World Trends

  • Can AI Navigate the Chaotic Middle East with Theory Alone?

    Akio KAWATO Recently, “collaborating with AI” has become something of a trend. I decided to try it myself, using ChatGPT as a discussion partner to explore a question that has been bothering me: Is today’s tangled Middle East even something that can be meaningfully forecast? . This in fact is a question about methodology in international relations. Japan’s leading political…

  • Beyond the Anthropocene: Toward the Age of AI

    (I originally wrote this in December 2024, but I suspect the basic situation has not changed much since then.) Will ChatGPT Surpass Human Intelligence? — An Interview with ChatGPT While finishing the manuscript of my book In Search of the Lost Modernity, I relied quite a bit on ChatGPT. For example, I asked its opinion about one of the arguments…

  • Will U.S.–North Korea Relations Start Moving Again? And What Should Japan Do?

    .　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Akio KAWATO On the 14th, almost at the same moment that President Trump announced a ceasefire agreement with Iran, he posted on social media an old photograph of himself standing beside Kim Jong Un. Perhaps he was sending a message: “Iran is done. North Korea is next.” . It is not a bad idea. If the historical grievances and accumulated…

  • Why Are Environmental Activists So Quiet in This Heat?

    It’s been scorching hot day after day. People say that if you fall on the pavement, you can suffer serious burns from the heat of the asphalt. Even the cicadas seem to have disappeared. These days, their larvae may be cooked underground before they ever emerge, and summer arrives with hardly a chirp. . Come to think of it, it’s…

  • The Summer Russia Chose Freedom

    . 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Akio KAWATO When people think of Russia today, they usually think of dictatorship, imperial ambitions, and the long shadow of Vladimir Putin. Yet there was a time when things looked very different. . After Mikhail Gorbachev launched his reforms in 1985, Soviet and Russian society began moving toward openness and democracy. That process reached its peak in August 1991,…

  • From Network-Centric Warfare to AI Warfare

    In the 1990s, under the guidance of thinkers such as Andrew Marshall and Arthur Cebrowski, the U.S. military developed an advanced operational concept known as Network-Centric Warfare. The idea was to connect large reconnaissance and strike drones such as the Predator, cruise missiles, ground forces, and other military assets through communications networks. Information from the battlefield would be gathered and…

  • “Civilizational Rupture”

    About twenty-five years ago, I published a collection of essays titled Toward a World Where Meaning Disintegrates. It traced the social transformations unfolding in Russia, Western Europe, the United States, Uzbekistan, and Japan. What I tried to argue there was that several of the core values that had sustained the modern world were beginning to lose their absolute authority. .…

  • Inequality? Perhaps. But the Rich Already Pay Most of the Income Tax

    　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　.Akio KAWATO In today’s advanced economies, discussion of “inequality” has become almost constant. Manufacturing has declined, while finance, IT, and other sectors increasingly concentrate income in the hands of a relatively small elite. . In the United States, the top 10 percent of earners now receive roughly 45–50 percent of national income. In Britain, the figure is around 35–40 percent;…

  • Gulf Security After the Iran War

    Akio KAWATO . Back in March, the American geopolitical analyst Andrew Korybko wrote something interesting. Citing a report by Reuters, he argued that the Gulf states — having been drawn into a war with Iran without prior consultation and having suffered both economic and military damage in the process — were beginning to question whether they should continue relying on…

  • The history of the Warburg family

    (I lately came across this intriguing piece in my own email magazine, “The Kaleidoscope of Civilization”. Let me post this for fun.) . Akio KAWATO There are several banks around the world bearing the name Warburg. They form part of a global financial network connected to the Jewish Warburg family. . One member of the family, Paul Warburg, moved to…