Pushing Japan to remilitarize was never, and still is not, a good idea. This is not just because an arms race in Asia is the last thing the region needs. But also because Japan, consistently unable to face up to its own history, is simply not the country to represent the world’s liberal democracies in Asia, especially as a military power.
The US House of Representatives passed a mammoth US$858 billion military spending bill, putting the US budget for weapons and war-making higher than the next nine countries combined. Also attached to the bill was unprecedented US taxpayer funding for Taiwan’s military.
France and the United Kingdom have ceased support for the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, the deadliest currently in operation. These withdrawals followed a decade of fruitless attempts to end hostilities between the West African nation’s government and its rebel Islamists.
Germany, led by Social Democratic Party (SDP) Chancellor Olaf Scholz, considers China both an essential economic partner and a “systemic rival.” This seemingly contradictory stance has produced political fractures within the coalition government, but it is part of a pragmatic geopolitical strategy.
It’s difficult for me to root for Japan teams in general. It’s not an issue of nationality. It’s a matter of how Japan as a society approaches international sports; we take all the fun out of it.
In the global environmental conference COP27, which is set to conclude today, much of the debate has been focused on whether or not wealthier countries should pay climate reparations to more vulnerable nations.
Ethiopia’s northern province of Tigray is losing ground in its brutal conflict with the central government, placing both the rebel region’s administration and its civilian population in severe jeopardy.
Due to rising inflation, the recent decision to hike the average minimum wage appears set to offer little or no advance to the real quality of life for low-income Japanese. This comes in spite of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s economic policy theme of “New Capitalism,” which is supposed to create a fairer society by enhancing the living standards of ordinary citizens.
The Horniman Museum and Gardens, based in London, has recently agreed to return all 72 of its artifacts that were forcibly taken from Benin City, now part of Nigeria, during a British military operation in 1897.
As a treaty review conference kicked off in New York City, antiwar groups called out nuclear-armed countries—particularly the United States—for not complying with the decades-old agreement.
