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August 09, 2025
 

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Brahma Chellaney

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Brahma Chellaney
Brahma Chellaney, a longstanding contributor to The Japan Times, is a geostrategist and the author of "Asian Juggernaut" (Harper, 2010) and "Water: Asia’s New Battlefield" (Georgetown University Press, 2011), which won the 2012 Bernard Schwartz Award. He is professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi.
COMMENTARY
Aug 7, 2010
The NPT's uncertain future
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's coming into force. Despite its central role in shaping the global nuclear order, the NPT's future looks anything but promising.
COMMENTARY
Jul 21, 2010
Don't underestimate ASEM
One of the less-noticed initiatives in the world is the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), designed to foster closer cooperation between the old economic giants of Europe and the new economic powers of Asia — the two diverse but culturally rich continents that together represent half of the world's GDP and...
COMMENTARY
Jul 5, 2010
China now exports its convicts
Relieving pressure on overcrowded national prisons by employing convicts as laborers at Chinese-run projects in the developing world is a novel strategy China has adopted — an approach that is certain to create new backlashes against Chinese businesses overseas, besides highlighting the country's egregious...
COMMENTARY
Jun 23, 2010
America's China policy flop
Success breeds confidence, and rapid success spawns arrogance. That, in a nutshell, is the China problem facing Asian states and the West. But no country faces a bigger dilemma on China than the United States because the present American policy simply isn't advancing its objectives.
COMMENTARY
Jun 6, 2010
Decks are stacked against China keeping its stake in Korea game
KOREAN DEMILITARIZED ZONE — One of the last Cold War relics, the Demilitarized Zone that cuts the Korean Peninsula in half, is the world's most fortified frontier. Although this division has prevailed for almost six decades, it is unthinkable that it can continue indefinitely, despite renewed inter-Korean...
COMMENTARY
Apr 15, 2010
Why precious is strategic
Water, food, mineral ores and fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas are resources of the greatest strategic import. They hold the key to human development and, in the case of water and food, to even human survival.
COMMENTARY
Feb 24, 2010
Three lessons from Copenhagen
The world now accepts that protecting our atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere and even cyberspace — the "global commons" — is the responsibility of all countries. Enforcing that norm is proving the difficult part.
COMMENTARY
Feb 7, 2010
U.S. Afpak path comes full circle
NEW DELHI — What U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has been pursuing in Afghanistan for the past one year has now received international imprimatur, thanks to the well-scripted London conference. Four words sum up that strategy: Surge, bribe and run.
COMMENTARY
Jan 20, 2010
Swords crossed in Sri Lanka
Two celebrated heroes who, as president and army chief, helped end Sri Lanka's long and brutal civil war against the Tamil Tigers are now crossing political swords. Whichever candidate wins Sri Lanka's Jan. 26 presidential election will have to lead that small but strategically important island-nation...
COMMENTARY
Jan 13, 2010
Asia's changing dynamics
With Asia in transition and the specter of a power imbalance looming large, it has become imperative to invest in institutionalized cooperation to reinforce the region's strategic stability. After all, not only is Asia becoming the pivot of global geopolitical change, but Asian challenges are also playing...
COMMENTARY
Jan 6, 2010
China wants it both ways
China is a schizophrenic power, a developing country on select international issues but a rising superpower that sees itself in the same league as the United States in other matters, with its new muscular confidence on open display. At the recent Copenhagen climate-change summit meeting, China was the...
COMMENTARY
Dec 30, 2009
The Japan-India partnership to power a multipolar Asia
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's India visit is part of Japan's growing economic and strategic engagement with that country. Given that the balance of power in Asia will be determined by events as much in the Indian Ocean rim as in East Asia, Tokyo is keen to work with New Delhi to promote peace and stability...
COMMENTARY
Dec 10, 2009
Asia's new strategic partners
