Research Recap highlights recent work that is being done at MIT's Center for International Studies. This episode features 2015-2016 CIS Robert E Wilhelm fellow Paul Heer, discussing his book Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia.

President Trump may find himself in a difficult position as soon as he sits down with Kim Jong-un, according to Jim Walsh, who has been in the room for previous talks and says North Korea’s first pitch is often a curveball.

There is a flurry of diplomatic activity ahead of a planned meeting between President Trump and the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Kim Jong Un. CGTN’s Mike Walter spoke with international security expert Jim Walsh.

The IPL received a record-breaking 42 proposals from 31 principal investigators representing all five schools at MIT. The committee chose 10 projects for full support. In an effort to assist as many PIs as possible with policy outreach, the majority of the remaining projects received partial support, with only six projects deemed too early to begin engagement with policy makers.

"The fact that the President is upset that Sessions is playing by the book is yet another indication that the President is profoundly ignorant and indifferent to the purposes of the institutions of our government," says Joel Brenner, former NSA inspector general and a senior research fellow at CIS.

Ben Ross Schneider, Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the MIT Brazil Program, is a co-editor of a new CIS-sponsored series on the politics of development called Cambridge Elements. The first of several forthcoming books is available for free (for a limited time) through Cambridge University Press.

At first glance, it would seem that Iran-North Korea military or even nuclear cooperation makes “sense.” Both nations face the United States as an adversary, and both have been subject to US and international sanctions.