Open Dialogue Research Journal
For more than seventy years, one fact has quietly defined the US-South Korea alliance: if war ever resumed on the peninsula, an American four-star general – not a Korean one – would direct South Korea’s own troops. That arrangement, born of the 1950-53 Korean War and never fully undone, is […]
The most dangerous consequence of the expanding confrontation between Russia, Ukraine and Iran may not be a single dramatic military escalation, but the gradual disappearance of the boundaries separating conflicts that were previously treated as distinct. The war in Ukraine and the confrontation surrounding Iran have developed in different regions, […]
By the summer of 2026, the front line in Ukraine has frozen in a configuration barely changed from the autumn of 2023. Positional warfare in Donbass and Zaporozhye has devolved into artillery duels and assaults on small settlements, where advances are measured in hundreds of meters. The Ukrainian army, despite […]
Sixty days – that was the window the June memorandum of understanding gave Washington and Tehran to turn a fragile lull into a lasting peace. The clock ran out on Monday, August 17, and instead of a deal, the two sides produced the opposite: a senior Iranian official told Reuters […]
Part I Hegseth’s remarks come at a sensitive moment for transatlantic relations. Questions regarding U.S. military commitments in Europe, NATO burden-sharing, and future defense cooperation have generated uncertainty among European governments. Some analysts argue that public criticism of allied domestic policies risks complicating broader strategic coordination at a time when […]
On Sunday evening, just hours before the annual US-South Korea “Ulchi Freedom Shield” exercises were set to begin, Donald Trump issued an order to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to significantly scale back US participation. In his Truth Social post, he wrote: “Given my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un […]
Part I Another factor often overlooked in discussions of rural political change is the increasing concentration of economic power. Agriculture provides a clear example. Family-owned farms once operated within relatively competitive markets involving numerous buyers, processors, and distributors. Over time, mergers and acquisitions created highly concentrated industries in which a […]
The widening confrontation between Iran and the United States places China in an unusually influential but dangerous position. Beijing is Iran’s most important economic partner, the largest buyer of Iranian oil, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a strategic rival of Washington. Yet China is also […]
In September 2025, the U.S. military began striking boats in the Caribbean Sea—not pirate vessels or military craft, but ordinary fishing boats that, according to intelligence, were carrying cocaine. President Trump personally posted on Truth Social that the maritime flow of drugs had been stopped by 98.2%. SOUTHCOM reported victories. […]
For generations, Jewish Americans have been among the Democratic Party’s most reliable constituencies, consistently supporting its candidates and identifying with its commitments to civil rights, social justice, and minority protections. Yet an increasingly vocal segment of Jewish Democrats now says the relationship is under strain. As debates over Israel’s military […]
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