Commentary / World Apr 25, 2017
Between Kim Jong Un's bluster and Trump's bluff
A resolution of the North Korean crisis requires a mixed strategy of pressure and engagement, not military threats.
Ramesh Thakur
Ramesh Thakur is Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University; adjunct professor, Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law, Griffith University, and editor-in-chief of Global Governance from Jan. 1, 2013. He began writing for The Japan Times in 1998 as Vice Rector of the United Nations University.
For Ramesh Thakur's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Commentary / World Apr 16, 2017
Trump more believable and moral than Putin?
In the Syrian strikes Trump effectively followed the policy of "bomb first, prove later" — exactly the sequence Bush followed in Iraq in 2003 to commit the greatest geopolitical blunder since World War II.
Commentary / World Apr 10, 2017
Decoding Trump's Syria strike
The use of chemical weapons and the unilateral retaliatory strikes show just how broken and dysfunctional the global order and its key institutions are.
Commentary / Japan Mar 29, 2017
Don't obstruct efforts to ban nuclear weapons
It is time for the so-called realists to get real about the existential dangers of a world brimming with nuclear weapons.
Commentary / World Mar 9, 2017
India's democracy is strained by illiberalism
India continues to be robustly, even chaotically, democratic. But its freedom is under growing threat.
Commentary / Japan Mar 1, 2017
The Trump effect and Japan
Japan has an exceptional opportunity, while maneuvering to remain close to Washington, to reduce its unhealthy security and economic dependency on the United States, and to educate the U.S. administration on the merits and benefits of the key planks of a rules-based global order ...
Commentary / World Feb 23, 2017
Trump's assault on the liberal international order
It is an irony of history that the president with the least previous foreign policy interest and experience could end up having the biggest impact on global affairs in a century.
Commentary / World Feb 22, 2017
Trump is from Mars, Guterres is from Venus
The U.S. president and U.N. secretary-general are polar opposites, but if the world is to weather the gathering storm, the two will have to work together.
Commentary / World Feb 14, 2017
Australia needs to wake up, grow up
Australia must chart an independent foreign policy according to a Canberra-based calculation of national values and interests.
Commentary / World Feb 8, 2017
A call heard round the world
U.S. President Donald Trump is proving to be a master of bad diplomacy.