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August 08, 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.
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.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 24, 2021
Taliban turning Afghanistan into narco-terrorist state
Afghanistan accounts for 85% of the global acreage under opium cultivation, making the Taliban the world's largest drug cartel.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2021
Defending Taiwan means ensuring world peace
Beyond compromising freedom of navigation in a crucial region, a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would upend the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2021
Biden shifts to a more conciliatory approach toward China
Biden's actions appear out of step with reality given that an ambitious China is actively working to supplant the U.S. as the world's preeminent power while waging a cold war against it.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 10, 2021
A crippling blow to the global 'war on terror'
The U.S. has come full circle by ceding control of Afghanistan to the same organization that gave Osama bin Laden the base from which to plot the 9/11 attacks.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 17, 2021
Biden has only himself to blame for the Taliban's victory
There was no strategic imperative for U.S. President Joe Biden to order a hasty pullout of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, yet he did.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2021
The great COVID-19 stonewall of China
Beijing has been doing everything in its power to prevent an independent forensic investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 2, 2021
Xi opens a Pandora's box with antagonism of India
Chinese aggression and the breaching of border agreements has made the rise of a more antagonistic and militarily stronger India a certainty.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2021
Biden’s Afghan blunder
Joe Biden's approach entails effectively admitting that a terrorist militia has defeated the world's most powerful military, and then handing Afghanistan back to that militia.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 22, 2021
With massive dams, China finds a weapon in water
Giant dams damage ecosystems, drive freshwater species to extinction, cause deltas to retreat and often emit more greenhouse gases than fossil-fuel power plants.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 2021
Did China avoid blame for causing the pandemic?
The WHO first learned of the COVID-19 outbreak from Taiwan, news articles, a public bulletin and from an automated alert system that scans the internet for mentions of unexplained pneumonia.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 12, 2021
The Western news media’s lurid Orientalism
Western media have been filled with images of dead bodies and other graphic scenes that generally would not be shown following a similar disaster in a Western country.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 9, 2021
Colonization by other means: China’s debt-trap diplomacy
In stark contrast to China's loans, interest rates for Japan's infrastructure loans to developing countries, for example, mostly run below half a percent.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2021
China’s Himalayan salami tactics
China's new border villages in the Himalayas are the equivalent of its artificially created islands in the South China Sea, whose map Xi's regime has redrawn without firing a shot.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 18, 2021
China catalyzes the consolidation of the 'Quad'
The surprise from the March 12 summit was that — unlike the past Quad foreign ministers' meetings — it yielded a joint statement, which articulated a clear-eyed vision.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 10, 2021
Don’t isolate Myanmar
Crippling U.S.-led sanctions from the late 1980s paved the way for China to become Myanmar's dominant trading partner and investor.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 1, 2021
On China, Biden should be like Trump
The contrast with President Donald Trump's divisive, isolationist rhetoric could not be sharper. But adopting a different tone is easier than reversing America's relative decline.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2021
Free vaccines and India’s humanitarian diplomacy
India is leveraging its manufacturing heft by embarking on humanitarian diplomacy — the supply of free vaccines to countries in its extended neighborhood.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World / Beyond COVID-19
Dec 28, 2020
Xi Jinping’s strategic overreach in the Himalayas
China's ability to pursue its geopolitical ambitions is diminishing rapidly. Nowhere is this more apparent than in its relations with India.
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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