Commentary / Japan Jul 9, 2015
Repairing Japan-China ties
Are the domestic politics of Japan and China antithetical to continued peace between Asia's leading powers?
Tom Plate
Tom Plate, a veteran American columnist and career journalist, is the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. His many books include the "Giants of Asia" series, of which book four, "Conversations with Ban Ki-Moon: The View from the Top," is the latest.
For Tom Plate's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Commentary / World Mar 26, 2015
Where political 'fox' LKY stands in Singapore history
The late Lee Kuan Yew showed the world that economic self-improvement in Singapore had to have public policies grounded in best-practice pragmatisms rather than in ideological schematics.
Commentary / World Dec 14, 2014
Indonesia, Thailand: rising and falling stars
At the moment, no spot on our troubled planet offers a better illustration of the dynamic of citizen participation in politics than Southeast Asia, with triumphant Indonesia and tragic Thailand.
Commentary / World Oct 30, 2014
Will Hong Kong go beyond self-flagellation?
Hong Kong and mother China should be working together on ameliorating the social and economic pressures threatening to pull Hong Kong down far more dramatically and dangerously than today's governance dispute.
Commentary / World Oct 26, 2014
Double-edged media sword
What was not widely known about the late Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Washington Post editor during the Watergate Scandal of the early 1970s, was that he was quite sensitive to the risk of the news media abusing its power when it came to presidential ...
Commentary / World Oct 5, 2014
U.S.-China partnership without tears or fears
In his new book, "World Order," Henry Kissinger wants you to accept what he believes is the 21st reality of China in a "partnership" with the U.S. He warns that a purely military definition of the Asian balance of power "will shade into confrontation."
Commentary / World Jul 31, 2014
Indonesia gets a sprout with a new president
Having conducted an election that produced a successor president without excessive tumult or corruption, Indonesia may well be on its way to emerging as a major global player.
Commentary / World Jun 23, 2014
Ironies of Iraq without end despite the best-laid plans
For President Barack Obama to stay true to his vision, judgment and instinct, he must ride out the extremely uncomfortable unpopularity of openly conceding that the Iraq war — of which he is now the prime custodian — never made sense.
Commentary / World May 12, 2014
It's a Thai thing: ditching the new for the old
More than almost any other political crisis on the face of the earth today, it is the crisis in Thailand that saddens American columnist Tom Plate.
Commentary / World Apr 21, 2014
Beyond good and evil in Ukraine
The U.S. fools no one with its high-minded condemnations of Russan President Vladimir Putin's designs on Ukraine when its own sense of international political morality is also defined by cold calculations of national interest.