As a professor teaching international law I receive questions from people from time to time asking me whether UN Security Council resolutions are binding, that is whether they are ‘legally’ binding. The answer to that question is yes. I figure that those questions and perhaps the misperception of UNSC resolutions partly come from the title itself – “resolution.” In fact, many a resolution adopted domestically or internationally is not legally binding (unlike statutes or treaties), albeit politic

Anyone with human feelings is outraged by North Korea’s murder of Otto Warmbier.The term “murder” is justified, although we don’t know exactly how this bright, adventurous student was brutalized after his arrest on a tourist visit to North Korea. No other word describes the crime of sentencing Otto to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster, then holding him for more than a year while he lay in a coma — and cutting off any diplomatic access to him.Yet note that, unlike

Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in January, 2007, before an adoring congregation, in his signature “Sermon on the Mount” style. On June 29, it became available to the public. Ten years later, the phone has spread like Christianity. The device represents “the pinnacle product of all capitalism,” as Brian Merchant argues in his new book, “The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone.” Merchant calls the adoption of the iPhone a “rapid, civilization-scale transformation.”Happy birthday, iP

In a 2001 book on the 1950-53 catastrophe in Korea’s origins, George Washington University professor Richard Thornton analyzed the North and the South’s egregious, bewildering and glaring arms imbalance – which preceded war’s outbreak on June 25. He draws some shocking conclusions, and well-substantiated ones, to boot.　He noted “unambiguous tactical indicators provided by the truly massive Soviet arms supply” over the spring of 1950 “dramatically changed the relative balance of forces” between t

With every tweet or meeting with a foreign leader that US President Donald Trump completes, American officials find themselves struggling to reassure allies that the United States remains committed to their security. Nowhere is this truer than in Asia, where longstanding US strategic engagement, backed up by the world’s most advanced military, has maintained the balance of power for decades.Trump’s signature Asia policy -- his pledge to stop North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons -- should

Cheered by Cuban-American supporters in Miami’s Little Havana, President Donald Trump announced grandly he was “canceling” his predecessor’s “terrible and misguided deal” between the US and Communist Cuba.Fortunately, Trump exaggerated the extent of his actions. Unfortunately, he took some, once more positioning himself on the wrong side of both history and public opinion.As President Barack Obama correctly foresaw, increasing Cuba’s relations with the democratic world, especially the United Sta