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December 22, 2024
 

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William Pfaff
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2015
A shift in U.K. foreign policy?
The British election in May could produce dramatic outcomes in trans-Atlantic and trans-channel relations.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 2015
France, U.K.'s right bark louder than they bite
France and Britain's nationalist parties attract great attention because of their dramatic character but are hard to take too seriously.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2015
Obstacles and opportunities in the Lausanne agreement
The framework agreement reached last week on Iran's nuclear program points the way toward an isolated and disempowered U.S. depending on the choices it makes.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 3, 2015
Putin and the neoconservatives
The national ambitions harbored by Vladimir Putin and American neoconservatives are troublingly similar.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2015
U.S. foreign policy founders on ignorance and arrogance
If it's true that President Barack Obama is unable to dominate the neoconservative faction in the State Department and the Pentagon, it makes the political nonsense involving Mideast myth-addicted members of the U.S. Congress pale in comparison.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 20, 2015
U.S. alienating European allies
Trans-Atlantic relations are worse than they have been in some years, as Europeans widely attribute the new jihadism, the chaos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, the newly proclaimed Islamic State group, tension with Iran, and the sinister turn of events in Israel/Palestine to American irresponsibility and adventurism.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 13, 2015
Ukraine is worst of Obama's many foreign policy disasters
If U.S. President Barack Obama is to be blamed for errors with Libya, the Mideast and especially Ukraine, it is also true that his foreign policies have reflected a consensus in the U.S. governing class and popular opinion alike that America must always be 'first.'
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2015
Stepping back from the edge
There is a solution to the crisis in Ukraine, which is to leave well enough alone before something really bad happens.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 27, 2015
Netanyahu tars Europe for anti-Semitism of terrorists
As he beats the drum for his Likud's Party re-election in mid-March, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu falsely asserts that anti-Semitism is responsible for growing European and American hostility toward Israel.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 20, 2015
Uses, and abuses, of history in the Middle East conflict
There remains in the U.S. an incorrigible conviction that it is the 'indispensable' nation, and that it alone can bring peace to nations. And that's done by more intervention and war, splitting nations in civil, tribal and sectarian battles in which the U.S. chooses sides and nominates the leaders.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 6, 2015
Time for EU and U.S. to step back from Ukraine conflict
For the first time since 1990, nuclear war is considered a possibility, all because of the conflict in east Ukraine. The U.S. and its European allies have been the aggressors in this confrontation with Russia, and they are the ones who can call it off.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 30, 2015
Eroding language of austerity
After years of trudging through an economic slough of austerity, guarded by German warders, that left southern European states near to despair, the EU can see a ribbon of the light of dawn upon the horizon.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2015
Damping the hysteria fanning Islamic alienation in the West
Much of the American reaction to the Charlie Hebdo episode has been fixed on launching an even larger military intervention in the Middle East, as if that could do any good addressing a problem inside the Western countries themselves.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 16, 2015
France defies the jihadists
To one who witnessed the transformation fear exacted from America's governing elite by the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the jihad killings last week in France seemed to produce a colossal reaction that was not one of fear at all.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 9, 2015
Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox
Today's crisis in Islamic society dates from its loss of unity in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Foreigners will never achieve peace and unity for them.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 2014
Is Israel headed for 'an abyss'?
Settlement policies, military actions and now the Israeli national election in March and the U.S. elections in 2016 threaten to isolate Israel totally from the world of democracies.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 19, 2014
Broken U.S. moral compass
The most disturbing and basic question with regard to the maintenance of Guantanamo and any one of the so-called Black Sites in recent years is why American officials seemed to want so badly to torture when to do so was known — even to the CIA — to be so unprofitable.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 12, 2014
A rude awakening for America
The American pivot to Asia was the product of people in Washington who only think in terms of military power — as in trying to annex Ukraine and Georgia to NATO and the EU. There are new ways of thinking in China and even Russia.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 28, 2014
Hagel leaves a Cabinet adrift
Former U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's real problem seems to have been to support too many wars for President Barack Obama and not enough for the Pentagon.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 21, 2014
Obama is wrong on Ukraine
U.S. President Barack Obama needs to recognize that the crisis in Ukraine must be resolved in a manner that respects the dignity, and national concerns and interests of both sides.
Freed anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson arrives in France
U.S.-Canadian anti-whaling environmental activist Paul Watson, who was released from prison in Greenland's capital Nuuk after five months in detention, arrives with Lamya Essemlali, president of Sea Shepherd France, at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy-en-France, near Paris, on Friday.
Nippon Steel alleges undue White House influence on doomed deal review
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Dec. 10.
Record 78% of people in Japan feel anxious, government survey finds
The public opinion survey on people's lives, conducted by the Cabinet Office, found that 28.1% of respondents think that their standard of living is at a lower-middle level among the general public — the highest percentage to give that response in 35 years.
Police raided suspect's home to arrest him after fatal Kitakyushu stabbing
Broken window glass is seen at Masanori Hirabaru's house in Kitakyushu's Kokuraminami Ward.
Taiwan lawmakers brawl over bills that would 'damage democracy'
Lawmakers from the Democratic Progressive Party and opposition party Kuomintang brawl in parliament in Taipei on Friday.
Casual workouts, cool living, ‘complete’ food: Japan’s health trends of 2024
In 2024, efficiency trumped effort among Japan's fitness-focused aspirants.
The mighty Mekong River's growing plastic problem
A group of elephant keepers in Chiang Saen, Thailand, remove plastic waste from the Ruak River, a tributary of the Mekong River, as a pair of Asian elephants bathe behind them.
Japanese officials inspect Yokota Air Base over PFAS concerns
The Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo in September 2019. An inspection of the base by Japanese government officials on Friday came amid public pressure to investigate suspected links between the use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam by the U.S. base and contamination of soil and groundwater in western Tokyo.
Crime numbers rise in Japan for second straight year
A police officer stands in front of the residence of a man alleged to have stabbed two junior high school students in Kitakyushu.
A year of Oscar wins and a quiet push for diversity
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist,” released in Japanese theaters in April, sharply dramatizes the clash between rural and urban values. The film won five awards at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, including the second-place Silver Lion prize.

Podcast

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

Yasuyuki Yoshida stirs a brew in a fermentation tank at his brewery in Hakusan.
The quake that shook Noto's sake brewing tradition
By Alex K.T. Martin

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