By Yutaka Iimura,Senior Fellow at GRIPS Alliance,Visiting Professor at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies,Former Ambassador of Japan to Indonesia and to France
Over the past few times, in my column, I have written from different angles about the economic, political, and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
The United Arab Emirates and the rest of the Gulf oil-producing countries, which abstained from the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Russia in April, are reluctant to increase crude oil production further.
On September 22, 2025, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) formally announced the leadership election to choose a successor to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who declared his resignation on September 7