a transit country for sending its energy to Western markets. If this happens, a major hole will open in the Ukrainian economy which Europe and the United States do not appear to be prepared to fill.
On October 2, the United States and the Philippines officially began the launch of a newly named bilateral exercise. The holding of the fresh drills speaks to the steps both sides are continuing to take to adapt to the changing context of the treaty alliance under the reign of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.