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COMMENTARY

May 24, 2005

Power politics ensnare reform

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI — Sixty years after its establishment, the United Nations is at a crossroads, its future direction and authority uncertain, even as it struggles with the diminution of its role in world affairs. Reforms are essential to revitalize the U.N.'s role, shore up its legitimacy and make it politically...

COMMENTARY

May 23, 2005

Getting doctors off the habit

By Kiroku Hanai

In February, the framework convention on tobacco control came into force, marking another milestone in the international antismoking movement. Japan has ratified the convention but is making only halfhearted efforts at tobacco control, frustrating antismoking activists ahead of No Tobacco Day on May...

COMMENTARY / World

May 23, 2005

Chinese protests stiffen Japanese resolve

By Richard Halloran

The Law of Unintended Consequences has been at work again, this time in the intense Japanese reaction to the Chinese demonstrations last month against Japan, some of them violent. In a word, the eruption in China has backfired in Japan.

COMMENTARY

May 23, 2005

Don't rely solely on America

By Robyn Lim

NAGOYA -- For more than 400 years, Great Britain played the role of global offshore balancer. Believing that it had neither permanent allies nor permanent enemies, but only permanent interests, Britain avoided entanglement on the Continent. Shifting its weight as required to prevent any potentially hostile...

COMMENTARY / World

May 22, 2005

Betting on World War III

By David Wall

LONDON -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick has a way with words. On a recent trip to Europe he tried to persuade European Union politicians not to lift the arms embargo that they had imposed on China after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. If the EU lifted the ban, he said, the Europeans...

COMMENTARY

May 20, 2005

The right leader for Britain

By David Howell

LONDON -- British politics is now in a fluid state. The May 5 general election, which should have settled things, at least for four or five years, has unsettled everything in a very puzzling way.

COMMENTARY / World

May 20, 2005

Battling the windmills while Iraq burns

By Ramzy Baroud

DOHA, Qatar -- Cast aside the nonsensical rhetoric about U.S. President George W. Bush's ostensibly successful efforts to bolster democratic tendencies "sweeping" the Middle East, and you'll discover that the facts are not so rosy, with Iraq remaining the most horrific reminder.

COMMENTARY

May 19, 2005

Soviet concessions at Yalta

By Gregory Clark

U.S. President George W. Bush rained heavily on Russian President Vladimir Putin's 60th anniversary war-end parade when he said the United States had renounced the Yalta agreement that conceded to Moscow postwar control over Eastern Europe. Putin had every right to be annoyed.

COMMENTARY / World

May 18, 2005

Push North Korea toward real reform

By Jack Pritchard and Michael O'Hanlon

WASHINGTON -- As Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill returns to Northeast Asia for talks with U.S. allies on North Korea's nuclear program, the future of negotiations to resolve this terrifying matter has never been bleaker.

COMMENTARY

May 16, 2005

Relax, breathe, leave the smokers alone

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- One of the most persecuted minorities in America, and increasingly in other countries, is smokers. U.S. cities and states have imposed ever more Draconian restrictions on lighting up a cigarette, and a bipartisan coalition of paternalistic legislators on Capitol Hill now is pushing for...

COMMENTARY

May 16, 2005

Braking an arms free-for-all

By Keizo Nabeshima

The 2005 review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which opened May 2 at U.N. headquarters in New York, remains in limbo, although the agenda has finally been agreed.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

May 15, 2005

Cannon fodder won the war

By Constantine Pleshakov

MOSCOW -- Writing a book is not unlike planting a garden. You make elaborate plans for each section; you comb encyclopedias and guides for advice; you collect every piece of information about the species that interests you; you say to yourself that, unlike other gardens, yours is going to be consistent,...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.

Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

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