Juha I. Uitto's Blog

 

Beyond the neon skylines, crowded subways, and hi-tech innovations lies another Japan – a wilder world of mountains, forests, and rice paddies that reveal the country’s deep relationship with nature.

The hills are shaped like traffic cones, except that they’re green. Many of them reach up to over 1,000 meters; the tallest ones nearly 3,000 meters. They stand on both sides of the road – Akita Expressway – blocking any view beyond them except for the sky, which that day was overcast. The forested slopes look virtually impenetrable. There are signs warning of mountain goats, tanuki-raccoon dogs – and bears – along the roadside.

Tohoku, consisting of the northern prefectures on the main island of Honshu, has been called the wild side of Japan. If Japan conjures up images of avant-garde high-rises, hi-tech attractions, and people in dark suits or outrageous anime costumes rushing at subway stations, then you should visit Tohoku. It is another world up here.

We were speeding through the mountains in Kikuchi-san’s Daihatsu Cocoa overtaking many larger vehicles as she pushed the little car to 120 kph. Mami, which is her name, is a hotelier and restaurateur in Iwate and a dear old friend of my wife Yoko. She was taking us from their mutual hometown of Oshu to Akita City in the adjacent prefecture with the same name. The road cut across the north-south mountain range that forms the backbone of Honshu, from Iwate Prefecture in the east to Akita Prefecture in the west, from the Pacific ocean to the Sea of Japan coast. Cutting through the mountains can be taken literally: there are about ten tunnels, most of them short but a few about 2.5 km long. Altogether, one spends more than 10 km driving under the huge mountain masses. What an engineering feat it has been to construct these tunnels!

In between, the road rises to higher ground and occasional bridges cross fertile valleys in the shadow of the steep mountains. These valleys are intensively utilized for farming. Small clusters of farmhouses are surrounded by green rice paddies.

Akita Expressway cuts east to west through the mountains (photo by author).

Rice is the staple in Japan. But it is also more than just food, as the anthropologist Emiko Tierney Ohnuki explains in her book, Rice as Self: “As a metaphor of self, rice paddies are our ancestral land, our village, our region, and ultimately, our land, Japan. They also represent our pristine past before modernity and foreign influences contaminated it” (p. 10). Later she explains, “The notion that each rice grain has a soul and that rice is alive in the hull are fundamental to the meanings assigned to rice in Japanese culture…” (p. 55). The rice paddies prevail even as the countryside empties of people and the farming population ages. This phenomenon also explains the widespread resistance to foreign rice by Japanese consumers, even as rice prices have soared this year and been a major contributor to rising inflation.

Tohoku, with its relatively cold climate, has experienced several rice famines in the recorded history, many of them linked to natural disasters, such as cooling climate after volcanic eruptions. Latest in 1934, the rice crop in Iwate failed due to cold weather, causing many poor farm families to send their children to Tokyo and beyond as laborers, or to work in the water trade, or to join the military, all of which contributed to the pre-war unrest. In better times, Tohoku rice is arguably the best in the world, thanks to the clean environment and water.

Japan’s environmental history is at best checkered. The case of mercury poisoning in Minamata on the southwestern island of Kyushu starting in the late 1950s is perhaps the most famous incident of industrial pollution with dramatic consequences to people’s health. But there were plenty of others where the environment and human health were sacrificed to the altar of progress in post-war Japan, such as the Itai-Itai disease caused by cadmium poisoning discovered in 1967 or the PCB poisoning in and around Kitakyushu the year after. Opposition to industrial pollution was silenced, communities divided, and victims shunned, as the country focused on rebuilding and getting rich at any cost.

Since those years, much has been done to improve the environment. Environmental consciousness is high: practically no one litters, recycling is religiously practiced, and the cities are clean. Air and water pollution are now controlled. The largest urban conglomerations – Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto – are concentrated in the Central and Western Kanto and Kansai areas.

The Japanese culture has been largely based on the desire to control nature. This has its traditional expression in Japanese gardens in which nature has been forced into beautiful, but artificial depictions of, well, idealized nature. The tortured, but gorgeous bonsai trees are another example. For many Japanese, nature is at its most beautiful when it is well regimented.

