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Andreas Kluth
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 8, 2023
Frederick the Great’s advice for Ukraine negotiations
Kyiv and Moscow both grasp what the 18th-century King of Prussia understood: Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 2, 2023
Four ancient truths to help you lead a modern life
The old Greek philosophers struggled with the same hard questions we're still asking today: What makes life worth living? What makes us thrive as human beings?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 16, 2022
We have to talk about Adolf Hitler
“Hitler Kitsch,” “Nazi Porn” and Godwin's Law have given us the frightening ignorance of people like Kanye West.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 7, 2022
Will Russians choose truth or lies? Ukraine’s fate depends on them
How ordinary Russians deal with their government's propaganda has become a matter of war and peace.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 30, 2022
Russia’s mass abductions are genocide
Defeating Putin's troops isn't enough. Kyiv must also get back the hundreds of thousands of women and children the Russians have taken out of Ukraine.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 27, 2022
Believe it or not, Putin's foes are now 'Nazi satanists'
Russians have been told Ukrainians are pawns of the West. Or they don't exist at all. Or they're Nazis. And satanists. And many believe these absurdities.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 21, 2022
If Putin orders a nuke, will his generals obey?
In Russia's nuclear and the conventional chains of command, insubordination might just be a tactical factor.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2022
The biggest threat to democracy and peace is thuggishness
The operating system of any functioning society is civility, and thuggishness is the virus that makes it crash.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 9, 2022
Can sex, gender and language live happily ever after?
Politicizing language adds to polarization and compromises elegance. There's a better approach, if we're capable of it.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2022
Will the Supreme Court come to rescue of U.S. expats?
The U.S. is unique in tormenting its citizens abroad with tax obligations. But the U.S. Supreme Court could show mercy.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 24, 2022
Putin won’t shrink from triggering Chernobyl 2.0
Never before has a nuclear power plant been on the front line of a major war, and indeed a main object of the warring parties' strategies.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 11, 2022
Germany looks like it is ready to begin a fourth nuclear exit
A wrongheaded phase-out of nuclear power plus a wrongheaded reliance on Putin's natural gas means Germany needs another U-turn.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2022
Europe is faking solidarity, and Putin knows it
As shown by a compromise on saving natural gas, the EU can't defend itself against its enemies yet.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 25, 2022
Sweating amid extreme heat while worrying about future shivering
Europe is baking under record heat due to climate change and can expect a frigid winter due to Putin.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 1, 2022
With 100 million refugees, the migrant crisis has barely begun
War and famine will make millions more take flight. And then comes climate change. How will the world cope?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 30, 2022
The best outcome for Ukraine in this conflict
For the aggressor, Russia, it appears, all possible outcomes are shades of terrible — a sign of just how colossally Moscow miscalculated. For the defenders, most scenarios are also dire.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 27, 2022
What’s the best way to deal with that bully? Join NATO.
Membership would make Sweden and Finland safer and the alliance stronger. But there's a time window of vulnerability.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 6, 2022
Russia has unleashed a new age of nuclear proliferation
Even if Vladimir Putin is bluffing on using nuclear weapons, his threat is more frightening than anything since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 11, 2022
‘Sapiens’? Humans aren’t wise, just too smart for our own good.
Perhaps that's what defines our species — neither wisdom nor folly, but the ability, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still function.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 1, 2021
What’s worst about omicron so far is the uncertainty
How should the world respond to omicron? We just have to wait as there is information that we don't yet have. And for many, the waiting itself is the problem.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone. 
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan