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May 24, 2024
 

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Ramesh Thakur

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Ramesh Thakur
Ramesh Thakur is Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University; adjunct professor, Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law, Griffith University, and editor-in-chief of Global Governance from Jan. 1, 2013. He began writing for The Japan Times in 1998 as Vice Rector of the United Nations University.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2014
India's illusory nuclear gains
The subcontinent's history since 1998 belies expectations at the time, in both India and Pakistan, that the nuclearization of weapons would prove to be a largely stabilizing factor.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 26, 2014
Which way is the enemy?
As the West seems to be picking fights with several enemies simultaneously, there is the risk of the war on terror mutating into a self-perpetuating permanent war against a continually expanding list of enemies.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 19, 2014
Parliaments need a say on war
Democracies urgently need to modernize procedures and structures for going to war with parliamentary debate and sanction, instead of by government fiat based on the instincts of a strong-willed prime minister or president.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 8, 2014
NATO is endangering Earth
Have NATO leaders demonized Russian President Vladimir Putin and created the Russia-Ukraine crisis to justify NATO's continuation after its original purpose expired?
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 1, 2014
Aussie uranium for India
The journey to the point where Australia has agreed to sell uranium to India has been tortuous, and the controversy is unlikely to fade anytime soon.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 26, 2014
Grading the Modi government
By the way he talks, new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi might appear to be replicating his Gujarat state model of learning to walk before starting to run with headstrong solutions to the big problems facing the country. Even so, he will have to walk the walk sooner than later.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2014
Australia should take lead on global no-first-use convention
There are good reasons why Australia is a credible candidate for leading the push for a global convention to enshrine a universal no-first-use policy for nuclear weapons.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 12, 2014
Stop the world and let me off
A common thread unites Ukraine and Gaza. The West acts as if it has the right to control, change and determine the destiny of both peoples and to topple their governments, whether elected or not.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 25, 2014
MH17: condemn but learn
It is not acceptable to respond to the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, and to similar incidents, through the lens of either a friend or a foe. We need credible and prompt international investigations.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2014
Geopolitics trumps economics
Western countries' insensitivity toward others' voices, values and interests lies behind the creation and evolution of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), whose New Development Bank will give priority to loans for developing countries to finance infrastructure projects and industrialization.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 3, 2014
China's reach for leverage
China's random and sporadic acts of provocations over territorial disputes seem to fail to intimidate its opponents in the Asia-Pacific region, but each push and probe tests retaliatory assets and calls into question the U.S. capacity, and will, to come to the aid of a beleaguered ally.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 29, 2014
Shamelessness of neocons
How do we impress on U.S. neocons-cum-chickenhawks — and their Australian-British fellow-travelers — the enormous disparity between the vision dreamed for Iraq, the goals pursued, the means used and the results obtained?
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 11, 2014
U.S. foreign policy marked by blatant hypocrisy
It is a truth universally acknowledged that behavior by others inconsistent with social norms is condemned as hypocrisy but similar discrepancies in our own conduct is rationalized as understandable prioritization in the face of multiple goals. When the military deposed Egypt's first freely elected president,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 6, 2014
U.S.-Taliban deal raises six intertwined issues
What should have been a joyous American family reunion, a chance to welcome home an army sergeant held by the Taliban for five years and a photo-op for a beleaguered U.S. administration is instead morphing into multilayered debate about Barack Obama's common sense when it comes to foreign policy.
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2014
Modi's foreign policy agenda
When Shinzo Abe led his party to a landslide victory in Japan's 2012 general election, he broke from protocol by taking a congratulatory call from Narendra Modi, then a state leader in India. The mutual respect between the two strongly nationalist prime ministers could pay handsome dividends.
COMMENTARY / World
May 19, 2014
Rise of aspirational India
The charismatic Narendra Modi will lead a majority government in India, as voters decisively repudiate the politics of dynasty, inheritance, entitlement, corruption and sycophancy.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 28, 2014
Ukraine narratives spawn dangerous presumptions
Competing, starkly different U.S.-Western narratives are spawning dangerous presumptions with regard to the Ukraine crisis.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 20, 2014
India's status quo is riskier
The political party that proudly led India into independence has been reduced to a self-serving coterie of sycophants, courtiers and court jesters. Is the status quo more risky than the 'Modi alternative' in the current election?
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 2014
Can a nuclear-weapons state champion disarmament?
India should be the one to step forward to champion a phased, regulated and verifiable global nuclear disarmament governed by a universal, nondiscriminatory nuclear weapons convention.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 16, 2014
Singh: missing for a decade
It would be interesting to know just what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — in office for a decade but rarely in power during that time — thinks the job requires beyond being a sycophant toward the first family.
America wasn’t made for walking, and it’s killing them
A 2010 study found that U.S. adults averaged 5,117 steps daily and that this was lower than the averages found in similar studies in Switzerland, western Australia and Japan.
China's military kicks off large-scale 'punishment' drills around Taiwan
A Chinese military ship northwest of Pengjia Island, off the coast of northern Taiwan, on Thursday
Why half of Japan's cities are at risk of disappearing in 100 years
A couple looks out onto the Fukuoka nightscape. Due to its distance from Tokyo and its close proximity to South Korea and China, professor Tomoya Mori believes that Fukuoka is one of the few metropolitan regions of Japan that will see some form of growth in the decades to come.
Japan aims to curb Apple and Google's smartphone app duopoly
The main targets of a new bill on smartphone software are the app stores provided by Google and Apple, as consumers effectively have only two choices for smartphone operating systems: Apple's iOS or Google’s Android.
Many COVID experts in Japan harassed after speaking to media, survey shows
Shigeru Omi, then-Japan's top COVID-19 advisor, speaks to reporters at the Prime Minister's Office in April 2022. A study published this month has shown that many experts who spoke to the media about COVID-19 in Japan were harassed by the public.
Japanese break dancer on cusp of fulfilling Olympic dream
Japan's Ayumi Fukushima competes in the women's Breaking B-Girls semifinal during an Olympic Qualifier Series ahead of the 2024 Paris Games, in Shanghai on Sunday.
Japan panel sets out plans to accelerate drug discovery efforts
A tourist shops at a drug store in the Asakusa district of Tokyo on April 30.
New Japan study on germ cells may help advance infertility treatments
Kyoto University researchers have found a way to create “near-indefinite” volumes of early-stage sperm and egg cells from iPS cells — a milestone that could potentially lead to new infertility treatments.
As new Taiwan leader takes office, a fragile status quo and power struggle at home await
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te (left) and Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim wave to a crowd following his swearing-in at the Presidential Office in Taipei on Monday.
Fuchu Prison adapting to foreign prisoners
From the outside, the light-brown complex that is Fuchu Prison in western Tokyo could easily be mistaken for a city hall.

Podcast

Toshihiro Kinjo (center), a research support technician at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, inspects an audio recording device in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, on April 3 as Masako Ogasawara, a research support specialist at OIST, looks on.
What does climate change sound like in Okinawa?

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