Another factor playing into the tendency to control nature is the prevalence of natural hazards. Japan consists of a chain of volcanic islands in the middle of the largest ocean of the world, the Pacific. The country is prone to earthquakes that happen daily (although larger ones are of course rarer). Despite its name, the ocean frequently acts in ways anything but pacific, sending typhoons and tsunamis to the coasts. The eruption of the iconic volcano, Mt. Fuji, is long overdue. If a natural hazard exists, Japan is bound to have it in quantities. Consequently, Japan is also the best prepared nation towards natural hazards: even massive earthquakes tend to have relatively few victims.

There are exceptions, the most prominent one in recent history being the earthquake that hit Tohoku on the Pacific side on March 11, 2011. The 9.1 magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami flattened out much of the Sanriku coastal zone in Miyagi and Iwate prefectures and killed almost 20,000 people. The tsunami also caused the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant resulting in the worst nuclear accident in human history, barring the Chernobyl accident in current-day Ukraine in 1986.

Up in in the mountains between Iwate and Akita, nature is largely unspoiled thanks to a low density of human population, little urbanization and even less industry. That in itself is largely the result of the mountainous topography, the harsh winters, and the relatively short growing season. Yet, virtually all flat valleys are under cultivation.

The topography is also what has saved Japan’s forests. This is one of the most forested countries in the world outside of the tropics, with 67% of land area covered in forests. Japan in the post-World War II years extensively replanted forests, with species like sugi and the Japanese cypress. According to environmental historian Catherine Knight, about 40% of Japan’s forests are currently man-made plantations, not naturally occurring ecosystems.

The forests would most certainly have been decimated had it been easier and more economical to exploit them. Instead, it is said that Japan has outsourced deforestation, especially to Southeast Asia where its companies have long maintained logging operations thereby saving the forests on the home islands.

What is evident even up here in Tohoku is the careful management of natural hazards and nature itself. Mountainsides where roads cross them are protected by engineering works to prevent landslides, which can be caused by earthquakes or just erosion of the slopes.

Japan has been referred to as the “construction state.” The Ministry of Construction and the numerous big and small companies operating in the sector wield significant power. They provide substantial employment and spend remarkable amounts of money as they fix the real and sometimes self-created problems.

In the decades following World War II, most rivers in Japan, notably near urban centers on the Kanto Plain, were straightened and channelized in concrete to control natural flow and meandering. Contrary to expectations, however, these works meant for flood control often had the opposite effect, while also harming ecosystems along the rivers. The government, to a degree, recognized the mistakes and mended its ways, leading the River Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism to reverse engineer riverine habitats since the 1990s. Today, Tohoku’s largest river – and to me the dearest – Kitakami-gawa flows quite freely from its origins at Mt. Nanashigure to the Pacific Ocean.

But the time of the construction follies is not over. Following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which destroyed virtually all small fishing ports on the Sanriku coast, many survivors left. Especially younger people moved to Sendai and other cities. Few of the refugees had any intention to return to the coast. Given this and the fact that the tsunami threat will not disappear, to me the sensible thing would have been to develop the coastline to an area for nature and recreation. Instead, the government has invested tremendous amounts of resources to massive earth moving and construction works to raise the coastline, in the process destroying much of the nature literally flattening hills. This for a handful of mostly old people who may return. That just demonstrates the natural tendency of the authorities and the construction industry to find an engineering solution to any problem.

Driving through the central mountains, however, these problems are far away. Yet, just like Sanriku coast, the countryside in the remote sparsely populated areas is further emptying. Most of the young people have moved to cities and the small farmers have few heirs to take over their plots (although there is a small back-to-the-land movement driving some younger urbanites to a more organic lifestyle in the rural areas). One might think that depopulation might lead to rewilding of the land – a popular concept in some parts of Europe – and there may be some benefits to the wildlife. However, the traditional farming system – satoyama – is surprisingly well adapted to the natural ecosystem. The rice paddies themself are ecotopes of their own, with a vibrant fauna and flora. There are studies that suggest that losing this agricultural landscape is a threat to the biodiversity that has evolved in them.

Japan is making measurable progress on climate and environmental fronts and is rolling out a nature-positive economy strategy, which includes the “30 by 30” conservation target, aiming to protect 30% of land and marine regions by 2030. Yet, challenges remain, not least as global temperatures rise affecting climate and weather in this island nation.

Tohoku’s rugged landscapes remind us that Japan’s story is not just one of futuristic glory and control of the environment, but of coexistence with nature, which offers lessons in resilience and balance that Japan, and the world, will need more than ever.

 

While veganism trends in headlines and health blogs, the global appetite for meat remains strong.

On Father’s Day evening we walked around in our Maryland neighborhood. Every restaurant serving steak was full and some even had long lines outside. Wait, but isn’t everyone turning vegan? I thought people these days watch you disapprovingly if you order a steak. Well, no, not really. For better or worse, meat consumption is on the rise.

It is sometimes said that, apart from not bringing new people to the planet, the best thing an individual can do to fight climate change is to stop eating meat. Raising cattle is the least effective way of producing calories. It takes about 6 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of beef. That’s not an efficient conversion ratio. We hear that the world’s largest wetland, Pantanal, and the Amazon rainforest are being decimated by the expansion of farms and cattle ranching. Both areas are reservoirs of incredible and unique biological diversity. Only three agricultural commodities—beef, palm oil, and soybeans—are responsible for almost 80% of tropical deforestation. Most of the soy isn’t served as edamame or go to make tofu, but to feeding the farm animals.

Pork and lamb are not much better than beef. Chicken have a smaller carbon footprint, as might be suspected from their tiny scrawny feet, but there are more than 26.5 billion of them on the planet (that’s more than 3 chicken for each human being alive today). We also read in magazines about how we will in the future get our protein from insects and seaweed. And there are all the medical studies linking consumption of red meat and especially processed meats to increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and general unhappiness.

These facts have led a number of people to decide that they should become vegetarian. Many of these people think that also other people should follow their virtuous example. There’s not only the climate to protect but there’s the ethical problem of how we treat our non-human relatives. Most of us have friends who have become vegetarian, even vegan, and they like to share their reasons for doing so and why you should join the club.

But is the vegetarian wave really happening? Data does not suggest so. The US industry’s Power of Meat report documents that total meat sales in the country grew to $104.3 billion in 2024, which translated to a 2.3% increase in the volume sold. According to the same survey, 73% of consumers consider meat to be a healthy choice.

Worldwide trends are similar, but with important nuances. Globally, meat consumption grew by less than 1% between 2008 and 2017. This growth seems to have leveled off in most of the rich world and even declining in a few countries, such as Belgium, the countries of the northern Mediterranean, and Canada. This most likely reflects changing attitudes due to environmental and health concerns. There’s also a broader trend from red meat towards chicken.

The picture is quite different elsewhere. The traditional beef countries, like Argentina and Brazil are still growing their consumption, but not as much as neighboring Colombia and Peru. Carnivorous habits seem to be spreading in much of the developing world as a consequence of rising standards of living. China, with its more than 1 billion people, leads this trend, but other Asian countries, like Vietnam, Myanmar and Sri Lanka are increasing their consumption even faster. Similarly in African countries like Malawi, Chad, Congo, Benin and Guinea consumption of meat has risen significantly in recent years.

The only places outside of the above-mentioned wealthy countries where meat consumption is down are countries where poverty, conflict and fragility have rendered large portions of the population highly vulnerable and unable to afford meat. These include Lebanon, Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti, Madagascar and Niger, as well as Venezuela where policy failure has rendered meat unaffordable to most people.

What can we conclude from this? First, the vegetarian trends may not be as pervasive as one might assume from the media coverage. They may be mostly limited to wealthy people concerned with planetary health and animal welfare, as well as their own healthiness. Of course, the world’s most populous country, India, is predominantly vegetarian. In my prosperous slice of the Mid-Atlantic seaboard, vegetarian and vegan restaurants seem to be thriving, although casual observation would suggest that the clientele are predominantly women.

For poorer Americans, the cheapest way of filling their stomachs is visiting a fast-food restaurant where burgers and fries effectively provide plentiful calories. Besides, in many neighborhoods it is very difficult to even get fresh vegetables. These food deserts only have corner bodegas serving low-income and often historically marginalized populations.

As for people in poor countries, can we really expect them to forego meat after we in the West have overindulged in it for decades? For many people meat has been—and still remains—a luxury. Now when incomes are rising, people can finally afford to eat what they want and add tasty tidbits to their nutrition. Then we come and tell them that they shouldn’t.

This is a parallel to other ways in which we in the rich West are trying to limit greenhouse gas emissions by our brethren in poor countries that never contributed much to climate warming in the first place. Rising living standards call for increased energy use. Turning vegetarian is still pretty much an obsession of those of us who can afford to shop for alternatives and worry about food-related health issues. I for one should definitely reduce my calorie intake.

My prediction is that meat consumption will continue to increase for some time to come. Note that this is not what I would personally wish would happen but, given the still growing world population, especially in countries where incomes must rise to give people a dignified level of existence, it would appear inevitable.

