Japan military on alert for possible North Korean ballistic missile launch

By Nobuhiro Kubo

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the ballistic rocket launch drill of the Strategic Force of the Korean People's Army (KPA) at an unknown location.

Japan's military was on alert for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch, a government source said on Tuesday, with media reporting its navy and anti-missile Patriot batteries have been told to shoot down any projectile heading for Japan.

North Korea appeared to have moved an intermediate-range missile to its east coast, but there were no signs of an imminent launch, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported, citing an unnamed government source.

A South Korean defense ministry official said it could not confirm the Yonhap report and said the military was watching the North's missile activities closely.

Tension in the region has been high since isolated North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and test launches of various missiles.

Japan has put its anti-ballistic missile forces on alert several times this year after detecting signs of missile launches.

The Japanese government source said there were again signs North Korea might be preparing a launch of the intermediate-range Musudan missile, the same missile it attempted to launch in May, prompting the order for the military to go on alert.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry said if the North goes ahead with a launch it would again be in violation of U.N. resolutions and defying repeated warnings by the international community.

"It will further isolate the North from the international community," ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck told a briefing.

The United Nations Security Council in March imposed tightened sanctions against North Korea over its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

North Korea has failed in all four attempts to launch the Musudan, which theoretically has the range to reach any part of Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam.

North Korea tried unsuccessfully to test launch the Musudan three times in April, according to U.S. and South Korean officials, while a May attempt failed a day after Japan put its military on alert.

North Korea is believed to have up to 30 Musudan missiles, according to South Korean media, which officials said were first deployed in around 2007, although the North had never attempted to test-fire them until this year.

From:
Nobuhiro, Kubo. "Japan military on alert for possible North Korean ballistic missile launch." Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 21 June 2016. Web. 21 June 2016.

Response

"It will further isolate the North from the international community.”

I didn’t think that was possible. With Korea’s nuclear tests drawing the ire of the near entirety of the Western world, its atrocious human rights records alienating even its once-close Communist allies, one has to wonder at what point exactly North Korea is rendered “isolated” from its fellow states. At what point it will no longer be able to act with impunity, at what point the world will be able to establish some sort of leverage Kim Jong Un could possibly care about.

This could be the fifth North Korean nuclear test. Just a few years ago, such a prospect was outrageous—one questioned whether North Korea would ever even go nuclear. And what we’ve seen is the redrawing of a line that was meant to be uncrossable.

China Tries to Redistribute Education to the Poor, Igniting Class Conflict

By Javier C. Hernandez

Students in Mianyang, China, did review work in May as they prepared for the national college entrance exam, known as the gaokao. The exam gives the admissions system a meritocratic sheen, but critics say it reinforces the divide between urban and rural students. 

BEIJING — Cheng Nan has spent years trying to ensure that her 16-year-old daughter gets into a college near their home in Nanjing, an affluent city in eastern China. She wakes her at 5:30 a.m. to study math and Chinese poetry and packs her schedule so tightly that she has only 20 days of summer vacation.

So when officials announced a plan to admit more students from impoverished regions and fewer from Nanjing to local universities, Ms. Cheng was furious. She joined more than 1,000 parents to protest outside government offices, chanting slogans like “Fairness in education!” and demanding a meeting with the provincial governor.

“Why should they eat from our bowls?” Ms. Cheng, 46, an art editor at a newspaper, said in an interview. “We are just as hard-working as other families.”

Parents in at least two dozen Chinese cities have taken to the streets in recent weeks to denounce a government effort to expand access to higher education for students from less developed regions. The unusually fierce backlash is testing the Communist Party’s ability to manage class conflict, as well as the political acumen of its leader, Xi Jinping.

The nation’s cutthroat university admissions process has long been a source of anxiety and acrimony. But the breadth and intensity of the demonstrations, many of them organized on social media, appear to have taken the authorities by surprise.

At issue is China’s state-run system of higher education, in which top schools are concentrated in big prosperous cities, mostly on the coast, and weaker, underfunded schools dominate the nation’s interior.

Placement is determined almost exclusively by a single national exam, the gaokao, which was administered across China starting on Tuesday. The test is considered so important to one’s fate that many parents begin preparing their children for it before kindergarten. The government has threatened to imprison cheaters for up to seven years.

The exam gives the admissions system a meritocratic sheen, but the government also reserves most spaces in universities for students in the same city or province, in effect making it harder for applicants from the hinterlands to get into the nation’s best schools.

