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May 05, 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.
For Ramesh Thakur's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
May 12, 2017
Is the sun setting on the U.S. imperium?
U.S. policy on Asia seems adrift under the Trump administration.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2017
Between Kim Jong Un's bluster and Trump's bluff
A resolution of the North Korean crisis requires a mixed strategy of pressure and engagement, not military threats.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 16, 2017
Trump more believable and moral than Putin?
In the Syrian strikes Trump effectively followed the policy of 'bomb first, prove later' — exactly the sequence Bush followed in Iraq in 2003 to commit the greatest geopolitical blunder since World War II.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2017
Decoding Trump's Syria strike
The use of chemical weapons and the unilateral retaliatory strikes show just how broken and dysfunctional the global order and its key institutions are.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 29, 2017
Don't obstruct efforts to ban nuclear weapons
It is time for the so-called realists to get real about the existential dangers of a world brimming with nuclear weapons.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 9, 2017
India's democracy is strained by illiberalism
India continues to be robustly, even chaotically, democratic. But its freedom is under growing threat.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 1, 2017
The Trump effect and Japan
Japan has an exceptional opportunity, while maneuvering to remain close to Washington, to reduce its unhealthy security and economic dependency on the United States, and to educate the U.S. administration on the merits and benefits of the key planks of a rules-based global order and international cooperation.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 23, 2017
Trump's assault on the liberal international order
It is an irony of history that the president with the least previous foreign policy interest and experience could end up having the biggest impact on global affairs in a century.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 22, 2017
Trump is from Mars, Guterres is from Venus
The U.S. president and U.N. secretary-general are polar opposites, but if the world is to weather the gathering storm, the two will have to work together.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 14, 2017
Australia needs to wake up, grow up
Australia must chart an independent foreign policy according to a Canberra-based calculation of national values and interests.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 8, 2017
A call heard round the world
U.S. President Donald Trump is proving to be a master of bad diplomacy.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 6, 2017
Will Donald Trump's persona destroy his administration?
U.S. President Donald Trump has done immense reputational harm to the U.S.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 10, 2017
Syria and the Hippocratic principle: first do no harm
Western interference has caused far more problems than it has solved across the region from Afghanistan to North Africa.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 4, 2017
Israel throws a U.N. tantrum
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had only himself to blame for the U.S. decision to not veto a U.N. resolution criticising Israel's settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 1, 2016
Trump's effect on U.S. allies
Donald Trump's election could prove a disruptive force in forcing many allies to analyze the costs of the U.S. alliance alongside the benefits.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 27, 2016
Economic and political risks of India's demonetization
Has the Indian government burned down its economic house in order to eradicate the pest of corruption?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 14, 2016
Middle America flips off the oh-so-superior elites
The progressivism of the privileged has lost its appeal in the rust belts of America.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 4, 2016
Rattling the nuclear cage, and look who is terrified
Japan's opposition to a U.N. treaty to ban nuclear weapons puts it on the wrong side of history.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 28, 2016
Aussie race hate law a weapon for identity politics
The Australian anti-discrimination act is used to bludgeon core freedoms that underpin liberal democracy.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2016
Secretary-general for the world
Incoming U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres possesses a rare combination of background, skills and experiences highly relevant to leading the United Nations.
Japan says Biden's description of nation as xenophobic is 'unfortunate'
The National Diet building in Tokyo
With eye on China, defense chiefs agree to bolster interoperability
From left: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Australian defense chief Richard Marles, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro hold a joint news conference in Honolulu on Thursday.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces
Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
Japan drops to 70th in press freedom rankings
A businessman reads a newspaper outside a train station in Tokyo.
Traders spooked by intervention risk trim record yen shorts
Traders edged back from record bets on yen weakness this past week, in a period that included a likely bout of intervention by Japan to prop up the currency.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.

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Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces
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