Kurt Campbell, the Biden administration’s National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, is the “brain” behind much of what the Pentagon and US State Department are doing in East Asia today, but his policy approaches do not correspond with the realities of a global US empire now in rapid decline.
Recent revelations regarding the Japanese government’s purchase of US military drones underlines the East Asian nation’s unwillingness to refuse the “requests” of their US allies as they relate to the acquisition of weapons systems.
Since California first legalized medical cannabis in 1996, and Colorado and Washington followed with adult-use cannabis legalization in 2012, there has been an increasing global movement towards medical legalization, relaxing cannabis laws in general, and in some cases full legalization of adult-use cannabis. Even Japan may now be taking notice.
Ahead of Donald Trump’s second visit to Japan in 2019, a Japanese hotelier invited the US president’s former chief strategist and senior advisor Steve Bannon to give a “special lecture” in Tokyo. That hotelier’s name is Toshio Motoya.
Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to Japan has been called a “traitor” back home after making controversial comments about the planned release of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima plant.
The Japanese government is demanding a national effort to host the Olympics. But it’s time to cancel the Games and put the national effort into supporting nurses and other healthcare professionals who are now working to save lives.
The Covid-19 crisis became a dominating issue for the world, and Japan is no exception. This is a timeline of the events so far.
This SNA Speakeasy features Hiroki Takeuchi on the theme of “Japan at the Center of Trade Rulemaking in Asia-Pacific.”
This SNA Speakeasy features Glen S. Fukushima on the theme of “US Presidential Election and US-East Asian Relations.”
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of July 2020.
