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Gwynne Dyer

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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

Aug 23, 2007

Britain's retreat from Iraq

LONDON — "The British have given up and they know they will be leaving Iraq soon," said Muqtada Al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi army, the country's most powerful militia group, in an interview with the Independent. "They have realized this is not a war they should be fighting or one they can win."

COMMENTARY

Aug 16, 2007

Scrambling among the Arctic players

LONDON — Among the headlines I never expected to see, the top three were "Pope marries," "President Bush admits error" and "Canada uses military might," but there it was, staring up at me from a British newspaper: "Canada uses military might in Arctic scramble."

COMMENTARY

Aug 9, 2007

Odds in democracy's favor

LONDON — "There's going to be a civil war." You heard it all the time in the old Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s. People fretted about it constantly in South Africa in 1994. They have been worrying about it in Lebanon for the past year. Now they're predicting it for Pakistan — but nine...

COMMENTARY

Aug 2, 2007

Expect oil to hit $100 a barrel and beyond

LONDON — Nine of the last 10 serious downturns in the world economy followed a spike in the price of oil, and we are heading for another spike, with oil back up near the peak of $78.40 a barrel that it reached almost exactly a year ago.

COMMENTARY

Jul 30, 2007

Blame game since Lockerbie

LONDON — Libya is the land of make-believe, and from a safe distance it can seem comical. The 65-year-old teenager who runs the place, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, has an even stronger commitment to fashion than my 15-year-old daughter (although she has much better taste). But it's a very ugly regime...

COMMENTARY

Jul 26, 2007

Turkish democracy shines

LONDON — The best thing about the outcome of the Turkish election on Sunday is that now the army can't stage a coup. It may still want to: It was certainly making menacing noises about it recently. But after almost half the voters (47 percent) backed the incumbent Justice and Development Party...

COMMENTARY

Jul 24, 2007

When democracy goes bad

LONDON — "We do not want to go back to an elective democracy where corruption becomes all pervasive," Lt. Gen. Moeen U Ahmed, chief of the Bangladesh army, told a conference in Dhaka in April.

COMMENTARY

Jul 14, 2007

New York Times vs. reality

LONDON — The New York Times has been wrong on Iraq for so long that it has become a tradition, and they respect tradition at the Times. Its Monday (July 9) editorial calling for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq caused a great stir in the United States: "It is time for the United States to...

COMMENTARY

Jun 28, 2007

Put yourself in China's shoes

LONDON — The United States is off the hook: last year China overtook the U.S. to become the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. "The tall tree attracts the wind," and from now on China will be the main target of the criticism that used to be directed at the U.S. for refusing to accept binding...

COMMENTARY

Jun 21, 2007

The law is clear on Kosovo

LONDON — The ratio of foreign soldiers to local citizens in Kosovo (16,500 NATO troops to 2 million civilians) is slightly higher than the ratio of American soldiers to Iraqi citizens.

COMMENTARY

Jun 4, 2007

Oceans being emptied of fish

LONDON — When the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission opened in Alaska last Monday, Japan declared that it planned to kill 50 humpback whales as well as the usual minke and fin whales next year in its "scientific" whale hunt (catch them, count them and sell them as food).

COMMENTARY

May 24, 2007

Baltic cyberwar nothing but a squabble

LONDON — Estonia is one of the most wired countries in the world — people even vote online — but for the past three weeks the country has been under a massive cyber-attack that has disabled the Web sites of government ministries, political parties, newspapers, banks and private companies....

COMMENTARY

Apr 19, 2007

Asia's latest great power joins the game

The test would hardly have made the news outside of India if the local air-traffic controllers had posted a warning in advance, but when an Indonesian airliner had to turn around in Indian airspace last Thursday and return to Jakarta to avoid flying into the missile's path, it was bound to draw attention....

COMMENTARY

Apr 7, 2007

Robert Mugabe's final act

LONDON -- It will take a while yet, but the long and brutal reign of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is probably nearing its end. Not because of the democratic opposition at home, whose members are regularly beaten up and sometimes killed by the regime's police. Not even because neighboring countries in southern...

COMMENTARY

Mar 22, 2007

Does religion do more harm than good?

LONDON -- In an opinion poll published in Britain recently, 82 percent of the people polled said that they thought religion does more harm than good. My first reaction, I must admit, was to think: That's what they would say, isn't it? It's not just that suicide bombers give religion a bad name. In "post-Christian...

COMMENTARY

Mar 18, 2007

Blind spot on Africa's population boom

LONDON -- You look at the numbers and you think: "That's impossible." Uganda had about 7 million people at independence in 1962, and in only 45 years it has grown to 30 million. By 2050, there will be 130 million Ugandans, and it will be the 12th biggest country in the world, with more people than Russia...

COMMENTARY

Feb 11, 2007

It's increasingly a walled world after all

LONDON -- If good fences make good neighbors, then the world is experiencing an unprecedented outbreak of neighborliness. They used to wall cities. Now they wall whole countries.

COMMENTARY

Jan 19, 2007

Europe, energy and Russia

LONDON -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a very different attitude toward Russia from the last three or four German chancellors, perhaps because she grew up in former East Germany, under Russian control.

COMMENTARY

Jan 15, 2007

No new U.S. strategy in Iraq

LONDON -- Repeat after me: There is no new U.S. strategy in Iraq. The allies are the same, the enemies are the same, the tactics are the same, even the new American force strength lies within the range that has prevailed since 2003.

COMMENTARY

Jan 7, 2007

Hanging Hussein for the wrong crime kept America's dirty laundry hidden

LONDON -- It was not the Iraqi government but its American masters that chose to execute Saddam Hussein in a great rush as soon as the first sentence was confirmed, thus canceling all the other trials on far graver charges that awaited him. The current Iraqi government had nothing to hide if those trials...

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

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How 'Reiwa moms' are reshaping motherhood in Japan

By Mai Yoshikawa

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