Gwynne Dyer - The Japan Times

November 22, 2024

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Gwynne Dyer

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Gwynne Dyer

Gwynne Dyer has worked as a journalist, broadcaster and lecturer on international affairs for more than 20 years; his articles are published in 45 countries. His book, "Climate Wars," deals with the geopolitical implications of climate change and has been translated into Japanese, French, Russian, Chinese and a number of other languages.

COMMENTARY

Feb 2, 2008

Tet offensive's long shadow

LONDON — Forty years ago this week, the American public realized that the United States was not going to win the Vietnam war. Lulled by assurances that "progress" was being made in the fight against the insurgents, Americans had patiently borne five years of growing military casualties in Vietnam,...

COMMENTARY

Jan 7, 2008

Hope and betrayal in Kenya

LONDON — More than two years ago, when Kenya's current opposition leader, Raila Odinga, quit President Mwai Kibaki's government, I wrote the following: "The trick will be to get Kibaki out without triggering a wave of violence that would do the country grave and permanent damage. . . . Bad times are...

COMMENTARY

Dec 30, 2007

Living with war and a warmer planet

LONDON — 2007 was the year in which global warming finally began to be taken seriously. Climate-change deniers were in full retreat, and the realization that we face a long and grave crisis was finally dawning on the general public. However, it remains to be seen whether the world will agree on effective...

COMMENTARY

Dec 20, 2007

Bali inspired hope in coping

LONDON — Do not be downhearted about the outcome of the Bali talks. They did not deliver the binding commitments to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that are desperately needed, and as a result millions may die who might have lived. But they did show us something remarkable. They showed us the human...

COMMENTARY

Dec 6, 2007

Israel's ticking time bomb

LONDON — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was just back from the Annapolis summit where U.S. President George W. Bush tried to reboot the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. More importantly, last week was also the 60th anniversary of the United Nations vote that divided British-ruled Palestine...

COMMENTARY

Dec 5, 2007

U.S.-Iraq: an 'enduring' relationship

LONDON — The word "enduring" crops up a lot in connection with the U.S. adventure in Iraq. As soon as the U.S. Army occupied the country in 2003, it began work on 14 "enduring" (i.e. permanent) military bases to turn it into an American bastion at the head of the Gulf. And now U.S. President George...

COMMENTARY

Nov 28, 2007

Hello to the euro, goodbye to the dollar

LONDON — It's just straws in the wind so far. India's Ministry of Culture announces that foreign tourists can no longer pay in dollars when visiting the Taj Mahal and other heritage sites; they have to pay in good, hard rupees. Iran and Venezuela call for a joint OPEC statement on the weak dollar,...

COMMENTARY

Nov 24, 2007

Evidence on Iran doesn't seem to matter

LONDON — Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli defense minister, is not a fan of Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. In fact, he wants him fired. "The policies followed by ElBaradei endanger world peace. His irresponsible attitude of sticking his head in the sand over Iran's...

COMMENTARY

Nov 14, 2007

Telling the truth about the limits of oil

LONDON — If a diplomat is "an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country" (Sir Henry Wotton, 1612), then oil industry executives used to be the business world's equivalent of diplomats.

COMMENTARY

Nov 3, 2007

A blow to the budding India-U.S. alliance

LONDON — Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's response made perfectly good sense. If his allies in Parliament were willing to bring the government down to block the nuclear deal with the United States that he had spent two years negotiating, he would drop the deal. "One has to live with certain disappointments,"...

COMMENTARY

Oct 31, 2007

Consistency, proportionality and hypocris

LONDON — Fifteen months ago, the armed wing of Lebanon's Hezbollah party, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, attacked Israel's northern border, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight more. Israel replied with a month of massive air attacks...

COMMENTARY

Oct 22, 2007

No reviving the Mideast peace process

LONDON — "We are at the beginning of a process," said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after her four-day tour of the countries closely involved in the Arab-Israeli confrontation. But the "peace process" really began with the Oslo accords in 1993, and it died when Ariel Sharon became prime...

COMMENTARY

Oct 12, 2007

Forcing defeat from the jaws of victory

LONDON — This week is the sixth anniversary of the start of U.S. airstrikes against al-Qaida and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. It was a very clever political-military operation, and by December of 2001 all of Afghanistan was under the control of the United States and its local allies for a total...

COMMENTARY

Sep 22, 2007

Thought Iraq was about oil? Guess again

LONDON — Australia's defense minister, Brendan Nelson, is not the sharpest tool in the box, so people were not really surprised in July when he blurted out that the real motive for invading Iraq was oil:

COMMENTARY

Sep 20, 2007

Decline of the Liberal Democratic Party?

LONDON — Sixty-two years after Japan surrendered to the United States at the end of World War II, many things have changed, but not Japan's subordination to the U.S. Despite having the world's second-biggest economy, Japan is still a pygmy on the international stage, and its foreign policy is still...

COMMENTARY

Sep 15, 2007

U.S. marking time in Iraq

LONDON — The thing to remember about U.S. Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress on the progress made by the American military "surge" in Iraq is that he is basically reporting on his own performance. Nothing in a review of his past career suggests that he is prone to downplay his own achievements,...

COMMENTARY

Sep 9, 2007

Extreme events fire up the Greek fringe

LONDON — "How are our children going to survive in a land that is dead?" asked a survivor of the wildfires that seared much of southern Greece during the last week of August.

COMMENTARY

Sep 7, 2007

Muslim nation minus 'idiotic autocrats'

LONDON — It was not a tactful way to start out his new job as a Turkish government spokesman, but Suat Kiniklioglu did cut to the heart of the matter.

COMMENTARY

Sep 1, 2007

Sarkozy offends in Africa

LONDON — The time was bound to come when France and the rest of the world would miss that old crook, Jacques Chirac, but who could have guessed that it would arrive so fast?

COMMENTARY

Aug 27, 2007

Alliance can't hide its anti-China intent

LONDON — When you are creating a military alliance aimed at a third party, it's always best to swear that you are doing no such thing, and that you simply share common values with your prospective allies.

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.

A boom for business tourism in Japan?

By Kathryn Wortley

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