Ian Bremmer

Iran’s taunting the West, Israel’s rattling its sword, and gas prices are rising. All that puts President Obama’s future at risk, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer tells Chrystia Freeland. Part 1:

Could it be that the international sanctions against Iran are hurting the Obama administration more than Iran itself? The argument over whether sanctions ever work is an age-old and never-ending debate, and to be clear, that’s not the one I’m trying to have in this column. But I do think it’s worth examining the negatives of Obama’s Iran policy, especially because it is likely to play out during this election season.

Let’s start with the background: Iran’s recent parliamentary elections went off without a hitch. No major protests (see: Russia), no violence, barely a blip in the Western media. Turnout on voting day was surprisingly high, even for the Islamist republic. That has a little to do with the fact that government is actually quite factionalized in Iran — Khamenei versus Ahmadinejad, yes, but also all sorts of high and midlevel bureaucrats — and each faction worked hard to drive turnout, to be able to pass the hot potato of blame should the election have gone poorly. Well, the election didn’t go poorly at all, and suddenly Iran’s government looks more legitimate, internally and externally, than it has in years. Reformists in Iran also picked up a large number of seats, and Iran has everything it did before the election — real economic wealth, a social safety net and huge oil resources that it can sell to every country that doesn’t adhere to the sanctions, of which there are plenty.

That’s the country Barack Obama has to keep in a box to win the election, which is to say one that doesn’t exactly look deplorable to large parts of the global community — like Russia, China, nearly all of Africa and even much of the Middle East. The Iranians won’t be easy to demonize, and to get the sanctions lifted, they are even making concessions to the Europeans, suggesting in talks they’d be amenable to restarting inspections. They’ll play the razor’s edge, even as the uncertainty in the oil market and fear of a shock — like an attack by the U.S. or Israel — steadily drives up the price of oil around the globe.

And that’s the downside for Obama — not only does he have to keep the hawks on their heels to stay true to campaign promises of avoiding unnecessary conflict, but he’ll have to do it as the threat in Iran appears to mount and the price of oil continues, most likely, to climb from its already-high perch of about $107 a barrel. Can Obama really squeeze Iran economically? Given the facts on the ground and Iran’s willingness to play at good behavior, I just don’t buy it. With an improving economy here and a self-defeating Republican field, this is one area that can go bad for the incumbent administration in a hurry, much more so than Europe’s shaky economy or the Greek debt crisis boiling over.

Yet the president is managing the situation as well as anyone could. In meetings with the hawkish Israeli prime minister, Obama kept Bibi Netanyahu talking in abstracts rather than concrete plans for Iran. He promised the country he wouldn’t telegraph his plans, arguing it’s foolish to tell a potential enemy what’s going to happen. (That’s a striking about-face for a country that so recently had a doctrine of preemptive war.) Obama probably got a good performance from Netanyahu because the U.S. has covertly provided Israel with much support on the Iran situation. But make no mistake: Behind the scenes, Bibi has surely drawn a line beyond which Israel won’t placidly follow U.S. policy.

Even though the energy-consuming behaviors of Americans are surprisingly elastic, as illustrated in a new study showing we’re driving far less than we used to, citizens and voters do fear the idea of $5-per-gallon gas — and they’ll punish the politicians who allow it to happen. Even if Obama manages to contain the financial and housing crises, not to mention stop the bleeding on unemployment, he can’t replace them with an energy crisis and expect to avoid pushback in the voting booth. And that’s what, heading toward November, he’ll have to fear in the standoff with Iran and the U.S.’s relationship with Israel.

This essay is based on a transcribed interview with Bremmer.

Almost a year on from a devastating earthquake and tsunami that left the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in its wake, it’s fair to say Japan has experienced a crisis unlike any other since the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War Two.

Over 13,000 people died from the quake, many from drowning. The final death toll, which will include those who were unable to receive proper medical care during the disaster, will be even higher. An estimated 100,000 children were uprooted from their homes after the quake, along with some 400,000 adults. And in the areas affected by fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, cleanup work is really just beginning. With all of this coming in the teeth of the global economic crisis and Japan’s national industrial slowdown, the densely populated main island of Japan has not seen anything like this in decades.