The authorities have sought to address the problem in recent years by admitting more students from underrepresented regions to the top colleges. Some provinces also award extra points on the test to students representing ethnic minorities.

This spring, the Ministry of Education announced that it would set aside a record 140,000 spaces — about 6.5 percent of spots in the top schools — for students from less developed provinces. But the ministry said it would force the schools to admit fewer local students to make room.

Against the backdrop of slowing economic growth, the plan set off a flurry of protests and counterprotests.

In Wuhan, a major city in central China known for its good universities, parents surrounded government offices to demand more spots for local students. In Harbin, a northeastern city, parents marched through the streets, calling the new admissions mandate unjust.

But in Luoyang, a city in Henan Province, one of China’s poorest and most populous, protesters countered that children should be treated with “equal love.” And in Baoding, a few hours’ drive southwest of Beijing, parents accused the government of coddling the urban elite at the expense of rural students.

“When they need water, land and crops, they come and take it,” said Lu Jian, 42, an electrician who participated in the protests in Baoding. “But they won’t let our kids study in Beijing.”

The government has responded cautiously, censoring news reports of the outcry and ordering the police to contain the demonstrations.

Analysts said the protests posed a delicate challenge for President Xi, whose signature slogan, the “China dream,” is a vaguely defined call for national rejuvenation that many associate with a promise of educational opportunity.

“The traditional Chinese dream is the hope of advancement for children through a relatively open, meritocratic and egalitarian system,” said Carl F. Minzner, a professor of law at Fordham University and an expert on Chinese government. “Popular outrage is triggered when there’s a perception that this is being challenged.”

Mr. Xi has argued that high levels of inequality in China could shake the party’s hold on power, and his government has sought to ease frustration in poorer areas by investing in education, health care and social services. But party leaders are also wary of alienating a growing and increasingly outspoken urban middle class.

“The question is how far are they willing to go in reallocating the privileges enjoyed by established urbanites, many of them state employees,” Professor Minzner said.

Over the past two decades, the government has opened hundreds of new institutions of higher education, and university enrollment surged to 26.2 million in 2015 from 3.4 million in 1998, though much of the growth has been in three-year polytechnic programs.

At the same time, job prospects for college graduates in China have dimmed in recent years. That has left parents worried about wasting their life savings on substandard schools and even more desperate to get their children into the better ones.

Dissatisfaction with the gaokao (pronounced GOW-kow) is also rising. The test, modeled after China’s old imperial civil service exam, was intended to enhance social mobility and open up the universities to anyone who scored high enough. But critics say the system now has the opposite effect, reinforcing the divide between urban and rural students.

The top universities in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing are the most likely to lead to jobs and the hardest to get into. Students from less developed regions are vastly underrepresented at these colleges. That is because they attended schools with less money for good teachers or modern technology and because the admissions preference for local applicants means they often need higher scores on the gaokao than urban students.

“It is a system that benefits the privileged at the expense of the disadvantaged,” Sida Liu, a sociologist at the University of Toronto, wrote in an email. “Without the improvement of schools in these regions, I would not expect any major change in educational inequality in China.”

The government’s plan to address inequality by taking university spots away from local students, though, tapped into frustration among parents in China’s most modern cities who are unhappy with a shortage of high-quality schools.

Xiong Bingqi, vice president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, described the backlash as “an outburst of a long-repressed grudge,” adding that a drastic overhaul of the system should be considered.

A set of national universities could rely on the gaokao to admit students from across the country, he suggested, while provincial colleges could focus on recruiting local students so they would look more like public universities in the United States.

But any change is likely to draw criticism, given limited resources and ethnic and regional prejudices. A common complaint, for example, is that students from Xinjiang, the far western region that is home to China’s Muslim ethnic Uighur population, receive a subpar education and should not get extra exam points.

A group of parents in Beijing has filed a complaint with the education ministry contending that minority students at an elite high school who had been recruited from across China should not be treated as residents of the city, and that, instead, spaces should be freed up in Beijing’s universities for other local children.

In poorer provinces like Henan, public anger is often directed at local governments for underinvesting in education and therefore dooming children in a society with a wide gap between rich and poor.

“When students from Beijing get into top universities and our students fail to do so, some become migrant workers,” said an open letter circulated by parents in Henan last month. “Who is to blame?”

