TOKYO – China’s refusal to attend this year’s summit with Japan and South Korea as scheduled comes at a trying moment for all three countrie…

KUWAIT CITY – When the consequences of the United States-led invasion of Iraq ten years ago are fully assessed, the importance of the subseq…

TOKYO – While the world focuses on the gathering of cardinals in Rome to choose a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, a similar conclave is unde…

TOKYO – F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that “there are no second acts in American lives.” Hillary Clinton’s stunning (and, I trust, unfin…

TOKYO – The Unha-3 rocket launched from Sohae in North Korea on the morning of December 12 passed through Japanese air space over the island…

TOKYO – When an American president’s first overseas trip following his re-election is to Asia, one can be sure that something big is afoot i…

TOKYO – The Korean peninsula is stirring. In December, South Koreans will go to the polls to choose President Lee Myung-bak’s successor in w…

TOKYO – When faced with domestic worries, politicians often resort to foreign diversions – a simple axiom that is highly useful in assessing…

TOKYO – Has Japan’s political paralysis finally lifted? The recent agreement, after a long debate, between the government and leading opposi…

TOKYO – This is a year of presidential elections worldwide, and the last to take place – on December 19 – will be in South Korea. That ballo…

TOKYO – Few recent elections have grabbed world attention in the way that Greece’s vote on June 17 did. Now that the center-right New Democr…

TOKYO – China is now engaged in bitter disputes with the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal and Japan over the Senkaku Islands, both located…

TOKYO – At 7:39 a.m. on April 13, North Korea fired a missile (which it called a satellite launch) in the face of opposition from almost the…

TOKYO – Brinkmanship seems to be congenital in North Korea. Under the late Kim Jong-il’s pudgy young successor – his third son, Kim Jong-un,…

TOKYO – On March 11, a year will have passed since Japan was struck by the triple tragedy of an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident. A…

TOKYO – China’s behavior during the recent presidential election in Taiwan demonstrates that its leaders have learned some lessons, if only …

TOKYO – On December 17, North Korea announced that its supreme “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-il, had died in a train carrying him on one of the ma…

TOKYO – Historic transformations often happen when least expected. Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika in …

TOKYO – Despite the relentless shift of global economic might to Asia, and China’s rise as a great power – the central historical events of …

TOKYO – As Libya’s National Transitional Council attempts to establish a functioning government for a newly liberated country, the truth abo…

BENGHAZI – The endgame in the Libyan conflict has at last arrived. Much of Libya’s capital is now in insurgent hands, with the rebel army it…

TOKYO – At least 38 people were killed and more than 200 injured by the recent crash of two high-speed trains near Zhenzhou in Zhejiang, a p…

TOKYO – July will mark two milestones in America’s sometimes-tortured relations with Asia. One is the beginning of the end of the nearly dec…

TOKYO – Just before the fourth trilateral summit between Japan, China, and South Korea began on May 21, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, South Ko…

TOKYO – In Japan, memorial services for the dead are normally held 49 days after their passing. The bereaved mourn throughout this period. T…