Now Japan has to contend with the fact that its primary power supply, nuclear energy, is effectively verboten in the country. How will it rebuild its power infrastructure when the very idea of a new nuclear power plant is dismissed nearly out of hand? How will it rebuild when its costs for construction have skyrocketed thanks to the setbacks its industries have faced this year? How will it continue taking care of the thousands who have yet to return home, many of whom are living in fallout zones and may never even have the option to do so? The challenges facing the country are serious.

Yet Japan’s response to tragedy has been nothing but remarkable. The Japanese are diligently rebuilding their infrastructure. That deserves our admiration. So does the government of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who reflected in public that he wasn’t meant to be a “shiny goldfish,” but rather a mudfish or catfish — a leader who gets down in the muck but gets the job done. To that end, Noda has mobilized the country’s military and his civilian bureaucracy in service of rebuilding, and is, based on conversations I have had, winning plaudits from Japan’s business community for his work.

In fact, Japan’s business leaders are more upbeat than I have seen them in years. That says several things about their state of mind in a world that has become accustomed to global shocks (whether oil spikes, natural disasters or unforeseen geopolitical events). Because we’re going to see much more instability in the years ahead, Japan knows it’s in a good position — it’s a country that prepares for the worst. Its economy focuses on quality and attention to detail, and Japanese society takes care of its young and old and has incredible longevity, even for a developed nation. Having just gone through a huge test, there is a sense of security among Japan’s leaders as its ability to withstand shocks has been proven.

Some inside and outside the country argue that Japan, thanks to its declining population, should be open to immigration. But I believe a less homogeneous society probably wouldn’t have responded to the earthquake in the same way. This is a country whose “Occupy Tokyo” movement consisted of, when I saw it, three protesters in Roppongi Hills. It’s not a country predisposed to rioting or looting, and perhaps that’s because of its makeup.

If there’s one area where Japan must improve, it’s in the development of more ideologically coherent and stable political parties. The Liberal Democratic Party served as the dominant ruling party for nearly the entire postwar period. But its fall from power has destabilized the entire political system and led to a seemingly endless process of party splits, births and mergers. Leadership in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is now fighting to remain in control of its own members and the government, and there is significant potential for political turmoil this year that could cause the party system to fragment even more.

The other big area that Japan has to work on is utilizing the full power of its potential workforce, and by that I mean its female population. When I addressed the U.S.-Japan Business Council meeting at the World Economic Forum this year, the Japanese executives in the room were uniformly male. Even though Japan is an advanced society in many ways, it has lagged behind the rest of the developed world in providing opportunities and training for women to work in its businesses and industries. Women of working age in Japan who don’t want to bow to custom or tradition have few choices for their careers. Many either work for the Japanese offices of multinational companies or leave Japan altogether. Neither of these outcomes helps Japan. The concerns about Japan’s aging population in the media may be overstated, but its failure to advance women in society is probably understated.

What’s amazing is that though the list of problems facing Japan is long, it’s not much longer than those every developed country faces these days. There is confidence inside and outside the country that it will meet these challenges and get the job done. That’s not to say that any of this is easy, that the country already has all the answers or won’t face the typical problems of corruption, waste, and tough choices in the decontamination and rebuilding process. But more important, Japan is primed to meet these challenges on a structural level. That says a lot about why so much of its postwar history has been, by all measures, a success, and why Japan has the opportunity to achieve more of the same in the 21st century.

This essay is based on a transcribed interview with Bremmer.

PHOTO: Local government officials inspect the bottom of the No. 4 reactor inside the containment vessel at the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture February 8, 2012. The Daini plant, located south of Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, was opened to the local media for the first time since the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. REUTERS/Kyodo

At a time when President Obama has moved troops out of Iraq and is moving them out of Afghanistan, it’s looking increasingly like our worries in the Middle East are far from over. Maybe it’s not unprecedented, but it’s highly unusual for a sitting secretary of defense to worry in print (to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius) that Israel could launch a strike against Iran as early as this spring. The point of the Israeli attack, according to Ignatius and Panetta, would be to stop Iran before it begins building a nuclear bomb. The U.S. is saying that it would find such a move foolhardy, and yet also reassuring both the Israeli and American publics that it is committed to Israel’s security.

