...members. Keiretsu companies own each other. Power is diffuse to a point where accountability is practically non-existent. The fact that no one is ultimately in charge of the keiretsu clusters, and that no one person or company is ultimately responsible for them, makes them sufficiently amorphous to permit industry-wide bureaucratic guidance. For purposes of industrial policy-making the government bureaucracy and business bureaucracy are completely entangled. Guidance does not emanate directly from government ministries, but is channeled mostly through the intersecting organizational structure of industrial federations. Sometimes dominated by one or a couple of giant corporations, these federations monitor and control all industrial sectors, coordinate production plans in specific sectors, help with collective technology acquisition, and give direction to Japanese industrial development at the highest levels. They can block projects of huge companies for all manner of non-economic reasons. What they decide on behalf of groups of companies has the force of law. Their high officials are usually retired bureaucrats from government agencies in whose bailiwick the association plays a role. Since Japan does not have an independent judiciary, and denial or refusal of membership means virtual exclusion from the economic mainstream, all Japanese companies fall under the extralegal jurisdiction of...

One of the best things that has happened since Barack Obama took over from George W. Bush is that ‘the most powerful man in the world’ no longer sounds like he is speaking to 11 year olds. Obama’s oratory has been not only a great asset for himself – it elevated him to where he is – but also a pleasure to listen to, even though in the past eleven months it has largely been used to substitute for the concrete measures he had promised his supporters. But with his latest performance, his hooray-for-war speech of a week ago, he has much insulted the intelligence of his supporters, of Americans in general, and of all of us, concerned onlookers around the world. Quite a lot of what he said did not begin to be convincing in any way, and it all pivoted around this line: “If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people was at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow.” Now, to find examples of a politician speaking the unvarnished truth while in some way involved in war we...

...well as still serving, have added their testimony to that conclusion. But it will not be touched. It is sacrosanct, and thereby lifted above political control. It serves a higher aim, one that needs no further re-examination as far as the mindset that comes with it is concerned. Hence it is literally out of control. But today, ten years after the onset of the ‘war on terror’, this out-of-control militarism cannot be understood with analogies from America’s past; the list of countries invaded, the overthrown governments or the inevitable Vietnam comparison. Equating these with what the United States does today diminishes its horror and undermines a fledgling anti-war movement. I covered the Vietnam war as a reporter in several of its phases, and for all its gruesomeness and warcrimes, I do not believe it can properly be seen as a prelude to America’s current military activities. It began as part of a general containment policy against the Soviet Union. It was justified with lies, yes, but it was fought to stop the conquest of a relatively free Southeast Asian country by a northern neighbor under communist dictatorship linked to Moscow. The South Vietnamese, ethnically only partially related to the Northerners,...

...that all too easily stands in the way of the full flourishing of individual freedom. America’s top 1% of the population, which owns about 40% of the national wealth, is not interested in continuing with what it likes to picture as the coddling of a middle class that simply has not worked hard enough. The American idea of the state limiting the potential of the individual has of course deep roots, going back to pioneer days when government was far away and local communities managed to keep order by themselves. But Ronald Reagan most recently helped popularize this huge misconception of state-citizen relations once again with his famous line that the state is part of the problem rather than part of the solution for American problems. In fact, a considerable number of America’s political problems follow from the fact that in common understanding the state is not recognized as a legitimate entity representing all citizens. There would not be an austerity craze if this were otherwise. Questions about the state of affairs concerning the state are a good point of departure also for discussing the two other instances where the epidemic is wreaking havoc or threatening to do so. With...

...intelligence makes it supremely wise and well informed – despite repeated and catastrophic evidence to the contrary. The belief in the democratization of Afghanistan by the mujahideen reflected a messianism rooted in the American Creed but was accompanied by a total ignorance of Afghan history, society, tradition or reality in general.” The hypothesis that populations of colonised territories were not yet ready for independence dates from the waning years of colonialism. More time was needed to prepare them for it. That hypothesis is now to a wearisome degree repeated when it comes to countries like Afghanistan, that have been disqualified as ‘failed states’. President Obama and his team have not escaped from this heritage of looking at things. It is this erroneous frame of reference that seduced President Carter to arm the mujahideen even before the Russians had placed one foot on Afghan soil, and that brought President Reagan to support these mujahideen in a maximum way as champions for the cause of the “free West”. That backfired with its creation of militarised Islamic martyrs. The American response to that has intertwined American and European interests in an unholy Afghanistan mess, a misbegotten trend that The Hague promises to prolong....

...have been that at the moment when, for the first time in history, one country gained unchallenged reach over the length and width of our planet the ultimate use of that power was placed in the hands of an utterly incompetent and incurious president? How come that in that same country, which thought of itself as the greatest democracy on earth, its much praised “checks and balances” installed to stop officials with monarchal or dictatorial ambitions ceased to function? What sickness caused the breakdown of broadcasters, newspapers, and the opposition party as preservers of political health? And why did governments of its earlier friends and allies remain mostly mute when its rulers tore the fragile but reliable fabric of diplomatic networks and agreements asunder? Where to find the analogies for helping us to understand it all? When we think of power not on a leash, we usually think first of royalty and emperors, and of what we have heard about the ways that they came to dwell on the verge of madness. Playwrights have long dealt with this, but the scale of the reality inspiring them with the intrigues and tribulations of courts and the anguish they caused outside the...