Henry Jackson Society

With the North Korea talks at risk, has Trump maxed out on ‘maximum pressure’?

hen North Korea threatened to call off next month’s summit with the US, because of the insistence it give up its nuclear weapons, the White House appeared to have been caught off guard. “We haven’t been notified at all, we’ll have to see,” was ...

May has a choice: side with our most important ally or with dangerous Iran

To anyone who understands the underlying narrative of his administration, President Trump’s announcement on Tuesday that the US would withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal with Iran was of little surprise. That it was greeted with shock ...

Trump is hoping his good cop, bad cop tactics will force Iran into a new deal

President Trump’s decision to terminate US compliance with the Iranian nuclear agreement has mystified international observers. Why walk away from a deal that is working? Trump routinely chastised Obama administration officials for having given away too much during the original negotiations. ...

Iran may pose a bigger challenge than North Korea

THE world waits with bated breath for the Trump-Kim summit. Yet although North Korea is hitting headlines, Iran may pose the bigger challenge. In the two years since the nuclear deal was agreed, Iran has pursued an increasingly expansionist form ...

Is the darknet a new playground for terrorists?

At first glance, it would seem that accessing the darknet is child’s play. In 2014, a 16-year-old girl radicalised herself in just seven months using content she found on the darknet. This culminated in her attempting to fly to Syria ...

Kim and Moon’s meeting was ‘historic’ – but what will its ramifications be? An expert explains

The photographs seem to say it all: Kim Jong-un greeting a smiling Moon Jae-in at the border of North Korea; the two men gingerly stepping over the border stone into each other’s countries. The sight of North Korean bodyguards running alongside Kim’s ...

The Riddle of North Korea’s Diplomacy

Famously, Donald Rumsfeld once said there are “known knowns, and then there are known unknowns”. With the current North Korea situation, this expression seems apt. There are things that we appear to know, for example the actual planned events, the ...

The New Great Game in the Indo-Pacific

This past March saw a mini-crisis develop in the Indian Ocean and it all revolved around the tiny island nation of Maldives. The crisis began in earnest after Maldivian President Yameen Abdul Gayoom declared a state of emergency after rejecting a Supreme ...

Can Donald Trump do a deal with Kim Jong-un without selling out a key regional ally?

The outlines of a Trump Doctrine are beginning to emerge. It is mercurial, flexible, and tactically volatile, but to paraphrase Polonius there is method to the madness. The question is: can Trump give Kim Jong-un what he needs to make the ...

Against all odds, is Trump about to solve the North Korea nuclear crisis?

The arrival in Beijing of a long, armoured North Korean train was as mysterious as it was sudden. Who could it be? Kim Jong-un hadn’t publicly left his country since he became leader in 2011, fearful perhaps of a military ...