“Abandoning diplomacy for confrontation.....is a dive over a cliff,” - Antonio Guterres, UN Chief

In introducing her thesis, Mary Wurtz opines that by relying on firsthand accounts from defectors, her key intention is to understand why North Koreans consume foreign media despite the danger it brings, the methods they use to access that information and the role that consumption has had on their perceptions. She adds that for the purposes of this project, foreign media means “any cultural product produced outside of North Korea, typically with a non-North Korean audience in mind.” Since it is illegal in North Korea to access radio, books or music not allowed by the state, the perils of being found doing so can include imprisonment, torture and public execution which can extend to your family members too. Despite the fact that the all-powerful Korean Worker’s Party is designated as the only legal source of information, North Koreans still take the risk to access content produced outside the state. An environment has been created whereby citizens do not trust anyone hence spy on each...

A review of the article titled ‘Playing Cold War politics’: the cold war in Anglo-Kenyan relations in the 1960s by Poppy Cullen Cullen (2018) seeks to show the leverage newly independent states specifically Kenya had over great powers during the Cold War- an ideological battle between the capitalist leaning states led by the likes of Britain and the United States against communist or socialist leaning states led by the likes of China and the Soviet Union. The article looks at Kenya’s foreign policy in the 1960s and having been colonized by Britain how it still sought to maintain those ties although the author’s central argument is to address the level of agency Africans had in shaping and directing these relationships as the Cold War went on. This is in contrast to what had been covered by other scholars who focused more on the agency of the superpowers (Cullen, 2018, p.38). In reference to the writings of Reynolds and McKay, the author opines that the Cold War provided Africans with...

A review of the article titled ‘Kenya's foreign policy in context (1963–2015)’  by Faith Mabera In the introductory page of her article, Faith Mabera (2016) asserts that in reviewing Kenya’s foreign since independence, the intention is to establish evidence of continuity, get the key themes as well as factors both within and outside the state that influence the conduct of foreign policy. In looking at the context, she argues that the ‘Africa Rising’ narrative which seeks to change the image of how Africa is viewed has similarities with what Kenya seeks to attain with Vision 2030 meant to transform the state into a middle-income country. Another context entails Kenya’s geographical position in the Horn of Africa surrounded by states with prolonged internal conflicts that have a spillover effect pushing regional peace and security to the top of Kenya’s foreign policy goals. As a regional kingpin, Kenya has had to play an extensive role in peace building through multilateral and sof...