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Andreas Kluth
For Andreas Kluth's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2022
Europe is faking solidarity, and Putin knows it
As shown by a compromise on saving natural gas, the EU can't defend itself against its enemies yet.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 25, 2022
Sweating amid extreme heat while worrying about future shivering
Europe is baking under record heat due to climate change and can expect a frigid winter due to Putin.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 1, 2022
With 100 million refugees, the migrant crisis has barely begun
War and famine will make millions more take flight. And then comes climate change. How will the world cope?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 30, 2022
The best outcome for Ukraine in this conflict
For the aggressor, Russia, it appears, all possible outcomes are shades of terrible — a sign of just how colossally Moscow miscalculated. For the defenders, most scenarios are also dire.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 27, 2022
What’s the best way to deal with that bully? Join NATO.
Membership would make Sweden and Finland safer and the alliance stronger. But there's a time window of vulnerability.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 6, 2022
Russia has unleashed a new age of nuclear proliferation
Even if Vladimir Putin is bluffing on using nuclear weapons, his threat is more frightening than anything since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 11, 2022
‘Sapiens’? Humans aren’t wise, just too smart for our own good.
Perhaps that's what defines our species — neither wisdom nor folly, but the ability, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still function.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 1, 2021
What’s worst about omicron so far is the uncertainty
How should the world respond to omicron? We just have to wait as there is information that we don't yet have. And for many, the waiting itself is the problem.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 5, 2021
Climate change will kill national sovereignty as we know it
In a world where all countries collectively face the planetary emergency of global warming, sovereignty is simply no longer a tenable concept.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 3, 2021
How Russia and Belarus are weaponizing migration
Belarus has been flying refugees from various points in the Middle East — Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria — then herding them toward neighboring countries that are members of the European Union.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2021
Nord Stream 2 will overshadow U.S.-German relations for years
Called Nord Stream 2 and more than 90% finished, it doubles the amount of gas Russia can export directly under the Baltic Sea to northwestern Europe.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 1, 2021
Science shows why simplifying is hard and complicating is easy
Spotting solutions that are simple and elegant, in other words, requires mental effort or what the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman calls slow as opposed to fast thinking.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 5, 2021
What’s better in a pandemic: federalism or a central state?
How, in a pandemic, do you balance regional autonomy and flexible local responses with national coordination and coherence?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 25, 2021
We must start planning for a permanent pandemic
SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), protean and elusive as it is, may become our permanent enemy, like the flu but worse.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 19, 2021
Smell in the time of COVID-19
Smell, as much of the world is discovering in the pandemic, has long been our most underrated sense.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 7, 2021
The risk of nuclear cataclysm is increasing
To make the global matrix even more complex, there are seven other nuclear powers to consider. Of these North Korea appears most unhinged. But China is the most ambitious.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2021
mRNA vaccines could vanquish COVID-19 today, cancer tomorrow
Therein lies mRNA's bigger promise: It can tell our cells to make whatever protein we want. That includes the antigens of many other diseases besides COVID-19.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 16, 2020
A letter from 9 million U.S. expats to Janet Yellen
This change would align American taxation of individuals with the systems of all other developed countries. It would free us expats to live, earn, save and invest as other people do.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 15, 2020
Here’s to the immigrant heroes behind the BioNTech vaccine
Their journey as Turkish Germans cannot have been easy. Discrimination, overt or subtle, is rife in German society.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2020
Would a universal basic income make us lazy or creative?
We are indeed in the midst of a digital transformation that will destroy many old jobs and create many new ones, and we need structures that help people adapt.

Longform

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.
Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree