Category: Yoichi Shimatsu

Yoichi Shimatsu is a free lance journalist based in Hong Kong. He is former Editor of the Japan Times Weekly. Mr. Yoi is a former Tsinghua University lecturer. He’s been regularly writing to several global media outlets including US, China and so on. He’s been frequently sitting on CCTV News, Blue Ocean Network TV and other global media outlets in China, Hong Kong and other countries.

America’s Next War Looms in Libya

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Most people around the world assume that the war on terrorism since the 9-11 attacks definitively ended any American and British support for Islamist insurgents. It didn’t. Washington isn’t just double-dealing; it’s been triple-dealing in Tripoli. Oil and Religion In possibly his last televised speech, Qadhafi described himself as a child of the desert, a “Bedouin revolutionary” who dared to challenge the colonial powers and their regional puppets.

U.S. Secretly Backed the Brotherhood’s Soft-Power Strategy in Egypt

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From George Bush’s Freedom Strategy to Obama’s Islamic policy, Washington has pursued a dual approach in the turbulent region: supporting military-based alliances with authoritarian regimes; while urging popular agitation for free and fair elections. The intention was to use democracy protests as a coercive tool to prod authoritarian regimes into cooperating with America’s strategic designs, but now the unimaginable has happened – democracy is winning.

The Shadow of ‘America’s Caesar’ Haunts Korean Military Exercises

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Manipulation of public perceptions has since advanced along the learning curve from MacArthur to the Pentagon’s “MacWar” bureaucracy. On Yeonpyeong Island, for instance, South Korean gunners positioned their self-propelled howitzers not in an open field but behind a ridge, causing the North Koreans to hit the village on the facing slope. The Western press could then lead the world to believe that Pyongyang had targeted innocent civilians. The media chorus accusing Pyongyang of “provocation” ignores the fact that the South Korean side had initiated the gunfire.

North Korea “Crisis”: In a Multipolar World, Security Equals Nukes

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The Korean situation differs somewhat because Pyongyang is superimposing a new strategic layer atop the existing Pacific triangle of China, Russia and the United States. In reaction to the centrifuge report, Seoul jumped the gun by calling for the reintroduction of tactical nuclear weapons on its territory after a lapse of 19 years. After the recent artillery exchange, Seoul retracted its threat.

As the mirage of a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula dissipates, the prospect of an East Asian nuclear triangle beckons Japan. Though Asians will voice strong objections, Tokyo may soon have to walk out from under the American nuclear umbrella and into the hard rain, just as Tel Aviv and Tehran have done. The superpower era is over, and so a multipolar world for its own security must create a new architecture of nuclear terror.