...to figure out Japan forces you to adopt will have more room to accommodate the Chinese puzzles. The reason why this is not immediately obvious is related to a problem that goes further back, the problem of an unquestioned faith among editors, supported by their intellectual environment, that whatever needs to be found out about countries like Japan and China is best found out by approaching them with the frames of reference installed in their minds by their own education. The idea that for solving puzzles one first must discover what it is that you actually want to find out – discerning the question rather than the answer, in other words – which is common enough among my physicist friends, has not caught on much among practitioners of political science or mainstream economics. Thus, rather than asking pertinent questions prompted by open eyes and open minds from within Japanese experience, most reporting by journalists, as well as academics, has for long consisted of answers to ready-made questions. The journalists have an excuse – usually their editors would not have it any other way. Readers are blissfully unaware of the sometimes titanic battles that may ensue when a reporter wants to...

...and influential voices in The Netherlands. The essence of what we were saying was simply not understood, apparently because references containing the term “security” conjure up an imagery filled with bombs, tanks, rockets, and fighterplanes. Respondents were obviously oblivious to the notion of collective security. We were reproached for wanting a new defensive alliance, but one with Russia and China, or of wanting an alliance against the United States. This while Europe has known a non-military security organization from as far back as the 70’s, when we were still half-way in the Cold War. It is known as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), of which the Soviet-Union was a co-founder. Collective security – security as a laudable shared aim for states and not directed against other states – appears to have disappeared as an immediately understood political concept. Much to the detriment of Europe’s (and everyone else’s) fortunes. With that concept gone from general discourse about international relations and defense there is even less standing in the way of the fearmongering that sometimes appears to drive the powers behind what used to be the transatlantic alliance in the direction of a new Cold War. The NATO,...

...of ‘neutrality’ or ‘nonpartisanship’. The line in the case of Japan’s new government was created by reporters interviewing Pentagon officials, Pentagon alumni and their friends, and a couple of academics who must keep in mind on which side their bread is buttered. Japanese are sometimes, wittingly or unwittingly, part of this game. The main Japanese newspapers jumped at the opportunity to copy Washington concerns about the government in Tokyo breaking routine, as they made Hatoyama and Ozawa Ichiro appear as spoilers of that great transpacific relationship. And Ms. Tatsumi is paid for papers and books reflecting Washington’s line that Japan is not doing enough to help in Afghanistan, that it is not trying hard enough to carry out the original plans for building a new base for the US Marines. She also echoes the hope that the DPJ will stop undermining the U.S.-Japan alliance, and expresses a more general concern about Tokyo perhaps not meeting with American expectations. You can check this at her think tank’s website. All this is of minor importance in the scheme of world events; but keep in mind where, primarily, the news about Japan is made when the next wave of revelations comes our way....

...will not be foremost in the minds of the chroniclers, since American media have ignored it altogether, but it does reflect in shrill contours the absence of any desire for constructive new beginnings. American diplomacy all around the world has gradually slipped out of the hands of what used to be diplomatic and foreign policy professionals and into the top levels of the six military ‘commands’ that have been constructed on all continents. As with the Japanese bureaucracy guarding the status quo in relations with Washington, these top soldiers appear to be operating on an autopilot of their own. One with a destination of ‘full spectrum dominance’ keyed in; something rather beyond the powers of the United States to achieve. Do not be fooled. A military not under political control, with industrial complex attached, is not an instrument of a state capable of strategy. There is no strategic logic to what Washington does to a Japanese government, or intends to do with its new bases for the Marines anywhere in Asia and Australia. The collective mind behind it is as witless as the Japanese military top telling the Emperor that there was no alternative to war with the United States....

...to NorthKorea. Earlier in Munich, Vice President Joe Biden aimed threatening language at Iran. Both countries are suspected of being at the point of stepping over the nuclear threshold, but that has so far not inspired official America with new thinking. It is possible to see ElBaradei’s musings as an attempt to encourage Obama to seek new directions by reminding him of his own earlier pronouncements. ElBaradei: “President Obama has pledged to seek a world free of nuclear weapons – a legal commitment under the Non-Proliferation Treaty”. The last point is pivotal; or ought to be that. The NPT, dating from 1968, starts from the premise that there are two categories of countries: those with and those without nuclear weapons. The latter signatories committed themselves to forego the use, the manufacture and the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. The haves committed themselves to eventually giving these up. As it happened, various further treaties have been entered into, but “arms control” has been revealed as something rather different from disarmament. Notwithstanding all the treaties, new nuclear poweres have emerged: India, Pakistan, and Israël. The least that one can say about this is that in this matter countries are judged by contradictory...

One of the things to which this website hopes to contribute is an active European public sphere. I hope that others with an interest in political, economic, and social affairs, who lament the shortcomings of European media in providing a pan-European citizen forum, will want to do the same, so that we may establish new networks for relevant conversation. Too few European voices with something to say reach other Europeans even one border away. A collectivity of those could do much to offset the odd and undesirable fact that most of the world and much of Europe consumes “news” in the choices and sauces and in portions determined by American-British editors. While some of these editors are without question excellent, they themselves can benefit from choices and interpretations arrived at by journalists and essayists from outside the territories in which that wonderful language, which most of us use when meeting foreign friends, is the tool of daily conversation. One of those writers is Jan Sampiemon whose insights in world events and European problems have long deserved an international audience. I met him first in 1972, when he hired me as correspondent for Japan and other parts of Asia for the...