Atlantic Council

Though autonomous, destructive robots are a long-time, hackneyed science fiction plot, for some time, this new kind of warfare has been shifting from yesterday's movie to today's reality. But unforeseen by the imaginations of both headline and science fiction writers, it was not a missile-laden drone or humanoid Terminator that introduced this new kind of combat, but a piece of software.

The re-balancing of United States interests in the Far East, the so called "pivot to Asia" that was announced two years ago by the Obama administration, is now stuck in neutral. That is because what the world is witnessing on the Korean Peninsula is good old-fashioned power politics: A move by China to re-balance its own interests in Asia.

The recent cyber attacks on South Korea highlight four truths of cyber conflicts as they have actually been fought. The implications of three of them are obvious, the fourth not yet so. Such conflicts are disruptive, but far from warfare. And cyber conflicts are both easier to predict than popular myth has it and the nation responsible is often perfectly obvious.

Amid the buzz in Washington about new North Korean nuclear threats, President Barack Obama late last week summoned 15 of America’s top financial leaders to the White House to discuss what his administration considers to be threats that are more pervasive, more persistent and less manageable ‑ cyber risks.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder once said, “They have it wrong if they ask if Schroeder favors Britain over France or France over Britain. Schroeder favors Germany.”  Watching David Cameron with family enjoying a German weekend break with Angela Merkel one could be forgiven for thinking all is well in the British-German relationship.

By now, those of you who have been following the Korean crisis have encountered plenty of proposals from pundits. Let's consider some of them.

Despite the grim realities we face on so many fronts in the Middle East today, there is reason to be optimistic about the long-term political trajectory of the Arab world. Arabs—especially young Arabs—are finally beginning to answer, on their own and from the ground up, the key question of the past century: what will follow the Ottoman system as the true source of political legitimacy? The emerging answer is that for governments to be legitimate, they must ultimately derive their powers from the consent of the governed. This, in my view, is the meaning of the Arab Spring.

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.