But it’s probably not Israel’s true intention to strike Iran anyway.

According to Ignatius and many others, the Israelis, led by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, believe that waiting for the U.S. to strike Iran is an unwise stance. That’s because the U.S.’s threshold for sufficient proof of a nearly finished or completed Iranian nuclear weapon is likely much higher than that of Israel. If such proof came to light, only the U.S. at that point would have the capacity to take out the leadership in Tehran singlehandedly. But such an operation would create a leadership vacuum and leave whoever was running Iran with the bomb. Right now, Israel feels that it can make a dent with its own operation, heading off Iran’s bomb-making before it becomes an issue only the U.S. can deal with. But the window for that option is rapidly closing.

Despite Panetta’s public warnings, and despite Israel’s sudden silence (which many are taking as a sign that it’s gearing up internally for such a mission as this one), an attack on Iran isn’t as likely to occur in the spring as Washington or Tel Aviv would have us believe. That’s because even though new U.S. sanctions on the country went into effect this week, the real test of Iran’s economic fortitude will come around July 1, when the European Union’s gradual introduction of a ban on oil from the country takes full effect. Unfortunately, even those sanctions are unlikely to do much to deter Iran, as India, China and African nations will likely continue to buy much of Iran’s oil production, and they will gain some concessions on price due to the artificially limited market. Nevertheless, Israel will presumably wait to see what happens.

Any smaller strikes that Israel makes against Iran before the economic sanctions would bring down on Israel the ire of the international community, along with that of the Obama administration. Not to mention that Israel certainly wouldn’t want to risk a counterattack if it didn’t have to. So it won’t.

If all of this is true, why would the Israelis telegraph an attack on Iran that is unlikely to happen quite so fast? Well, it’s in their best interests to talk the talk. By using coordinated speaking points they’re bringing Iran front and center on the global stage, while the international community still has time to deal with it. Since the last thing the Israelis want to do is rely on the U.S. to fight their battles for them, they have to press on the Iran issue now, and threaten to act unilaterally, to get the U.S. and EU to act with alacrity. In fact, sources close to the Israeli decision-making process have told me that no final decision has been reached about when or whether to strike Iran. Simply put, it would be premature for Netanyahu and Barak to have made up their minds already. But why would they tell this to the rest of the world when they are convinced the Iranian nuclear threat will soon be very, very real?

The Israelis are smart to play their hand this way, because the world absolutely does need to pay attention to Iran. The political situation in Iran is deteriorating. President Ahmadinejad is facing his own re-election in June 2013, which he almost certainly will not win, if he even lasts that long in his current position. A rift has opened between his camp and that of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – not a good thing for one’s life expectancy in totalitarian religious dictatorships.

The rift has created incentives for increased corruption and heightened self-interest in everyday government actions. That’s why Iran’s message has become scattershot. Remember that embarrassing plot to kill the ambassador from Saudi Arabia, as well, more recently, similar bizarre plots against neighboring Azerbaijan? Meanwhile, Iran’s big regional allies, like Bahrain, Syria and Iraq, have, to put it mildly, their own internal issues to contend with.

Iran, in short, is on its back foot right now. If a provocation comes from Israel, Iran will act like a cornered animal. Geopolitical forces are aligning for just such a lashing out against Israel and the West to occur, whether it’s this spring, after July, or perhaps as a U.S. election October surprise.

In other words, yes, let’s talk about Iran — early and often. Especially about how its influence in the region can be better contained. An open discussion is the world’s best chance of not waking up one day to the news that yet another country has nuclear weapons and everything that would entail in altering the world’s already precarious balance of power.

PHOTO: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (C), attends a Likud party meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem, February 6, 2012. Netanyahu will visit the United States early next month to address the annual convention of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in Washington, his office said on Sunday. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

This essay is based on a transcribed interview with Bremmer.

DAVOS–If 2011 was the year of the protestor, 2012, at least where the World Economic Forum is concerned, is the year of the reckoning. Through the events of the Arab Spring, major power vacuums have been created in countries all over the Middle East. More governments, such as Syria’s, are likely to topple. But the time to start thinking about what’s next for countries like Egypt is already here.

