Atlantic Council

From the hysterical TV portrayals of goose-stepping North Korean troops, breathless news reports of North Korean warnings of war, and maps depicting the range of imminent missile launches (complete with retired U.S. generals explaining the targets), you might think there is a crisis on the Korean Peninsula. But there is no crisis, only a farce.

"To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: 'You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning.’”

I like to run. One thing runners know, really that all athletes amateur to professional know, is that when you take time off or scale back on your training because of an injury or the like, it takes time to recover. I don’t mean taking a day off to recover here and there. I mean taking say a month off.

Sure, you can start running again – but you won’t be at the same level as when you took the break for quite some time. And, to make it even better, it’s often a bit painful getting back up to that level.

Why do I bring this up? Because the same holds true for military capabilities.

Monday was International Roma Day. Throughout Europe, Roma people and their allies gathered to sing, dance, and celebrate Romani culture. But the day is also meant to draw attention to the poor living conditions and social exclusion facing many of Europe’s largest minority.

There has been plenty of hype recently about the wonders of three dimensional printing – a fast-emerging technology that may be able to reproduce any object from an instrument for sublime music (a Stradivarius violin) to a potential weapon of death (a bullet-firing gun).

Paul Wolfowitz, a leading cheerleader for and planner of the Iraq War, says "it's too soon to tell" how it turned out.

More than a century ago, as this column noted, events in Europe were simultaneously described as serious but not yet desperate and as desperate but not fully serious. Given the antics of the Boy Sun King in Pyongyang, Kim Jung Un, it is hard to know how serious or desperate the current situation on the Korean Peninsula is.

The first visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry to Afghanistan last month underscored the changing nature of Western involvement in the country. Kerry, among other important discussions, finalised the transfer of the Parwan detention centre over to Afghan authorities.

On March 21, 2013 Turkey entered a new period with the reading of a letter from Öcalan to the crowds gathered in Diyarbakir on Newruz day, the traditional Kurdish Spring festival, calling for a cease-fire and the withdrawal of PKK fighters from Turkish territory.

In 2000 Cranfield University’s Professor Helen Smith posed the now seminal question about North Korea, “Bad, Mad, Sad, or Rational Actor?” Kim Jong-un, the thirtyish leader of the somewhat misnomered Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) would indeed seem on the face of it to be bad, mad, and sad.