The maritime security post proved very timely with news out this afternoon that a South Korean warship has exchanged fire with a North Korean naval vessel.
Phil Deans, professor of international affairs at Tokyo’s Temple University and an expert on North Korea, had an interesting quick take on it for Bloomberg:
“North Korea often creates this kind of incident as a get- out clause [if negotiations don’t go its way]… The Americans really want to engage with North Korea, resolve the nuclear issue and move on to the bigger problems they feel they have in the Middle East and Pakistan, but North Korea is very unpredictable and it’s very hard to do.”