Will Japan assert its own vision for East Asia, or will it continue simply to react to China? That will be the biggest question in 2014 for Tokyo as tensions with Beijing continue to mount. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s decision to beef up military spending and enhance its longer-term security is a game-changer for the region, and while there is a chance the move will strengthen bilateral relations between Japan and the United States, it is unclear how this will impact Tokyo’s relations with Beijing.

On February 12, 2013, North Korea carried out its third nuclear test in the run-up to the inauguration of a new administration – my own – in the South. Around that time, the Presidential Transition Committee adopted the “Trust-Building Process on the Korean Peninsula” as a key policy of the new administration. Though the North’s nuclear test created pressure to revise the trust-building process, I made it clear that I would stay the course.

The result is what we academics call premature closure, or what policy makers call a failure in due diligence; basically an unwillingness to consider all of the potential options, the risk and the consequences of a particular course of action. In this newspaper and elsewhere, I have addressed the reasons why a foreign policy that is not open to public scrutiny lacks both accountability and legitimacy.

While bombings in Baghdad killed at least 34 people Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said America would help Iraq battle the al Qaeda militants that overtaken two of the nation’s western cities — but emphasized that the fight belonged to them. Kerry said that the U.S. was concerned over the mounting violence in the Anbar province, where al Qaeda militants have overtaken the capital city of Ramadi as well as Fallujah, USA Today reports. But he cautioned that intervention was not an option.

China is preparing to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy, in purchasing power parity terms. Already its economy is 80 percent the size of ours, and if current growth rate differentials persist, it will take China only about four more years to surpass us. At market exchange rates, China’s GDP is smaller, and is expected to remain less than ours until 2028. This is hardly surprising.

For more than two decades, running for Congress in this sun-soaked capital of Cuban exiles has required two things: a Republican registration card and a hard line toward the Castro regime. So when Joe Garcia became the first Cuban-American Democrat from the state to win election to the House in 2012, it signaled a crack in a critical GOP constituency.

China is preparing to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy, in purchasing power parity terms. Already its economy is 80% the size of ours, and if current growth rate differentials persist, it will take China only about four more years to surpass us. At market exchange rates, China’s GDP is smaller, and is expected to remain less than ours until 2028. This is hardly surprising.

Russia’s recent diplomatic successes in Syria and Iran, together with foreign-policy missteps by US President Barack Obama, have emboldened President Vladimir Putin in his drive to position Russia as capable of challenging American exceptionalism and Western universalism. But Putin’s recent address to Russia’s Federal Assembly was more a reflection of his resentment of Russia’s geopolitical marginalization than a battle cry from a rising empire.