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Katharine H.S. Moon, Professor in the Department of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate Fellow at the Asia Society in New York, writes, “The US government has kept a long arm’s distance from the musical overtures between Pyongyang and the Philharmonic, but it also has missed a unique opportunity to assert one of the best examples of its “soft power” not only to North Korea but to the rest of the world.”

Mark J. Valencia, Maritime Policy Analyst in Kaneohe, Hawaii and a Nautilus Institute Senior Associate, writes, “The publication of an article critical of the Philippine government’s agreements with China in 2004 and with China and Vietnam in 2005 to undertake joint seismic surveys in the South China Sea has unleashed a fusillade of allegations that have rocked the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo… in approving this arrangement, the Philippine government undermined its political relations within ASEAN and its own legal claims to islands, waters and continental shelf in the South China Sea.”

Georgy Toloraya, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institute, writes, “If the hard-line approach persists on both sides, the future is predictable. It would likely be a repetition of the past: after a series of mutual steps increasing tensions and driving relations into yet another dead-end, the opponents (probably with a changed administration on the U.S. side) will get back to discussing the same issues from square one, again discovering there is no alternative to engagement and small-step tactics leading to gradual solutions, one by one.”