From:

Hernandez, Javier C. "China Tries to Redistribute Education to the Poor, Igniting Class Conflict." NYTimes. New York Times, 13 June 2016. Web. 13 June 2016.

Response

Ah, what is more assuring than hearing the words "class conflict" associated with China? Indeed, Xi Jinping's latest efforts to what amounts effectively to affirmative action for low-income families is drawing a backlash that is threatening to expose severe class tensions that have festered since China's extremely meteoric, extremely asymmetric, economic growth.

One has to wonder what exactly is on the General Secretary's agenda for his "Chinese Dream." In fact, I can't even decide whether affirmative action is Communist or not. Certainly it bestows an "unearned" advantage upon certain people groups, but isn't that what happens in practice anyways? Furthermore, since the government largely controls the distribution of resources, why not education?

The gaokao, like the American SAT and the French baccalauréat, has garnered considerable controversy over the years. Akin to the baccalauréat, what was originally designed to promote a meritorious system of social mobility is now widely perceived as fulfilling a completely countercurrent role as the discrepancies in education quality across China become more and more pronounced. Let's also not forget that standardized test scores, especially with the SAT, and family incomes have one of the strongest correlations--well, ever.

The point I want to make is this: affirmative action, whether in the US or China, serves its function when those who benefit from it are encouraged to return to their low-income, low educational quality communities as professionals. Too often, they simply join the elitist institutions they initially sought to fight. It's not just about creating opportunities for some people. It's about using those opportunities as an investment to drive these communities up out of poverty and all the other plagues that accompany it.

That, of course, is my bias. Affirmative action is broken in the current state it is in, and China should be careful not to make America's mistake. The writer of this article did a good job getting viewpoints from both sides of the issue, but it seems that he leans towards reforming the Chinese educational system. He points out a number of glaring flaws, and subtly hints that this may be an improvement--let's not forget that the Times does have a liberal bent.

South Korea courts isolated North's old friends in push for change

By Jack Kim

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se (2nd R) exchanges documents with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov (L) during a memorandum of understanding signing ceremony in the presence of South Korean President Park Geun-hye (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin

South Korea's foreign minister will visit Moscow next week after touring Cuba, Uganda and Iran as part of a push to enlist North Korea's old allies to press for change in the isolated state, Seoul said on Tuesday. 

North Korea has come under growing diplomatic pressure since its January nuclear test and a space rocket launch in February, which led to a new U.N. Security Council resolution in March tightening sanctions against Pyongyang.

"The minister's visit to Russia following Iran, Uganda and Cuba is part of diplomatic efforts to enlist the international community to the effort to bring about change in North Korea on all fronts," South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck told a briefing.

South Korea said last week that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has pledged to halt security and military cooperation with North Korea, following a summit in Kampala with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se visited Cuba, a first for the country's top diplomat, and held talks with his counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez, at the weekend. South Korean media said Yun conveyed Seoul's hope for establishing diplomatic ties with Havana.

In May, Park made the first visit to Iran by a South Korean leader in the hope of broadening political and commercial ties after Iran emerged from years of economic sanctions in January. 

Cho also said Poland had stopped issuing visas for North Korean workers amid concern that Pyongyang may be subjecting them to conditions that violated their human rights. 

An official at the Polish embassy in Seoul said Poland had not issued any work visas for North Korean citizens this year, in reaction to the North's nuclear test and rocket launch at the beginning of the year. 

North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

North Korea has 53 embassies and overseas missions, according to South Korean government data, some of which have been notorious for engaging in business, including illicit activities.

Much of North Korea's support at the United Nations is from fellow members of the Cold War-era Non-Aligned Movement. It has enjoyed consistent backing in U.N. General Assembly votes on human rights from a core group including Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Beijing at the end of high-level talks between the United States and China, said on Tuesday the two countries were determined to fully enforce sanctions against North Korea.

From:

Kim, Jack. "South Korea courts isolated North's old friends in push for change." Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 7 June 2016. Web. 7 June 2016.

Response

A few months ago, President Park Geun-hye raised eyebrows when she appeared behind Xi Jinping during a celebration in China, standing in the place usually occupied by the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. Some hailed the move as a shrewd maneuver to undermine support for North Korea amongst its international allies.

Surely, President Park Geun-hye's government is pursuing a more aggressive diplomatic policy that did its predecessor, seeking to emerge from under Western wings and establish itself as its own force in southeast Asian relations.

