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August 22, 2025

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COMMENTARY

Jun 20, 2004

Kabul will need homegrown solutions

By Farhan Bokhari

ISLAMABAD -- Renegade warriors who continue to mount attacks on U.S. military troops and Afghan government soldiers have effectively upset the runup to Washington-backed presidential elections scheduled in four months.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 20, 2004

Popular return of a dynasty

By Ramesh Thakur

It is generally accepted in India and abroad that, in the changed political landscape of India, Sonia Gandhi is the power behind the scenes. She is the convener of the ruling multiparty alliance. Her son Rahul Gandhi, a new member of Parliament from the "family" seat of Amethi in northern India (which...

EDITORIALS

Jun 19, 2004

SDF's new role raises questions

Reiterating in effect what he had told U.S. President George W. Bush in a Japan-U.S. summit earlier this month, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi announced on Thursday that Japanese troops now stationed in Iraq will participate in the U.S.-led multinational force following the June 30 transfer of sovereignty....

COMMENTARY

Jun 19, 2004

Where has America gone?

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- The 60th anniversary commemoration of the D-Day landings focused attention on the nature of the relationship between Europe and America. The liberation of France and the overthrow of the Nazis in 1944-45 could not have been achieved without American forces. Britain had stood alone against Adolf...

EDITORIALS

Jun 18, 2004

Verdict on Koizumi beckons

Debate in an election-year Diet session is liable to lead to confrontation. So it was with the 150-day regular session that ended Wednesday. With an Upper House ballot set for next month, the ruling and opposition parties faced off on both domestic and foreign policy issues, sometimes resorting to heavy-handed...

COMMENTARY

Jun 18, 2004

Shifting rightwing goal posts

By Gregory Clark

Japan's increasingly powerful rightwing has gone to some strange lengths to condemn Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's recent admirable efforts to improve relations with North Korea.

EDITORIALS

Jun 17, 2004

Reconciliation under house arrest

Defying international opinion, Myanmar's military government continues to rule the country with an iron hand. It is hard to understand why the ruling generals, despite their increasing isolation at home and abroad, maintain such a hardline stance. They should know that genuine democratic reform is the...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 17, 2004

A fresh start in the West Sea

By John Barry Kotch

SEOUL -- Although the recent agreement between North and South Korea to set up a hotline, a shared radio frequency and a mutually recognizable naval signaling system to avoid future West Sea clashes -- which claimed scores of lives in 1999 and 2002 -- is certainly good news, it treats the symptoms and...

EDITORIALS

Jun 16, 2004

New defense laws best left unused

Monday's Diet approval of defense-related bills signifies that Japanese security policy has entered a new phase. Now, Japan has a legal framework for defending itself against military attacks. This is no cause for complacency, however. The real challenge for the nation is to make greater efforts for...

COMMENTARY

Jun 16, 2004

What fruit has Korean summit born?

By Ralph Cossa

HONOLULU -- This week marks the fourth anniversary of the historic June 13-15, 2000, Pyongyang meeting between then-South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and North Korea's current "Dear Leader," Kim Jong Il. It was a meeting that forever changed the geopolitics of the Korean Peninsula. It made the impossible...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 16, 2004

U.S. troop pullouts: There's a political message, too

By Richard Halloran

The implications of the forthcoming withdrawal of one-third of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea and two army divisions from Germany are as much political as military since both nations have been the site of vigorous anti-American eruptions in the last few years.

EDITORIALS

Jun 15, 2004

Managing security alliances

The administration of President George W. Bush has recognized that new security threats and new military capabilities require a new U.S. global defense posture. Nowhere are those changes more evident than Northeast Asia, and on the Korean Peninsula in particular. The redeployment of U.S. forces in South...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.

From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

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