This article examines the origins and development of the US “forever wars” in recent decades, and its implications both for democracy and warfare.

The world faces a perfect storm of existential risk, with a deadly new pandemic, an escalating climate crisis, and the constant threat posed by nuclear weapons. The essential facts and dangers for all of these are long- known, but they have been downplayed or neglected until presenting an immediate threat – by which time it may be too late. We need to have a clear understanding of these risks, but also need to understand the deeper reasons why they have not been properly addressed. To a large extent these lie in the dogmas of military and political elites and in an optimistic preference for short-term results. Civil society and the world community of nations should come together to work for real change, as has already been achieved with the 2020 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. They should seek to safeguard the welfare of future generations, giving priority to that interest. The alternative is the growing risk of multiple disasters that could prove terminal.

The Navy ship containing nuclear bombs that a junior officer saw anchored off Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Station in 1959 was only the most notorious of many U.S. violations of Japan's official policy banning nuclear weapons. The Japanese government has a long history of secretly agreeing to their deployments, and feigning ignorance when they were revealed. The outrage that erupted in the press and in the Diet when former American Ambassador to Japan, Edwin Reischauer, spoke publicly in 1981 about nuclear-armed warships in Japan's ports came close to bringing down an LDP government. In Okinawa local residents protested the large numbers and types of nuclear weapons based there during the U.S. military occupation (1945-72). Breaking its promise that they be permanently removed, the Japanese government concluded a secret nuclear understanding as part of the 1969 Okinawa Reversion Agreement that the U.S. government could bring them back whenever it decided there was “a great emergency.” In 2009 a high Japanese government official advocated their return to Okinawa in testimony before a U.S. Congressional Commission.

Recent surveys have shown that over 90% of Japanese have a negative view of China and the Chinese people. This tendency appears to have become more pronounced since the beginning of Abe Shinzō's second term as prime minister in December 2012. It also coincides with greater and greater numbers of Chinese visiting Japan as tourists and consumers. This paper investigates portrayals of the Chinese people in Japanese media to identify positive and negative representations and to see if these correlate with the results of surveys of attitudes among the general population.

Ever since the thwarted bid by T. Boone Pickens to obtain seats on the board of Koito Manufacturing, the activities of foreign investors in Japan, and of foreign CEOs of Japanese companies, have generated controversy. Foreign assertions of noble intentions are often distrusted by Japanese, while frustrations voiced by Pickens in 1989 are still keenly felt today.