So what can be done?

As with energy, it is a matter of environmental justice that it should be us in the rich West who should first cut down on our consumption before asking Asians and Africans to do so. There are also ways of reducing consumption without entirely changing our diet. These include deciding to have a day or two every week when you do not eat meat. Or simply reducing the portions. The Japanese eat meat regularly but it’s rarely the largest part of any meal, usually mixed with vegetables, rice and noodles. The move towards chicken is also a step that is easy to take.

This is yet another dimension of the climate dilemma. As I’ve written before, behavior change is highly unlikely to stop climate change. It would require sacrifices from lots of people who would have to cut down on, not only meat but many other favorite conveniences. We would also have to deal with the aspirations of those billions of people who today don’t have enough for a fulfilling life. Governments have signed up to the Paris Climate Agreement but few are achieving the promised emissions cuts.

We thus need to move on several fronts and not put our eggs into one basket. This would include adopting techniques that would help us increase the productivity of oceans while they would at the same time absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Plans such as seaweed farming could provide multiple benefits, from increasing carbon storage to enhancing the productivity of fisheries. This would, of course, have to be done carefully not to cause unintended consequences to the environment or to local people and their livelihoods.

Until sustainable options become affordable and accessible for all, we can't point fingers and lecture others. The path to a cooler planet shouldn’t be a guilt trip. The good news is that change doesn’t have to mean sacrificing everything we like. We just have to be smarter. Less meat is a smart choice for our health and that of the planet. Maybe we will also learn to love seaweed. After all, millions of Asians already enjoy it daily.

And by the way, no steak for the dad on Father’s Day. We ended up having dinner in a restaurant where everything is plant-based, locally sourced, and certifiably healthy. At least we had most of the restaurant for ourselves.

[Originally published on https://juhauitto.substack.com on 19 June 2025.]

This is a great book on many levels. Although it was published already in 2017, it hardly matters given the historical context and the fact that the Caribbean nations have not changed dramatically since then.

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro knows the Caribbean intimately and is extremely well-read in the region and its culture, from history and literature to music. He covers the places he visits or stays in for longer periods from the time of Columbus’ journeys, the colonial period when the islands were used for sugar plantations relying on slave labor, to contemporary cultural trends. This is how a travelogue should be: personal but anchored in the larger historical-geographic-political context, erudite but entertaining.

Yet, it took me some time to wade through the 430+ pages. Not because I wasn’t interested but because some of the chapters (each dealing with a specific island) were rather heavy going. Some sections on the larger islands — Jamaica and Cuba each get three chapters — are lively, mixing culture and societal commentary with the author’s personal experiences.

In the case of Jamaica, rasta culture and reggae, naturally, play an important part. It’s not only about Bob Marley, but also Toots Hibbert, Peter Tosh and many others get their share. Jelly-Schapiro spends time with Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records that brought reggae to a wider audience, now living in the villa where Ian Fleming dreamed up James Bond. Jelly-Schapiro places these cultural and musical factors firmly into the socio-political setting.

Similarly, the highly personal section on Cuba brings together history, politics, economy, music and culture. He explores the notion of cubanidad, which “first crystallized as an important, if still vague, idea when the cause of Cuban independence” was promoted by José Martí in the 1880s and 1890s (p. 120). He equally explores the roots of the specifically Cuban music that we love in the mélange of African and European traditions. He highlights the role of Israel “Cachao” Lopez, the legendary musician and composer broght to broader fame in his later years through Buenavista Social Club. The last of the three chapters concerns Cuba in the twilight of Fidel Catro’s reign.

The chapter on Puerto Rico emphasizes the island’s relationhip with the United States and the diaspora in the Bronx. The chapter also traces the history of Puerto Rican nationalism and its hero, Pedro Albizu Campos.

The three chapters dedicated to Hispaniola are weighed down by history, perhaps inevitably given how important it is in explaining the current state of affairs. The two countries that share the island — Dominican Republic and Haiti — are often contrasted, with the first one coming on top as a developmental success story and the second as a hopeless basket case. Jelly-Schapiro brings much nuance to this interpretation highlighting the violent and dictatorial history of the Dominican Republic, while bringing out the humanity in Haiti. He sheds light on the curious racial relations on the island, stemming from the two sides’ histories as Spanish vs. French colonies, and how these continue to cause tensions between the two.