Certainly, South Korea is in many ways a more favourable ally than North Korea, and especially for China, it would be within its national interest to build stronger ties with major powers in the area. It is yet to be seen whether these new efforts will serve to alienate the United States and the South's traditional allies, but history indicates that this is unlikely. In any case, South Korea has followed the Obama administration's lead in establishing contact with nations like Cuba and Iran.

Pentagon report reveals confusion among U.S. troops over Afghan mission

By Josh Smith

Afghan National Army soldiers fire artillery during a battle with Taliban insurgents in Kunduz, Afghanistan, April 29, 2015.

Amid fierce fighting after the Taliban captured the northern Afghan city of Kunduz last year, U.S. special forces advisers repeatedly asked their commanders how far they were allowed to go to help local troops retake the city.

They got no answer, according to witnesses interviewed in a recently declassified, heavily redacted Pentagon report that lays bare the confusion over rules of engagement governing the mission in Afghanistan.

As the Taliban insurgency gathers strength, avoiding enemy fire has become increasingly difficult for advisers, who have been acting as consultants rather than combatants since NATO forces formally ceased fighting at the end of 2014.

In the heat of the battle, lines can be blurred, and the problem is not exclusive to Afghanistan: questions have arisen over the role of U.S. troops in Iraq after a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed by Islamic State this month.

"'How far do you want to go?' is not a proper response to 'How far do you want us to go?'" one special forces member told investigators in a report into the U.S. air strikes on a hospital in Kunduz that killed 42 medical staff, patients and caretakers.

That incident was the biggest single tragedy of the brief capitulation of Kunduz to Taliban militants, and there is no suggestion that the mistake was the result of a lack of clarity over the rules of engagement.

But the 700-page report, much of it blacked out for security reasons, sheds light on how the rules are not fully understood, even by some troops on the ground, compromising the mission to stabilize the nation and defeat a worsening Islamist insurgency.

The issues exposed in the report are likely to be considered by the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, as he prepares to makes recommendations in the coming weeks that may clarify or expand the level of combat support the U.S.-led training mission can provide.

"It's not a strategy and, in fact, it's a recipe for disaster in that kind of kinetic environment," said the soldier, who, like others in the report, was not identified.

He added that his unit, whose role was to advise and assist Afghan forces without engaging in combat, asked three times for commanders to clarify the rules governing their mission.

"Sadly, the only sounds audible were the sounds of crickets ... though those were hard to hear over the gunfire."

U.S. MISSION UNDER REVIEW

While acknowledging a lingering "lack of understanding in the West" about the U.S. and NATO role in Afghanistan, U.S. military spokesman Brigadier General Charles Cleveland denied there was confusion among troops over the broader mission.

More than 9,000 U.S. soldiers were "retrained" on the rules of engagement following missteps in Kunduz, in an effort to reduce future misunderstandings, he said.

Critics say the confusion comes from political expediency, because U.S. leaders are keen to portray the Afghan operation as designed mainly to help local forces fight for themselves.

"The rules of engagement are trapped in the jaws of political confusion about the mission," a senior Western official told Reuters.

"Nobody in Western capitals seems willing to admit that Afghanistan is a worsening war zone and ... that their troops are still battling out a combat mission on a daily basis," added the official, who declined to be named.

Until the end of 2014, when their combat role officially ended, NATO forces in Afghanistan peaked at more than 130,000 troops, most of them American. NATO's presence today is a fraction of the size.

DIFFERENT OPERATIONS CAN MERGE

Around 10,000 U.S. troops are divided between the NATO train-and-assist mission called Resolute Support and a U.S.-only counter-terrorism operation against militant groups that include al Qaeda and Islamic State but not the Taliban.

Under publicly declared rules of engagement, U.S. advisers in Resolute Support generally cannot attack Taliban targets except in self defense.

As government forces have struggled, however, the definition of "self defense" has appeared less sharply defined, with some U.S. air strikes conducted to defend partnered Afghan units.

The Kunduz report indicates at least some U.S. troops have been sent into battle with questions unanswered.

The Green Beret complained that failure to provide clear guidance represented "moral cowardice", and that political leaders intentionally keep the mission vague.

That allows them to "reap the rewards of success without facing the responsibility of failure," he added.

Soldiers pleaded for "clearer guidance" and more clarification of overly complicated rules, according to investigators.

The Pentagon has not fully publicized rules governing the use of force by U.S. troops, who may be called upon to act under either type of mission, sometimes in the same battle.