The thing is, it’s coming at an inconvenient time for Western democracy. Having long held themselves as the global models for governance and economic structure, Western Europe and the U.S. have in recent years shown their warts as never before. That has opened the door for state capitalist models — like China’s — to take the stage. And the simple fact that new models for how countries and economies should work are even being considered is a blow to the Western world’s power and prestige. Obviously, well before the G-7 system broke down, China was already on a path of state capitalism, and that has turned out to be a successful course for that country to chart. But here’s the problem: While it has led to wealth and a rise in living standards for the Chinese, it hasn’t led to more democracy.

Here at Davos, and in capitals around the world, the paths countries should chart for themselves in the future is always topic A, and what we’ve learned over these last years is that transforming those countries and indeed the world is about a lot more than simply swapping out the players who legislate and lead. Look at the precarious situation in Egypt. Consider Putin’s long hold on power in Russia. For that matter, look at the situations in many countries on the euro zone periphery. Going down that list, nations that have simply replaced one power-grabbing leader with another are in trouble. (In Russia’s case, that leader has simply replaced himself.) Countries that have revolved leadership without addressing deeper institutional weaknesses are not setting themselves up for success in the long run.

That’s why changing not just the leaders at the table but the system by which the country is governed is such a real and important goal — it reconfigures the country’s “end result” trajectory. When countries like China and Russia become economically important, they of course support the models that made them powerful: strong authoritarianism and state capitalism. Specifically as China gains more and more economic power, it continues to improve its bargaining position with the West — that is, it can get away with bargaining less and less. And China’s ability to eschew compromise will only grow as its position in the world continues to get stronger — so why would the Chinese negotiate about anything? When their growth starts to level off or their cost structures begin to match the West’s — a change that will be measured in decades, not years — they’ll be willing to cooperate more. But not before.

If you believe in the values of Western democracy — equality, fairness, opportunity and freedom — that’s precisely why the West must rise to the occasion and continue to challenge state capitalism and press Arab Spring countries to fight for democratic institutions in their new national orders. Otherwise the fate of the West will be to represent an important but diminishing subset of the global economy — and to have almost no sway over a group of countries whose economic fortunes are on the rise. And that’s not just about prestige — those are the countries with weaker values. For example, the New York Times has published a devastating series on the Foxconn factories that assemble Apple products, highlighting worker abuses, deaths and practices that would have been outdated in the U.S. even a century ago. Those workers might be making state-of-the-art products, but they live as though they are indentured servants, or worse. It would be naive to think Foxconn is an isolated incident. In China, Foxconn is a success story of state-directed capitalism. Will the West tolerate Foxconn? And if so, how many more Foxconns will it tolerate?

It’s pointless to worry about China stealing U.S. manufacturing jobs — China has taken far more jobs from Mexico than it has from the U.S., by some measures. What the West should worry about is the manner in which those jobs are performed and what our tolerance of that says to the parts of the world that are today at a crossroads.

This essay is based on a transcribed interview with Bremmer.

A Russian Spring grows as the prospects of Vladimir Putin returning to the presidency loom. Ian Bremmer, Susan Glasser and Gideon Rose talk with Thomson Reuters Digital Editor Chrystia Freeland about the prospects of an uprising in Russia similar to what we’ve seen in the Arab world.

The media can’t help themselves when it comes to presidential politics, and that’s never been more in evidence than in the current Republican nomination battle. For the press, campaign season is its Olympics, the time when reporters’ bosses open their wallets to send them to far off places like Dixville Notch, New Hampshire and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and correspondents can make a career on how well they report on the race. Except this year, there is no race. Mitt Romney will be the nominee, and that’s been clear for months.

Yet here’s the lead from today’s Wall Street Journal recap of yesterday’s New Hampshire primary: “Mitt Romney is a long way from claiming the Republican nomination, but he leaves New Hampshire with significant advantages in a field where no single opponent seems well-positioned to stop him or become the obvious alternative to him.” While the reporter may merely be acknowledging the mathematics of the delegates Romney still has to win in primaries across the country, the hedging on Romney’s inevitable victory, to anyone who follows the day-to-day stories in the campaign, rings hollow at best.

