Civilization

  • Does the Iran War Herald the Advent of the “Euro Renminbi”

    Akio Kawato Since the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID shock of 2020, the United States has continuously expanded the supply of dollars. Federal debt has now exceeded the size of annual GDP. Policymakers fear that, at some point, this could erode confidence in U.S. Treasuries, trigger a surge in interest rates, and destabilize public finances. . Could the current…

  • After America: What Middle Powers Can Still Build

    Iran ceasefire talks are now beginning. Had the war continued, Iran’s retaliation might well have threatened the very survival of Gulf civilization itself, while also exposing the limits of U.S. military power and potentially bringing an end to America’s unipolar dominance. The ceasefire has, at least for now, bought everyone some breathing room. . Even so, this latest attack on…

  • The AI Rush; But Does It Have To Be So Expensive?

    These days, whenever AI comes up—NVIDIA, xAI, all that world—people casually throw around figures in the tens of billions of dollars. It sounds almost surreal. Then again, maybe this is exactly how early 19th-century Britain must have felt when iron, railways, and chemicals suddenly replaced cotton as the engines of growth. Compared with spinning mills, the money required must have…

  • Living in the Age of the Bully

    I finally managed to revive my blog, yet somehow I cannot quite summon the energy. In times like these, no matter what one writes about the world, Trump the realtor arrives like a bulldozer, flattening every counterargument and dissenting voice in his path. Even when he himself seems to hesitate, pressure from America’s evangelicals and MAGA forces (though those circles…

  • Can ChatGPT Grasp “Infinity”?

    When I’m working, I sometimes feel like taking a break and playing with ChatGPT. It’s not just a machine that picks up bits of information and stitches them together. It seems to have some kind of internal standard of judgment—or perhaps it borrows the user’s values—then recombines what it finds to produce something new. In that sense, it does something…

  • Israel’s Gamble, America’s Limit–The War on Iran

    War is always shrouded in a haze of rumor and information control. In this latest conflict with Iran , one could not help but be impressed—at least initially—by Israeli intelligence capabilities and American military prowess, especially with the reported killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet the response that followed has been strangely muted, as if something were being held…

  • How to Survive Trump’s Armageddon

    For some time now, analysts have been pointing to the possible end of the U.S.-led postwar order. With the Strait of Hormuz now facing the risk of closure, global stock markets, oil prices, and other indicators are swinging wildly. The atmosphere feels almost apocalyptic. ・ History shows many moments when an existing system of security and economic stability suddenly collapsed.…

  • Trump Lectures Europe on Freedom and Democracy

    Since the birth of the Trump administration, a strange argument has continued between Washington and the European Union. It often feels like the pot calling the kettle black. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Vice President J.D. Vance made a speech, the essence of which can be summarized as folllows: “ The greatest threat to democracy is not…

  • Dialogue with the Late Professor Joseph Nye

    (This essay was originally written in March 2025. Since then, Professor Joseph Nye has passed away. The issues discussed here, however, remain urgent. I have therefore updated and reposted it.) On February 25, 2025, I read in Newsweek Japan an article by Joseph Nye, the architect of the concept of “soft power,” titled “Why America Holds the Advantage in a…

  • Twilight of the Modernity

    (This thesis was published last year, but the situation has barely changed) In China and India, various domestic factors hinder growth. But in this respect, the United States, the European Union, and Japan are not in a better position, either. The West is now deprived of many attributes of the modern era, which facilitated their economic growth. In Western European…