Gwynne Dyer - The Japan Times

Today's print edition

Subscribe for more access

Gwynne Dyer

Meta

Gwynne Dyer

Gwynne Dyer has worked as a journalist, broadcaster and lecturer on international affairs for more than 20 years; his articles are published in 45 countries. His book, "Climate Wars," deals with the geopolitical implications of climate change and has been translated into Japanese, French, Russian, Chinese and a number of other languages.

For Gwynne Dyer's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY

Jul 24, 2008

Barack Obama's overseas tour

Barack Obama wants three things out of his tour of the Mideast and Europe. He wants people everywhere to think that he has the answers for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He wants U.S. Jews to believe that he is Israel's unquestioning supporter. And he wants Americans to notice that Europeans would vote...

COMMENTARY

Jul 23, 2008

Omar al-Bashir versus the ICC

All the opposition groups in Darfur celebrated when the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced on July 14 that he was seeking the indictment of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir on the charge of genocide, but almost everybody else had a problem with it. They don't doubt that al-Bashir...

COMMENTARY

Jul 16, 2008

The odds are stacked against an Iran attack

The Iranians have clearly concluded that all the American and Israeli threats to attack them are mere bluff. Israel could not destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities unless it was willing to drop large numbers of nuclear weapons on Iran. The United States could do the job using only conventional weapons,...

COMMENTARY

Jul 9, 2008

After a century has passed, Young Turks at a crossroads

The Ottoman Empire had already been in retreat for over a century when the Young Turk revolution broke out in July, 1908. Some of the Young Turks hoped to save the whole empire; others wanted to abandon the empire and rescue an independent Turkey from the wreckage. The latter group won the argument,...

COMMENTARY

Jul 3, 2008

Malaysia: deja vu all over again

Reading the first reports of the accusations against Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, I had to check the date at the top of the page. Has there been a time slip? Is this file 10 years old?

COMMENTARY

Jun 25, 2008

Zimbabwe: opposition right to cut its losses

Morgan Tsvangirai was right to withdraw from the runoff presidential "election" in Zimbabwe on Sunday. Thousands of his supporters have been kidnapped and tortured by President Robert Mugabe's thugs since the campaign started, and 86 have been murdered already.

COMMENTARY

Jun 11, 2008

Washington and Baghdad: the treaty that isn't

In the Sherlock Holmes story "Silver Blaze," the world's most famous private detective refers to "the curious incident of the dog in the night." "But the dog did nothing in the night," replies his interlocutor. "That was the curious incident," says Holmes. The dogs aren't barking over the U.S.-Iraq treaty,...

COMMENTARY

Jun 4, 2008

Cluster bomb ban is a good start

The British armed forces clung to their cluster bombs like a baby to its rattle, and some suspected that they were trying to sabotage the treaty on behalf of their American friends. But Prime Minister Gordon Brown overruled them, in the end, and Britain was among the hundred countries that agreed to...

COMMENTARY / World

May 28, 2008

Eagerly awaiting a warmer Arctic

What connects oil at $135 a barrel with last month's discovery of huge cracks in the Ward Hunt ice shelf off Ellesmere Island at the top of Canada's Arctic archipelago? And what might connect those two things with a new, even Colder War?

COMMENTARY

May 23, 2008

It'll be Serbia's choice when the sulking stops

LONDON — The rhetoric before the Serbian parliamentary election May 11 was ugly enough, but it has gotten worse since. President Boris Tadic spun the outcome as a victory for the pro-European Union forces when only half the votes were counted, which served his purposes as he is also the leader...

COMMENTARY

May 14, 2008

Why Burma has been trashed for 46 years

LONDON — The Burmese regime is not to blame for the powerful cyclone that struck the Irrawaddy Delta and Yangon early this month, killing up to a hundred thousand people. But it certainly will be to blame for the next wave of deaths if aid does not soon reach the survivors.

COMMENTARY

Apr 28, 2008

A little too much help for Israel

You have to admire the macho instincts of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Asked on the day of the Pennsylvania primary what she would do if Iran made a nuclear attack on Israel, she replied: "If I'm the president, we will attack Iran . . . we would be able to totally obliterate them." And it's perfectly...

COMMENTARY

Apr 6, 2008

Suppose Texas was like Iraq

LONDON — Suppose the shoe were on the other foot. Suppose that the former United States had splintered into half a dozen fragments after the South won the Civil War 145 years ago.

COMMENTARY

Apr 1, 2008

A respectful Russian bluff

LONDON — In February, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia, and most of the NATO countries recognized it. Russia condemned this as an illegal and dangerous precedent, and hinted that it might recognize other breakaway states like Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

COMMENTARY

Mar 22, 2008

Iraq after five years of war

LONDON — March 20 marked five years since U.S. President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq. Can Iraq emerge from this ordeal as a place where people lead reasonably safe and happy lives?

COMMENTARY

Mar 12, 2008

Still stalled in the Middle East

LONDON — "Twenty-four hours a day of rolling news to fill," lamented the senior producer of an all-news radio station recently, "and only two hours of actual news to fill it." But his problem is minor compared to that of people condemned to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where there is...

COMMENTARY

Mar 5, 2008

Russia is on the right path for Russians

LONDON — The coronation of Dmitri Medvedev as Vladimir Putin's anointed successor, by means of a presidential election on Sunday whose outcome was a foregone conclusion, has unleashed the usual deluge of stereotypes about "the Russians" in the Western media. They are backward, they cannot ever...

COMMENTARY

Feb 24, 2008

Dawning of strategic realism in Cyprus

LONDON — To call Tassos Papadopoulos a dinosaur is a slur on the entire Cretaceous era, but at least the age of the dinosaurs has ended in Cyprus. Running for re-election as president last Sunday, Papadopoulos, the man who almost single-handedly scuttled a peace settlement in Cyprus four years...

COMMENTARY

Feb 14, 2008

Why is the Pentagon begging for billions?

LONDON — Last week the Pentagon asked Congress for the biggest defense budget since World War II: $515 billion, plus an additional $70 billion to cover the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for part of the coming year. The United States is proposing to spend more on the armed forces,...

COMMENTARY

Feb 10, 2008

The least bad option outside U.N. rules

LONDON — The Serbian presidential election last Sunday was a near-run thing, but in the end the good guy won. Not that President Boris Tadic is all that wonderful, but he positively glows with virtue in contrast to his opponent Tomislav Nikolic, an ultra-nationalist who served as a government minister...

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Things may look perfect to the outside world, but today's mom is fine with some imperfection at home.

How 'Reiwa moms' are reshaping motherhood in Japan

By Mai Yoshikawa

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Cultural properties:A Fujiya Hotel insider’s view

Cultural properties:A Fujiya Hotel insider’s view

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

international-reports