The recently concluded India-Australia security agreement has come at a time when tectonic power shifts are challenging Asian strategic stability. Asia has come a long way since the emergence of two Koreas, two Chinas, two Vietnams and a partitioned India. It has risen dramatically as the world's main...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 17, 2009
Asia benefited most from fall of Berlin Wall
NEW DELHI — By marking the Cold War's end and the looming collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago transformed global geopolitics. But no continent benefited more than Asia, whose dramatic economic rise since 1989 has occurred at a speed and scale without parallel in world...
COMMENTARY
Nov 14, 2009
China-India tensions rising
NEW DELHI — The India-China relationship has entered choppy waters due to a perceptible hardening in the Chinese stance. Anti-India rhetoric in the state-run Chinese media has intensified, even as China has stepped up military pressure along the disputed Himalayan frontier through cross-border incursions....
COMMENTARY
Oct 6, 2009
Challenges for China concern political future, not economics
NEW DELHI — Six decades after it was founded, the People's Republic of China has made some remarkable achievements. A backward, impoverished state in 1949, it has risen dramatically to now command respect and awe — but such success has come at great cost to its own people.
COMMENTARY
Sep 19, 2009
Colombo risks squandering Sri Lanka's hard-won peace
If Sri Lanka is to become a tropical paradise again, it must build enduring peace. This will only occur through genuine interethnic equality, and a transition from being a unitary state to being a federation that grants provincial and local autonomy.
COMMENTARY
Sep 14, 2009
An advantageous U.S. exit
NEW DELHI — America's war in Afghanistan is approaching a tipping point, with doubts about President Barack Obama's strategy rising. Yet, after dispatching 21,000 additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan, Obama is considering sending another 14,000 combat troops there. Let's be clear: America's Afghan...
COMMENTARY
Aug 29, 2009
U.S. should engage Burma
By rendering its sanctions instrument blunt through overuse, Washington has dissipated its leverage against Burma, North Korea and Iran, and run out of viable options. The Obama administration, therefore, has wisely sought to open lines of communication with these countries and review policy options....
COMMENTARY
Jul 15, 2009
China's false monoculture
By blanketing the oil-rich Xinjiang with troops, China's rulers may have subdued the Uighur revolt, which began in Urumqi, the regional capital, and spread to other heavily guarded towns like Hotan and Kashgar, the ancient cultural center whose old city is to be razed and redeveloped to help drain supposed...
How Pakistan shot down India's cutting-edge fighter using Chinese gear
An Indian Air Force pilot gets out of a Rafale fighter jet during its induction ceremony at an air force station in Ambala, India, September 2020.
Trump: The $550 billion pledged by Japan is 'our money'
U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday. He told CNBC that investment pledges are like signing bonuses.
The United States imposes 15% 'reciprocal' tariff on most Japanese goods
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the White House on Wednesday.
Japan's inheritance tax is high, unforgiving and sometimes avoidable
The National Tax Agency at the Ministry of Finance, Kasumigaseki, Tokyo. Japanese tax authorities can bill foreign residents in Japan for assets inherited globally.
Photographer Bleg Bayraktar is winning social media with politeness
A video on Bayraktar's Instagram account of the Belgian photographer approaching an elderly worker in Tokyo's Shibuya has gone viral, garnering almost 9 million views.
Cheer with caution: Expert advises sports fans have game plan for extreme heat
A Cardinals fan fans himself during the seventh inning of a game against the Pirates in St. Louis, Missouri, in June 2022.
Japan's inheritance tax is high, unforgiving and sometimes avoidable
The National Tax Agency at the Ministry of Finance, Kasumigaseki, Tokyo. Japanese tax authorities can bill foreign residents in Japan for assets inherited globally.
Will the movement seeking Ishiba’s resignation succeed?
Liberal Democratic Party youth division head Yasutaka Nakasone (center) and other members speak to reporters in Tokyo on July 25.
Photographer Bleg Bayraktar is winning social media with politeness
A video on Bayraktar's Instagram account of the Belgian photographer approaching an elderly worker in Tokyo's Shibuya has gone viral, garnering almost 9 million views.
Australia announces new warships will come from Japan
The Maritime Self-Defense Force's Mogami-class frigate Niyodo sails at an undisclosed location in this image released Tuesday.

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