Trump-Kim smackdown leaves South Koreans cold

JONATHAN MANTHORPE: International Affairs May 13, 2017 For a while it looked as though Donald Trump was the white horse on a cresting wave of right-wing demagogy rushing to break over liberal democracies world-wide. But the defeat of Trump’s neo-Nazi fellow travellers

Has a crack opened between North and South Korea?

After more than six decades of hostility – including the devastating 1950-53 civil war – is North Korea now serious about trying to improve relations with South Korea?  International Affairs columnist Jonathan Manthorpe examines the possibilities. An excerpt of his new column, Lightning-strike diplomacy

Promises to aid development are empty

Pledges by “have” countries to help the “have-nots” are almost all talk and no action, new research shows.  Since 2003, when a Washington-based think tank started an index to measure development policies by wealthier countries, “the scores for aid, migration, trade and