Today, the Middle East no longer stands out amid what’s happening in the rest of the world. In our nearest neighbor, a former prime minister was assassinated in broad daylight. A demagogue former president is ready to announce he is running in the next election as the incumbent sees his approval ratings drop to the lowest point ever in the US. A prime minister resigns after lying about rowdy parties during COVID-19 lockdowns in the UK. And a mentally and physically sick Russian president

Viewpoints July 13, 2022

Korea was the first country I visited in my new capacity as Climate Ambassador last February. Denmark regards Korea as an important partner in green growth. The Korean Green New Deal cements my belief that we are heading in the same direction. It is a visionary moon-shot that can have implications for the lives of millions of people and generations to come in Korea. While Korea initiated a 73.4 trillion-won Green New Deal, this June we adopted the Danish Climate Law setting our ambitious target

Viewpoints Sept. 21, 2020

Workers born outside Japan are playing an increasingly important role in the world’s third-largest economy. Just don’t call it immigration.The country is often said to pride itself on homogeneity and an aversion to outsiders. But as Japan’s population declines and ages, employers are becoming aware of their constraints. The number of employees from overseas has more than doubled since 2012 to about 1.5 million, says Bank of America Merrill Lynch.In recent conversations with loc

Viewpoints Oct. 1, 2019

Summer 2019 will go on record as the hottest summer in human recorded history, but it will also be remembered as a summer of madness, when there are protests everywhere and violence seems to be on the boil. Who would have expected South Korea to be quarreling with Japan? Or India taking away the autonomy of Jammu/Kashmir to direct rule by Delhi? Or the Argentinian peso dropping 30 percent in one day? Why did the US put every one of their major trading partners, including Singapore, Malaysia and

Viewpoints Aug. 19, 2019

As Hong Kong recovers from a general strike that paralyzed transportation and led to mob violence and tear gas fired on protesters, the Beijing-controlled government’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, is hinting at even stronger action. The Chinese government agency that oversees Hong Kong held a rare press conference Tuesday, announcing support for Lam and accusing the protesters of fomenting a revolution. Most ominously, Chinese authorities have mobilized troops near the border with the main

Viewpoints Aug. 11, 2019

Tuesday marks the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It was an event that profoundly shaped not only modern China, but also the US-China relationship.It is the odd anniversary that will pass virtually unobserved in the place where it had the greatest impact. Each year, around the anniversary, the government mobilizes an army of censors and trolls to stamp out any discussion of Tiananmen online.Yet for the world outside China, revisiting the Tiananmen Square massacre is crucial fo

Viewpoints June 2, 2019

Two years ago, the curtain rose on a new play. It was billed as a show never imagined before. The director said his play would depict a society without privileges and misconduct. He put up a sign that read, “Opportunities will be equal, the process fair and results righteous.” The title of the first act was “Elimination of Evils.” Only misconduct by conservatives and rightists was uncovered. Over 100 people who worked for the previous government were indicted, a

Viewpoints May 15, 2019

Confirmation bias seems to be stopping President Moon Jae-in from ending his reliance on his perspective and beliefs in favor of evidence and facts.The bias is a psychological term denoting a tendency to cherry-pick information that confirms one’s preconceived ideas, while finding fault with evidence that goes against them. It prevents people from considering other important information when making decisions.Moon said in his New Year’s press conference on Jan. 10 that employment indexes fell sho

Viewpoints Jan. 23, 2019

“Brazilian foreign policy cannot change.” That is how a Brazilian politician summarized his dislike for the foreign policy of President Jair Bolsonaro and myself. Those views are representative of people who have been so traumatized by the shambolic, far-left foreign policy of the governments of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff (2003-2016) that they prefer inaction and indifference to any attempt to make Brazil a global player again. They are so used to bad change that they would rat

Viewpoints Jan. 9, 2019

This weekend’s G-20 summit in Argentina will likely demonstrate what does and doesn’t work for this multilateral format, but also for international policy gatherings more generally. Despite weakening and diverging global economic growth, the aspiration for the larger discussions among leaders representing about three-quarters of global gross domestic product has been reduced to issuing bland joint communiques -- and that’s assuming an agreement on this can be achieved. The real action will be ta

Viewpoints Nov. 29, 2018