Two years after his accession to power, Kim Jong Un continues to pursue his country’s foreign policy with the familiar pattern of bellicose rhetoric, cut with the occasional conciliatory gestures. More substantial changes can be seen in the way power is exercised within the top leadership. The country is now increasingly run by a circle
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For the past twenty years Japan has been following a slow and steady path toward military normalisation and in the coming decade it seems increasingly likely to finally reach this goal. Yet, this is not a sign of either increasing militarism or decreasing pacifism within Japan, but rather is in keeping with the realist policies
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The surge in maritime piracy and robbery in Southeast Asia that followed in the wake of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis led to the drafting of the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) by 16 countries in 2004. This paper presents three arguments: First, that ReCAAP has
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In the last two decades, the proliferation of regionalisms has brought international relations’ scholars to question on the effects that such a phenomenon may entail on the international system. Thanks to the focus given by neoregionalist authors on regions’ external dimension, theories on interregional relations have been developed and several debates around the functions of
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