The US Department of Defense has released its annual Congress-mandated report on Chinese military power, available for download here. (Hat tip: China Digital Times)For a China hawk's take on this year's report, check out this article by Bill Gertz in the Washington Times. Gertz manages to spin a relatively tame report, the product of a …
Author: Tobias S. Harris
Tobias Harris is Japan analyst at Teneo Intelligence. He is the author of a forthcoming biography of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Japan’s revenge
Over at Project Syndicate, Thomas Palley outlines the argument about how the yen carry trade is fuelling global asset bubbles — although Finance Minister Omi denies that Japan's low interest rates are the cause of the carry trade.Aside from rehearsing the standard arguments about how Japan's barely-over-zero interest rates contributes to global instability and the …
The naval arms race in Asia continues
Back in April, Paul Kennedy, professor of history at Yale best known for his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, had an op-ed in the IHT in which he discussed the meaning of the growing naval arms race in Northeast Asia in terms of the center of balance of the international system, with …
Is $6 billion too high a price?
As the Diet session winds down — and the Upper House elections loom — the Upper House has passed a bill approving Japan's commitment to executing the 2006 agreement on the realignment of US forces in Japan.Mainichi reports that the bill was opposed by all opposition parties, meaning that the bill passed by the relatively …
UN tells Japan to tend its own garden
That's the message one could conclude from criticism of Japan by the UN Committee Against Torture, calling attention to Japan's justice and prison system, and even criticized Japan for dismissing comfort women cases on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired.As the FT's David Turner writes:The report comes at an embarrassing time for …
The failure of Ozawaism?
Apologies for not having posted sooner, but once again I'm out of Japan, this time back in my hometown of Chicago for business.Having stepped out of the news cycle for a day, it might be a bit before I am completely up to speed, but meanwhile I highly recommend this recent post at Shisaku on …
The revisionists ascendant
Western commentators who only intermittently pay attention to Japan seem to be befuddled by the Japanese constitution. They seem to have a hard time grasping the difficulties associated with changing it, the totemic significance it has been made to bear by both pacifists and revisionists — and thus tend to assume that revision is easy, …
Benign neglect for the alliance?
Upon further reflection, I wonder if the Asia team that the Bush administration has assembled — which I previously discussed here — for its final years in office might be a good thing for the US-Japan alliance.For too long, the alliance has been a cozy love fest. Even in rough patches, the alliance has been …
Cyber war against Estonia?
This New York Times story, "Estonia Computers Blitzed, Possibly by the Russians," strikes me as pregnant with implications that reach far beyond the Russo-Estonian dispute over the removal of a Soviet monument commemorating the "Great Patriotic War."The Times reports that Estonian officials have blamed Russia for a series of attacks on its government websites, although …
Checking premises
In questioning the Associated Press's use of the term "nationalist" to describe Prime Minister Abe, Ampontan, in this post, asks, "What is it they mean by calling Mr. Abe a 'nationalist'? And because they so frequently insist on using that term to describe him, they must think he demonstrates more of those characteristics than other …
Tobias S. Harris 