In the four days leading up to the hospital attack, U.S. special forces called in nine close air support strikes under the authority of counter-terrorism, and 13 under Resolute Support, according to the report.

As part of self-defense, coalition troops have "some latitude" in calling air strikes on militant targets that may not be directly attacking them, but could soon pose a threat, Cleveland said.

Last year the Pentagon announced that Afghan forces could be helped under extreme conditions.

Additionally, under a "Person with Designated Special Status" classification, Afghan units operating closely with international advisers can be protected by air strikes as if they were coalition forces, according to Cleveland.

WHO IS THE ENEMY?

Further complicating matters are counter-terrorism rules that allow strikes against al Qaeda, as well as militants linked to Islamic State which did not exist when the U.S. military intervened in Afghanistan in 2001, but not the Taliban.

In recent weeks U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have reported that al Qaeda and the Taliban are working more closely together, signaling that the dominant Taliban group could once again be attacked by more air strikes.

Calling the authorities in Afghanistan "exceptionally complex," previous training had failed to prevent confusion, the Kunduz report found.

Prior to deploying to Afghanistan, commanders made clear that "combat operations was mostly a thing of the past," another special forces soldier said in the report.

On the ground, however, things were more complicated.

The second officer said he went into the Kunduz operation unsure of which authorities his unit would be operating under.

The lack of explicit instructions led the officer to choose his "default" of Resolute Support authorities, which he described as "just the safe bet."

From:

Smith, Josh. "Pentagon report reveals confusion among U.S. troops over Afghan mission." Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 9 May 2016. Web. 9 May 2016.

Response

Washington loves the term "specialist." Vague, broad, yet with a reassuring PR-friendly stem, it's the perfect word to describe the murky, fluid roles U.S. soldiers are fulfilling on the ground. If anything, the Pentagon report only confirms widespread doubts and suspicions that abounded following the 2015 pullout--in what capacity would American troops be serving in Afghanistan?

The pullout, of course, came too early, as Washington knew. The Afghan government was ill-equipped to combat the established Taliban, and the Obama administration had caved in to growing pressure at home to "bring our boys home." Now, it seems that the situation is predictably worsening, and the regular rules of engagement are being stretched to employ U.S. soldiers in more vigorous functions, taking advantage of convoluted chain of command structures and a historical resistance to independent investigation to skirt the fringes of the law.

Not only is it dishonoring to the men and women in uniform fighting abroad, but it's setting up a potential foreign policy disaster. Without clear rules of engagement, military personnel on the ground are simply unable to gauge what sorts of action are within their legal jurisdiction--so we end up with bombed hospitals and an uncoordinated support structure.

The Obama administration needs to clarify the U.S.'s role in the war. For its soldiers, for its allies, for long-term stability and success in Afghanistan, and just for honesty's sake.

South Korea warns of risk North may abduct citizens abroad

By Jack Kim

Flags of China and North Korea are seen outside the close Ryugyong Korean Restaurant in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, China, April 12, 2016

South Korea said on Monday it was on guard for the possibility North Korea may try to snatch its citizens abroad or conduct "terrorist acts" after the North accused it of abducting North Korean workers from a restaurant in China.

"All measures of precaution" were in place for the safety of South Koreans abroad including an order to beef up security at diplomatic missions, said the South's Unification Ministry, which handles issues related to the North.

"We are on alert for the possibility that the North may try to abduct our citizens or conduct terrorist acts abroad," ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee told a briefing.

The two Korea's have been fierce rivals since the 1950-53 Korean War and tension on the peninsula has been high since January when North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test. It followed that with a string of missile tests in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

South Korea said in April 13 North Korean workers at a restaurant run by the North in China had defected. North Korea accused the South of a "hideous abduction".

North Korea proposed sending family members of the 13 to South Korea for face-to-face meetings but the South rejected the suggestion.

About 29,000 people have left North Korea and arrived in the South since the Korean war, including 1,276 last year, with numbers declining since a 2009 peak. In the first quarter of this year, 342 North Koreans arrived in the South.

From:

Kim, Jack. "South Korea warns of risk North may abduct citizens abroad." Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 2 May 2016. Web. 2 May 2016.

Response

The Powerful and Prosperous Nation may be up to old tricks again. The supposed threat, of course, does seem retaliatory in nature when viewed with the recent defections that occurred in China, but nonetheless, it represents yet another unwelcome disturbance in North-South relations.

