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August 13, 2025

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COMMENTARY / World

Jun 18, 2009

Ghost of appeasement still haunting EU ties

By Vaclav Havel

PRAGUE — One of the fundamental pillars of Europe's political architecture is a strong and enduring belief in the universal validity of equal, universal, and inalienable human rights.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 17, 2009

Balancing U.S.-China economic ties

By Kenneth Rogoff

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the global economy stabilizes, there is a growing danger that the United States and China will slip back into their precrisis economic patterns, placing themselves and the rest of the world at risk. Despite Chinese official rhetoric about the need for a new global currency to...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 17, 2009

Incoming ambassador Roos is right for the job

By Weston S. Konishi and Robert Dujarric

After months of speculation, U.S. President Barack Obama recently nominated John V. Roos to represent the United States in Tokyo. Roos, like several American ambassadors, earned his position as a top Democratic fundraiser during the U.S. presidential campaign. As the head of a major Silicon Valley law...

COMMENTARY

Jun 17, 2009

Rewriting history in Russia

By Gwynne Dyer

In the Soviet Union, the future was always certain; only the past could change without notice. The signal that it had changed was often the publication of a pseudo-scholarly article that denounced the "falsifications" of the existing version of history.

COMMENTARY

Jun 16, 2009

Jailing U.S. journalists could prove costly

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — Call me a dupe of the commies if that makes you happy — I really don't care at this point. Maybe all these years I have been wrong to argue that we can negotiate with North Korea; maybe my critics are right and the regime does need to be either ignored and further isolated or, in the...

COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE

Jun 16, 2009

Ozawa's residual influence

Even after being forced to resign as Democratic Party of Japan president because of a scandal involving his secretary, Ichiro Ozawa appears to exert strong influence over his successor, Yukio Hatoyama.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jun 14, 2009

To make an Israeli omelet is it necessary to break so many eggs?

By Roger Pulvers

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. . . . Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. . . . Think of it this...

COMMENTARY

Jun 14, 2009

The will to deal imaginatively with a crisis

By Hugh Cortazzi and William A. Masters

LONDON — The report that North Korea had set off a second underground nuclear explosion made headlines here, but European eyes were on issues closer to home, including elections to the European Parliament and the state of the European economy.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 14, 2009

Neither charity nor bulldozers prevent slums

By Caroline Boin

LONDON — After treading the red carpet at the Oscars in Los Angeles in February, the child stars of "Slumdog Millionaire" are on the streets. Mumbai authorities have demolished their flimsy shelters only three months after promising them real houses.

COMMENTARY

Jun 14, 2009

A purge of Parliament is calling

By David Howell and Chang-Tai Hsieh

LONDON — In British politics the familiar scenario is for the opposition to press for an early general election — there being no fixed-term provision in the very flexible British constitution — and for the government of the day to reject all such demands and sit tight.

COMMENTARY

Jun 12, 2009

The deficits of democracy

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON — Britain and Japan have prime ministers who have not been endorsed by the electorate in a general election. Both are hanging on to power and argue that it is their right as prime minister to choose the date for the next election. Under our constitutions this is a valid claim, but is it in accordance...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 12, 2009

Losers can live with Lebanon's 'West' vote

By Paul Salem

BEIRUT — Lebanon's voters have handed a clear defeat to the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance. In a smoothly run and peaceful election, the pro-Western March 14 alliance emerged with a clear majority of 71 seats, compared to 58 seats for its rivals. The results elicited a nearly audible sigh of relief...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person

By Naoko Abe

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