With Gingrich, then Santorum, and Bachmann and Cain before them, news stories always turned to polls to explain the latest in the “anyone but Romney” vote. But the story the media should be telling is that polls during campaign seasons historically change the most and matter the least. Flawed methodology and small sample sizes make even the most rigorous polling little more than a one-day snapshot of popular sentiment, yet poll results are often reported as if they were all but recorded in the county clerk’s election rolls.

What we should be reading about when it comes to the nomination are things like the size of each candidate’s ground force, the number of committed staff, an ongoing endorsement tally–in other words, the true measures of a candidate’s strength. By these measures, Romney has an overwhelming advantage and has for months. But for some reason such metrics are mentioned only in passing, if at all, or are left to weekend feature stories, as if the day-to-day news about Romney walking down a street in Manchester to knock on doors had anything to do with his viability as a national candidate.

Part of the problem, albeit unspoken, may be that the media haven’t really warmed to the often robotic and sometimes aloof Romney, and because of that, they are holding back on anointing him as the nominee. They therefore highlight those qualities in him and cite the failure of the Tea Party and evangelicals to coalesce around him, even though Romney has been carrying a majority of the overall support of the party, again, for many months now.

The other problem Romney is facing is that candidates with no chance of winning the nomination are refusing to get out of the race. While some may blame the influence of soft money and Super PACs in putting these campaigns on artificial life support, there are simpler explanations for why Gingrich, Cain, Perry, Santorum, Huntsman and Bachmann all stayed in so long: There’s nothing but upside for them, personally, in doing so. The longer candidates can claim a sliver of the national stage, the better off they are in the long run. For Gingrich and Cain, it helps them sell books and raise their personal profiles. For Santorum and many of the rest, they can position themselves to be important parts of Team Romney in the general election and in a Romney administration. Those who aren’t looking for a spot on Romney’s roster are especially willing to trade the enmity of the future GOP nominee for the media attention that bashing him brings. It’s all about job security. And after all, any publicity is good publicity–fueled by an ever-rotating media spotlight that really shouldn’t be shining on these also-rans in the first place. If Ron Paul, who consistently garners high percentages in polls and now in the New Hampshire primary, is widely acknowledged as being too far outside the Republican mainstream to win the nomination, there’s no way Huntsman, who could do no better than third in New Hampshire, can surge past both to win the nod.

Having been vetted during the GOP primaries in the 2008 cycle, what few skeletons there are in Romney’s closet have likely been thoroughly exhumed and inspected. There’s always the chance of a scandalous surprise to knock him from his perch, but it seems unlikely that the no-swearing, no-drinking, family man Mormon has any such bombshells to worry about. So what’s the net result of the media’s refusal to call this race all but over?

Probably a stronger and stronger platform for Barack Obama in the general election. The longer Romney has to beat back the fringe candidates in the primaries, the less work Obama has to do in the general election. But even that is not Romney’s biggest concern–rather, it’s the improving economy and the continual upward creep of economic and employment numbers–indications the country is getting back on the right track, upsetting his core argument against the incumbent.

Rick Perry has promised to make his last stand in South Carolina, and Jon Huntsman has said that the Florida primary on Jan. 31 will decide who the GOP nominee will be. While it may be fun for both men to dream, they know the race is long over, and the identity of the nominee will be Willard M. Romney. It may be fun for reporters to cover the remaining candidates as the political human-interest equivalent of the Jamaican bobsled team, but this isn’t the Olympics–it’s a national presidential election. It’s time to focus on who Romney is and what his policies as president would be, and how they stack up against Obama’s. With so much at stake for the future direction of the U.S. and its place in the world, anything else is, at best, a disservice to readers.

This essay is based on a transcribed interview with Bremmer.

PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney points to supporters as he stands on stage with his relatives while speaking at his New Hampshire primary night rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, January 10, 2012. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

In a video for Reuters, Ian Bremmer discusses the biggest risks facing the markets in 2012 and says the next phase in the Middle East and the post-9/11 environment pose the greatest uncertainty:

Top Risks of 2012

As we begin 2012, political risks dominate global headlines in a way we’ve not experienced in decades. Everywhere you look in today’s global economy, concerns over insular, gridlocked, or fractured politics affecting markets stare back at you. Continuation of the politically driven crisis in the eurozone appears virtually guaranteed. There is profound instability across the Middle East. Grassroots opposition to entrenched governments is spreading to countries such as Russia and Kazakhstan that were thought more insulated. Nuclear powers North Korea and Pakistan (and soon Iran?) face unprecedented internal political pressure… Read the full top risks report here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By Ian Bremmer
The opinions expressed are his own.

