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Mark Leonard
For Mark Leonard's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump attends the NATO summit in Watford, England, in December 2019.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 3, 2024
The Trump effect takes Europe
There is a chance that the Trump effect could leave the trans-Atlantic order stronger than it has been for a long time.
Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hold discussions in Kyiv in September 2022.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 22, 2023
Europe needs a new Ukraine strategy
The European Union’s decision to start accession talks with Ukraine represents a symbolic victory rather than a practical one.
The European Union finds itself at a crossroads of balancing national borders, economic autonomy and liberal values.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 23, 2023
The geopolitics of EU enlargement
The European bloc appears to be moving toward radical reinvention.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the White House in Washington on Saturday.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 5, 2023
The global consequences of the Israel-Hamas war
The EU’s shambolic response to the Israel-Hamas war has made China’s forceful reaction all the more notable.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 21, 2023
The post-American Middle East
The recent cease-fire between Israel and Islamic Jihad, the detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the de-escalation in Yemen have all been accomplished with minimal Western involvement.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2023
The Ukraine war and European identity
A battle for the soul of Europe is brewing beneath the surface of the Ukraine war and next year’s European Parliament elections could serve as its first battleground.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 19, 2023
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s idea of a new world order
To present a compelling alternative to China's vision of world order, the West should stop asking others to defend the existing one and start recruiting partners to build on a new vision.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2023
When mob diplomacy rules the day
As the recent Chinese balloon saga showed, public opinion is increasingly in the driver’s seat, and it is steering international relations away from open, honest dialogue.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 1, 2023
What to expect from the next round of globalization
There is growing support for the idea that the world is experiencing not 'deglobalization' but rather 're-globalization,' owing to accelerating changes in energy and technology.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 2022
It is time Europe begins Russia-proofing itself
The West, and especially the European Union, must get serious about positioning itself for a protracted and multi-pronged conflict with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 30, 2022
Preparing for the long war
Vladimir Putin's latest moves suggest that Russia is settling in for a long war of attrition that will test European resolve.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2022
Ukraine’s war viewed from China
Westerners regard Russia's war as an attack on the rules-based order, but Chinese scholars see it as another harbinger of the final curtain on U.S. and Western hegemony.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 3, 2022
European peace project forced to confront war
Born of the need to preserve peace on a historically war-torn continent, the EU and its political leaders are now being forced to rethink some of their most important principles.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 1, 2022
The decline and fall of 'Davos Man'
The Ukraine invasion loomed large at this year's annual World Economic Forum, where political and business leaders once gathered to celebrate globalization and pursue more of it.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 25, 2022
Europe’s soft-power problem
What is most off-putting is the way that Europeans tend to universalize their own experience, often assuming that what is right for them is right for others.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2022
Beijing becomes a rising star in the global rule-maker race
In the coming decades, the biggest global threat will not be China the rule-breaker, but China the rule-maker.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 30, 2021
In an ‘age of unpeace,’ civilians become new pawns of war
While migration has become a political football in Western Europe, it has been fully weaponized in an obscure strip of land between Belarus and Poland.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 3, 2021
Why the COP26 climate summit will fail
From Brazil and Australia to China and the U.S., countries are trying to game climate negotiations in order to shift the costs of adaptation onto others.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2021
The false promise of AUKUS
AUKUS comes hot on the heels of the U.S.' chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and thus is being held up as evidence that the Biden administration is competent on foreign policy.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2021
The end of the 'forever war' in Afghanistan will not bring peace
Many in the West who attack Joe Biden's Afghanistan policy are in fact upset about the return of brutal geopolitical competition.

Longform

High-end tourism is becoming more about the kinds of experiences that Japan's lesser-known places can provide.
Can Japan lure the jet-set class off the beaten path?