The incident has provoked an unusually strong response from the South, presumably due to the increasing pressure President Park Guen-hye's administration is facing at home. Another interesting dynamic that has been put into play is China's role in all of this. With Park warming up to Xi Jinping and Beijing cooling its support for North Korea, it will be interesting to discover the extent of China's involvement in the affair and its response (if any). 

As expected, the article is biased against North Korea. From the title to the sparse supporting details, the writer places too much emphasis on a few vague statements released by South Korea in response to a threat that is not even mentioned. The real news is the defections, but no details concerning them are forthcoming.

Merkel Hints at Further Military Effort in Libya After Talks

By Frank Jordan

British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. President Barack Obama, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President François Hollande, meet at Schloss Herrenhausen in Hanover, Germany, April 25th, 2016

HANNOVER, Germany (AP) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that she, U.S. President Barack Obama and the leaders of France, Britain and Italy discussed ways of supporting the fragile unity government in Libya and the possibility of expanding military efforts to stop the smuggling of migrants across the Mediterranean.

NATO is already patrolling for smugglers farther east, in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey, and Obama had assured the European leaders the U.S. was "prepared to also take responsibility with regard to the migration route from Libya to Italy if necessary," Merkel said.

She emphasized, however, that the five leaders didn't discuss "concrete proposals" for a NATO mission off Libya during their hour-long meeting in Hannover, and that a European Union mission in the Mediterranean had been "working quite well."

The White House said in a statement that the leaders had urged NATO and the EU "to draw on their experience in the Aegean to explore how they could work together to address in an orderly and humane way migrant flows in the central Mediterranean."

A senior Obama administration official added that the U.S. would be supportive of a NATO mission in the central Mediterranean. But the official added that the U.S. would defer to NATO to announce the details of such a mission if and when it were to occur. The official wasn't authorized to discuss internal deliberations publicly and requested anonymity.

With the flow of people across the eastern Mediterranean slowing sharply due to the NATO patrols and an EU agreement to return illegal migrants to Turkey, officials say it is likely that those trying to reach Europe will increasingly try to set off from Libya again. The route has seen a number of mass drownings over the past year of migrants packed into unseaworthy boats.

Germany refused five years ago to back the international military campaign against Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, but since his toppling Berlin has been pushing hard to stabilize the North African country, in part to prevent it becoming a hub for people-smugglers and extremist groups such as the Islamic State.

Merkel said the leaders agreed "we will all do whatever we can together to strengthen" the unity government in Libya, but did not go into specific details.

During a recent trip to Tripoli, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier offered to provide the unity government with 10 armored cars worth 3 million euros ($3.38 million) to help protect top officials from assassination.

Juergen Hardt, a German lawmaker and the government's coordinator for trans-Atlantic cooperation, said recently that Germany might also consider assisting the new unity government in driving Islamic State out of Libya.

"We'd end up paying the bill too if we didn't help this (unity) government gain recognition and sovereignty in its country," said Hardt, whose country took in the overwhelming bulk of migrants to Europe last year.

"I wouldn't rule out that an approach like the one targeting IS in Syria could be found and that Germany would play a similar role as in Syria, that's providing airborne reconnaissance and support for those who carry out airstrikes," he told The Associated Press in an interview.

German military help for the new Libyan government could go beyond air support, he added.

"The training effort that we're involved in with the Peshmerga in northern Iraq is a model that is conceivably transferable to reliable forces for the new Libyan government, and that could be done in a neighboring country," Hardt said.

From:

Jordan, Frank. "Merkel hints at further military effort in Libya after talks." Associated Press. Associated Press, 25 Apr. 2016. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

Response

With all the trouble in the Middle East, it is easy to forget at times that instability (much the result of Western interventionism) still plagues other parts of the world. Indeed, five years after the fall of Gaddafi's dictatorship, the unity government in Libya is still flailing, unable to gain control of its fractured country.

Enter Germany, having favorably remained neutral during the Libyan campaign, and concerned about the growth of radical Islam and terrorism in North Africa. Undoubtedly, all parties involved must tread cautiously. None of the Western powers wish to be sucked into another conflict, and they must be sure to let the unity government establish its own credibility.

In this light, their somewhat minimal efforts to combat illegal immigration make more sense--especially as many of these immigrants may hail from largely Islamic nations.

In any case, I applaud Germany's leadership on the issue, and it seems like the writer of this article does as well, making frequent mention of its efforts to aid the unity government--somewhat extensive background for a report on the Hannover conference.

South Korea, U.S. begin exercises as North Korea threatens attack

By Jack Kim and James Pearson

South Korean and U.S. marines participate in a joint landing operation drill in Pohang, South Korea

South Korean and U.S. troops began large-scale military exercises on Monday in an annual test of their defenses against North Korea, which called the drills "nuclear war moves" and threatened to respond with an all-out offensive.

South Korea said the exercises would be the largest ever following North Korea's fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch last month that triggered a U.N. Security Council resolution and tough new sanctions.

Isolated North Korea has rejected criticism of its nuclear and rocket programs, even from old ally China, and last week leader Kim Jong Un ordered his country to be ready to use nuclear weapons in the face of what he sees as growing threats from enemies.

The joint U.S. and South Korean military command said it had notified North Korea of "the non-provocative nature of this training" involving about 17,000 American troops and more than 300,000 South Koreans.

South Korea's Defence Ministry said it had seen no sign of any unusual military activity by the North.

North Korea's National Defence Commission said the North Korean army and people would "realize the greatest desire of the Korean nation through a sacred war of justice for reunification", in response to any attack by U.S. and South Korean forces.

"The army and people of the DPRK will launch an all-out offensive to decisively counter the U.S. and its followers' hysterical nuclear war moves," the North Korean commission said in a statement carried by the North's KCNA news agency.

The North, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), as it is officially known, routinely issues threats of military action in response to the annual exercises that it sees as preparation for war against it.

The threat on Monday was in line with the usual rhetoric it uses to denounce the drills.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei noted that North Korea had already said it opposed the drills, adding that Beijing was "deeply concerned" about the exercises.

"China is linked to the Korean Peninsula. In terms of the peninsula's security, China is deeply concerned and firmly opposed to any trouble-making behavior on the peninsula's doorstep. We urge all sides to keep calm, exercise restraint and not escalate tensions," he told a daily news briefing.

The latest U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea were drafted by the United States and China as punishment for its nuclear test and satellite launch, which the United States and others say was really a test of ballistic missile technology.

South Korea's spy agency said it would hold an emergency cyber-security meeting on Tuesday to check readiness against any threat of cyber attack from the North, after detecting evidence of attempts by the North to hack into South Korean mobile phones.

South Korea has been on heightened cyber alert since the nuclear test and the rocket launch.

South Korea and the U.S. militaries began talks on Friday on the deployment of an advanced anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea.

Kim, Jack, and James Pearson. "South Korea, U.S. begin exercises as North Korea threatens attack." Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 7 Mar. 2016. Web. 7 Mar. 2016.

Response

So another round of angry North Korean rhetoric begins--almost impossible to tell apart from the statements issued in 2012 leading up to another controversial missile launch. And like in 2012 or in every year since, nothing is likely to result from Kim Jong Un's grandiose threats, certainly not an all-out war (perhaps nothing more than sporadic shelling).

But the annual exercises do shed some light on recent geopolitical developments in the area. The continued development of the North Korea nuclear programme has become a serious threat for the South Korean military, as one can see from the scale of the operation as well as its determination to upgrade its defense capabilities. And coming on the heels of yet another set of UN-issued sanctions, one has to wonder at the situation in Pyongyang. Finally, Beijing's noncommittal statement, echoing concern for the entire peninsula and urging for "calm" from both sides, reflects the cooling relationship between Kim Jong Un's government and its most powerful ally--also keeping in mind that China voted in favour of the sanctions in the Security Council.

What interested me most, however, was the mention of potentially deploying THAAD missile systems in Korea. Whether this will take place via the placement of U.S. batteries on South Korean soil or an arms deal, any type of regional defense system against missile attack is likely to significantly change the state of military power in southeast Asia. By undermining the power that China (and perhaps even North Korea) possess in their nuclear deterrent capabilities, THAAD may represent a cheaper and less controversial strategy for dealing with a nuclear threat, and open the way for other countries, such as Japan or Taiwan, to develop similar systems.

As for bias, the writer of the article seems to generally favour South Korea and its allies, portraying North Korea's missile tests as the worst kept secret in the world (well maybe second, after Israel's) and subtly characterising its leadership as irrational and stubborn.

As a South Korean myself, I obviously possess significant bias myself against Kim Jong Un's regime and fully support the necessity and legitimacy of these exercises occurring on the peninsula.