There are many surprising things about Kim Jong-il’s sudden death, not the least of which is that it took two days for the rest of the world to hear about it. Yet most surprising is the sanguine reaction of the global and especially the Asian markets. On Monday, or actually Sunday as we now know, the world woke up to its first leaderless nuclear power. Coming as close as anyone could to filling his seat was his youngest son, who is in his late twenties. There’s no way these facts were accurately priced into markets that took just a relatively minor dip as a first response. The news from North Korea appears to have been taken far too lightly, and just a few days out, it’s disappearing from the front pages.

While Kim Jong-un’s status as heir apparent seems to tie a nice bow around the situation, let’s get real for a moment. The son of the elder Kim only appeared on the North Korean stage after a stroke necessitated succession planning in Kim Jong-il’s regime in 2008. Consider that founder of the country Kim Il-sung put his son, Kim Jong-il, in front of the citizenry as his heir for more than a decade before his 1994 death. That decade was precious time; time Kim Jong-il spent consolidating power and putting his own people into high government office— and he was over 50 years old when his father passed away. Kim Jong-un has been deprived of that head start; he’s got to rely on whatever ground his dead father managed to clear for him since his 2008 stroke. A couple of years at his father’s side — and a promotion to four star general — is scant time for the younger Kim to have developed a real plan for ruling, or real allies in government.

That said, don’t expect Kim Jong-un to be deposed. There won’t be a North Korean spring — for real or for show — anytime soon. The country is too backward and too brainwashed to mount any sort of populist opposition to the ruling regime, and its people have little if any knowledge of the outside world. Even if Kim Jong-un proves unable to consolidate and retain power, all that would replace him as the head of state is a military junta or strongman; there’s no democracy on the horizon, given the country’s current sorry state of affairs.

The important relationship to watch going forward will be between North Korea and China. Kim will want to impress his people by letting more food into the markets and increasing their terrible standard of living in whatever marginal way he can. He’ll need cash to do so, and will probably call upon China to help. China is North Korea’s last substantial benefactor in the world. In a classic diplomatic sense, because North Korea is America’s enemy and South Korea is America’s friend, China has little choice but to keep propping up the North. If China changes its tack now, it could find North Korea inching towards reunification with the South, putting a firm American ally right on its border. The question is, will China support Kim Jong-un wholeheartedly, or will it too take a step back and see what emerges from the power struggles sure to be playing out behind the scenes at this very moment?

Meanwhile, the U.S. has taken the right approach to this complicated situation: the White House has decided to sit back, watch and wait. It could, and likely already is, offering behind-the-scenes humanitarian relief to the North Korean people. It should continue to offer any such assistance that it thinks will be accepted. The Obama administration should not by any means be applying diplomatic pressure to restart six party talks or anything else of the sort. In essence, the free world should be rooting for Kim Jong-un to stabilize the country so that it can again try to bring North Korea out of the dark ages in an orderly fashion.

The British SAS used to say that when securing a dangerous environment, you should shoot the first person who makes a move (hostile or otherwise) to ensure authority. While I’m not advocating violence, one has to hope Kim Jong-un can consolidate power sufficiently, so that the world at least knows who it’s dealing with when it comes to North Korea. We don’t know what kind of leader he’ll be, or if he’ll even be a leader for very long, but a country that treats its rulers as gods needs someone at the top of the pyramid to keep from devolving into chaos. Otherwise, the world is back to where it was the day after Kim Jong-il died — a day in which no one knew whose finger was on the North Korean nuclear button.

This essay is based on a transcribed interview with Bremmer.

Photo: New North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un (C) pays his respects to his father and former leader Kim Jong-il (R) who is lying in state at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang in this still picture taken from video footage aired by KRT (Korean Central TV of the North) December 20, 2011. REUTERS/KRT via REUTERS TV