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January 18, 2025

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COMMENTARY

Mar 3, 2001

Two unloved bureaucratic behemoths

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES -- With the free-market Bush administration settling into power, what's to become of those controversial twin pillars of the world economic system, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank? Those two institutions -- both based in Washington, D.C. and sharing reputations for arrogance...

COMMENTARY

Mar 3, 2001

No quick fixes for Japan's ills

By David Howell

TOKYO and LONDON -- The 17th annual meeting of the U.K.-Japan 21st Century Group -- the bilateral think tank set up by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher way back in the '80s -- took place this year on Awaji Island in Kobe Bay, island of gods and puppets and,...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 3, 2001

Tightening the noose on war criminals

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON -- For years, former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic lived openly in Belgrade at 119 Vlagoja Parovica Street. He treated with utter contempt his indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia for directing the slaughter of 7,045 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July,...

COMMENTARY

Mar 2, 2001

Mori's time is running out

By Minoru Tada

There is an increasing likelihood that Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, lambasted at home and abroad as a symbol of political incompetence, will announce a decision sometime this month to step down to end the leadership crisis. This is hardly surprising, given Mori's abysmal performance since he was appointed...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 2, 2001

Fear, obsession hold back Japan-China ties

By Zhu Jianrong

In recent years, Japan-China relations have been marked by almost incessant friction over issues ranging from historical questions to more mundane problems.

COMMENTARY

Mar 1, 2001

Lessons of failed Iraq policy elude Bush

By Doug Bandow

"We bomb, therefore we bomb," seems to be Washington's policy toward Iraq. Ten years of sanctions and military strikes have failed to tame or oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Yet the Bush administration thinks only of doing more of the same.

COMMENTARY

Mar 1, 2001

Bush presidency, Ehime Maru tragedy bring national security issues to the fore

By Ronald Morse

The issue for 2001 is whether Japan's leaders will take responsibility for their own national security. The stage is set for them to make this choice and the United States is ready to cooperate no matter what decision they make.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 1, 2001

The spy game: high stakes, low payoffs

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON -- It's an impressive list: CIA official Aldrich Ames jailed for life in 1994 for spying for Moscow; CIA agent Harold Nicholson jailed for 23 years in 1997 for the same offense; FBI employee Earl Pitts sentenced to 27 years later the same year for passing information to Moscow; U.S. Army Col....

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 1, 2001

Don't bet against China's industrial policy

By David Wall

Cambridge, ENGLAND -- At a recent conference in Berlin organized by the Institute of Asian Affairs of Hamburg, Ireland's leading China specialist said quite unequivocally that China's industrial policy has failed. As the speaker has long been known as one of the most vocal supporters of China's state-owned...

COMMENTARY

Feb 28, 2001

Alleviating anxiety in Seoul

By Ralph Cossa

SEOUL -- On the surface, U.S.-South Korean relations have seldom seemed better. Last fall's contentious issues -- negotiations over revisions to the Status of Forces Agreement and over South Korean missile-development plans -- were settled amicably. The new U.S. administration has firmly endorsed the...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 28, 2001

How the anti-Iraq raids played in France

By Andre Fontaine

PARIS -- It was hardly a surprise that less than a month after U.S. President George W. Bush's inauguration, the U.S. Air Force should have launched a raid against Iraqi missile batteries and radars close to Baghdad. The flights of the U.S. and British jets supposed to protect the "no-fly" zones where...

COMMENTARY

Feb 27, 2001

A crash and a culture clash

By Nobuo Asai

The collision off Oahu Island between the Japanese fisheries training ship Ehime Maru and the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine USS Greeneville has drawn an unprecedentedly sensitive reaction from Japanese people. There are a number of reasons for this sensitivity on the part of the Japanese, and it is...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Atsuyoshi Koike, the president and CEO of Rapidus, says there is a “sense of urgency” when it comes to Japan’s efforts in manufacturing semiconductors. “We have to make sure we are successful,” he says.

Atsuyoshi Koike’s big game: Fourth down and 2 nanometers to go

By Kazuaki Nagata and Richard Meyer

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