What a bad week for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. His foreign policy initiatives lay in tatters with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's plans to dump the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Russian President Vladimir Putin pouring cold water on Abe's hopes of regaining some of the Northern Territories.
Abe also has his work cut out for him in trying to cope with developments on the Korean Peninsula, where Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program is making progress while Seoul is paralyzed by a leadership crisis — complicated by an untested and erratic Trump. When it comes to the art of diplomacy and how to deal with security issues, Trump is in way over his head, especially in regard to Asia's most urgent security threat: North Korea.
The choice of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a hardliner, as his national security adviser raises concerns that Trump will become a war president like George W. Bush, leading the nation imprudently and destructively. Flynn served in the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which has been referred to as the presidential "ninja" force — one of the JSOC's units was responsible for killing Osama bin Laden. In "Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield," author Jeremy Scahill argues that JSOC's dubious record of errant operations and its snowballing "kill lists" proved counterproductive while sowing the seeds of blowback. Flynn's track record doesn't suggest he will be reining Trump back.