author

 
Menu
Search
 
June 10, 2025
 

Today's print edition

Home Delivery
Subscribe for more access
Brahma Chellaney

Meta

Twitter

@Chellaney

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.
While India’s gross domestic product is still smaller than China’s, the country is currently the world’s fastest-growing major economy and is projected to account for 12.9% of global growth over the next five years.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 18, 2023
India’s quiet rise as Asia's other demographic giant
While India appears stable and resurgent under Modi, its future will depend on its ability to maintain political stability and rapid economic growth.
Chinese leaders seem to believe the country has a narrow window of opportunity to achieve global preeminence before unfavorable demographic and geopolitical trends catch up with it.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 15, 2023
China’s dangerous secrets
China's secretive approach to projects and activities, including its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, should be a significant concern.
Indian border security force soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint along a highway leading to Ladakh in Kashmir's Ganderbal district in June 2020.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 6, 2023
China-India border conflict holds lessons for Japan, too
India has learned that bilateral ties and economic interdependence do not constrain China's territorial ambitions. That is a lesson Japan should heed.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 31, 2023
Bedlam in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Pakistan's political unrest, coupled with the Afghan Taliban regime's support for terrorists, has grave implications for international security.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2023
It’s in America’s interest to end the Ukraine crisis
A negotiated cease-fire is the only way out of the current military deadlock in Ukraine, and it must happen before Russia and China cement a strategic axis that weakens the West.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 17, 2023
South Asia’s looming water war
The Indus Waters Treaty is nowhere near meeting India's needs and it is in Pakistan’s interest to remedy that.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 13, 2023
Unpacking the limits to Japan’s military awakening
Japan must find ways to frustrate China's furtive efforts to alter the regional status quo while avoiding the risk of open combat.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 18, 2022
Are Europe’s Russia sanctions a shot in the foot?
If the European Union is enduring severe economic pain while Russia's Ukraine war proceeds apace, sanctions become tantamount to self-flagellation.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 4, 2022
A spotlight on Chinese debt bondage
China's creditor imperialism holds far-reaching risks — both for the debtors themselves and for the future of the international order.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 17, 2022
The Afghan abyss: One year after the U.S. pullout
The Taliban regime is behaving as expected, turning the country into a breeding ground for international terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and mass migration.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2022
The fall of the house of Rajapaksa
Through a combination of authoritarianism, nepotism, cronyism, and hubris, the Rajapaksa family weighed down Sri Lanka's economy with more debt than it could possibly bear.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2022
Hydropower is a bad bargain
There is no question that the world must cut its reliance on fossil fuels. but building more hydroelectric dams is not the way due to the environmental impact they have.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 20, 2022
A clash of titans: The forgotten India-China border row
Chinese President Xi Jinping has picked a border fight that he cannot win, and transformed a previously conciliatory India into a long-term foe.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 27, 2022
The 'Quad' at a crossroads
The Indo-Pacific's four leading democracies can hold as many leaders' summits as they want, but without a clear strategic vision or agenda, the 'Quad' will have little impact.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 25, 2022
Putin’s war and the mirage of the rules-based order
Rules-based order and economic interdependence has not stopped countries like Russia and China from engaging in relentless expansionism at the expense of their neighbors.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2022
The new global Cold War clouds India’s tightrope walk
India's solo struggle to rein in an expansionist China in the icy Himalayan region has helped influence its measured response to the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 20, 2022
Will the U.S. finally make the pivot to Asia?
Biden's Indo-Pacific strategy is essentially an exercise in public diplomacy, while Trump's strategic framework was formulated to advance a policy of a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 17, 2022
America is focusing on the wrong enemy
U.S. President Joe Biden is treating a “rogue” Russia as a peer competitor, when he should be focused on the challenge from America's actual peer, China.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2022
The great COVID-19 coverup
COVID-19 deaths make all the headlines, but what flies under the radar are the increased rates of obesity, unemployment, depression, alcoholism and suicides.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 15, 2021
Beijing turns to hybrid 'lawfare' to expand its borders
China has become quite adept at waging “lawfare” — the misuse and abuse of law for political and strategic ends.
Explosion at U.S. air base in Okinawa injures four
The Kadena U.S. Air Force Base in Okinawa Prefecture. An emergency call was made at around 11:15 a.m. reporting that a small-scale explosion occurred at a storage depot for unexploded shells.
Japan eyes tougher rules for foreign residents and tax hike for tourists
A tax-free shop in Kyoto in April 2024. Last week, members of a Liberal Democratic Party study group drafted a proposal seeking to scrap the country's tax-free shopping system altogether.
Hakuho vows to grow sumo globally after exiting domestic sports body
Former yokozuna Hakuho gives a news conference to announce his retirement from the Japan Sumo Association and reveal his future plans in Tokyo on Monday.
Victims mourned 17 years after Akihabara indiscriminate attack
A mourner prays for the victims of a stabbing rampage on a street in Tokyo's Akihabara district on the 17th anniversary of the incident on Sunday.
Top banker vows loyalty to DEI at Tokyo Pride Parade as Trump’s pushback rages
Akihiko Ogino, president and CEO of Daiwa Securities Group, says Japan should press ahead with diversity initiatives as he attends the Tokyo Pride parade in the capital's Shibuya area on Sunday.
‘Kokuho’ finds riveting drama on and off the kabuki stage
Lee Sang-il’s "Kokuho" stars Ryo Yoshizawa as an orphan from a yakuza clan who rises through the world of kabuki to become a star performer.
Junto Nakatani remains on collision course with Naoya Inoue after latest win
Junto Nakatani celebrates after defeating Ryosuke Nishida to unify the WBC and IBF bantamweight titles at Ariake Coliseum on Sunday.
At a mountainside shrine, yuzu candy made by imperial decree
Descendents of the original "Gonin Byakushō" families are the only vendors allowed inside the gates of Kotohira Shrine, where they sell "kamiyoame," a golden-hued, yuzu-flavored candy meant for good fortune.
What can Kenji Yanobe’s cosmic cats teach us about humanity?
Kenji Yanobe’s spacesuited cats are the main characters of “Ship’s Cat Island,” the inaugural exhibition at Hyper Museum Hanno in Saitama Prefecture.
From ridicule to redemption: Rice crisis returns Koizumi to the spotlight
Agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi speaks to the media as he inspects a warehouse storing stockpiled rice in Kanagawa Prefecture on May 30.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy
Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS note

Read more

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER