By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com WASHINGTON — The eyes of the world are upon the new U.S. war in Syria and Iraq, and that’s not just because people want to know how or whether aerial bombardments and missile strikes are really knocking out the bad guys. One question is whether such high-tech attacks from the air […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Miles Yu, Geostrategy-Direct.com The tiny state of Israel with a population of 8 million crammed into an area smaller than New Jersey, is the world’s 6th largest arms exporter, with some of its weapons reigning at the top of the most coveted items in the global arms trade market. The reason is simple: […]
By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com History is full of such twists, turn and reversals. What are we to think of an American four-star general, medals and ribbons dripping from his chest, showing up in Hanoi talking up the idea of the U.S. shipping arms to the regime that dealt the U.S. the worst humiliation in U.S. […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com China’s highest-ranked diplomat Yang Jiechi made a surprising trip to Hanoi even as the two countries are embroiled in arguably the worst confrontation since the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979. The tension was triggered in early May when Beijing moved an oil rig into waters within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone. China […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com Remember the great “surge” of U.S.forces in Iraq that Gen. David Petraeus believed would finish off the bad guys before the U.S. scaled down and then withdrew its forces? It was as though the U.S. wanted to declare a victory and go home. Anyone would have known that […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Geostrategy-Direct.com A ramming incident between a Chinese and a Vietnamese maritime vessel on June 1 highlighted the escalation of violence in the South China Sea between the two communist countries over disputed waters. The Chinese state media gloated about the Chinese vessel’s “heroic” move and reported that the Vietnamese vessel was […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Yes, the widening attacks on the press, and arrests and intimidation of journalists were disturbing and among the barriers to the free flow of information worldwide in 2013. But beyond the usual lists of suspects blocking and censoring news and the Internet, there’s a definite and deadly spike in […]
Jeffrey T. Kuhner President Obama has insulted the memory of the nearly 60,000 Americans who died in Vietnam. Last week, Mr. Obama met with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang. Mr. Sang peddled the lie that the communist nation’s founder, Ho Chi Minh, was inspired by the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Obama agreed, […]
Sol W. Sanders For those of us who lived through it, current negotiations for the American exit from Afghanistan smells much too much like the end of the U.S. commitment in Vietnam. Washington, after a decade of enormous sacrifice of life and treasure, has chosen to negotiate with the enemy following diplomatic “modalities” pretty […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The spectacle of the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh did more to lay bare the problems, conflicts and paradoxes of relations among the region’s wildly different and widely scattered nations than to resolve them. The fact that at least three of the leaders at this year’s ASEAN summit […]