The four chapters covering eight smaller islands in the Lesser Antilles are shorter, perhaps because there’s not that much to report (and perhaps because the author seems to have spent less time on each of them, which is perfectly understandable). His reporting from these islands tends to poke holes to the image of them as paradise. Yet, Jelly-Schapiro’s understanding still brings forth many distinctive features between, say, Barbados and Barbuda, both with a history as British colonies and sugar plantations.

Grenada has a distinct political history and a charismatic leader, Maurice Bishop, executed by his political rivals in 1983. Ronald Reagan found the island’s socialist experiment so threatening that he sent in the marines to subdue the tiny island nation, on the pretext of the presence of Cuban workers helping to expand the airport.

Montserrat, a British Overseas Territory where Sir George Martin, the legendary producer built a house and studio, rose to international attention in 1995 when the long-dormant Soufrière volcano erupted destroying Plymouth, the capital, and forced two-thirds of the island’s population to flee. Jelly-Schapiro explores the volcanic zones with an American geography professor, Lydia Pulsipher, and her husband. They note how, following the disaster, the British governmental aid agency DFID, relocated people into new houses in a non-affected area: “they’re well bjuilt, but they’ve got nothing to do with how Montserratians live; with the old social structure here, and with homes they built to fit it” (p. 319). Unfortunately, this is a picture that often emerges when well-meaning outsiders try to assist countries to rebuild after a disaster (for example in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami).

Martinique, which still today is a French territory and the westernmost extension of EU, deserves a lengthy chapter, largely due to the writers and political thinkers it has produced, such as Aimé Césaire and Patrick Chamoiseau. Jelly-Schapiro writes (p. 358):

“Few large countries, let alone little ones, boast the literary riches allowing one to trace the whole modern arc of their culture, and the contours of that culture’s conflicts, through those of its books.”

Accordingly focusing on these writers and their poetry and their legacy at the expense of the author’s own experiences, these 32 pages took me more effort than most other parts of the book.

Throughout, the book discusses numerous authors from the islands, many of whom have achieved fame outside of the Caribbean: C.L.R. James and V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad), George Lamming (Barbados), Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua), Franz Fanon (Martinique), Jean Rhys (Dominica), and the already-mentioned Aimé Césaire and Patric Chamoiseau

Luckily, he saved the best for the last. The 40-page final chapter on Trinidad is superbly crafted. Its culture and social and political issues are presented in a very animated way. Jelly-Schapiro has spent ample time on the island, including as a visiting scholar at the university. The carnival, the calypso and steel bands form a sort of a backbone to the chapter. Jelly-Schapiro tells the dramatic story of Michael Abdul Hakim (a.k.a. Michael X), a Black activist, and the people around him.

His best informant is Jay Telfer, an octogenarian figure whom he befriended. Telfer who in the 1960s played a central role in bringing West Indian culture, including the Notting Hill Carnival, to London, is a font of information and a delightful character. Before that, in the 1950s, Jay Telfer studied at NYU and worked at the jazz clubs in Greenwich Village where he met many jazz legends, and where Thelonius Monk told Telfer he was the only man able to dance to Monk’s music. Although involved in politics throughout his career, Jelly-Schapiro says of Telfer: “Personal ethics, like personal style, were for him much more important than politics” (p. 411).

Jelly-Schapiro has written a highly interesting and valuable book, although it is somewhat uneven. He generally writes well alternating between the casual when describing his own personal experiences and the academic. There are places where his style can get a bit out of hand. Take, for example, this sentence about Chamoiseau (p. 334):

“And his ideas’ shadows have been palpably present, too, over polemics surrounding the French Antilles’ great human export of now; those other public artists — soccer players — whose goals in World Cup stadia, firing France to victory in a Coupe de Monde contested in Paris in 1998, prompted scenes of joy on the Champs-Elysées more massive than any since the Liberation, and forced a country still unaccustomed to seeing itself reflected in the brown and black faces of its colonies to ask pointed questions about what, two centuries after Robespierre’s fall, a Frenchman is.”

Apart from these squabbles, it is a book worthy of its author, a fellow geographer, with a PhD from UC Berkeley. Finally, Jelly-Schapiro confesses to having adopted C.L.R. James as “a kind of intellectual hero and style icon alike” (p. 401):

“Here was a scholar activist who wrote with equal verve and brilliance about the Haitian Revolution and the game of cricket, Hegelian philosophy and Hollywood movies, Herman Melville and calypso music — and whose synthetic aptitude for doing so, moreover, found him placing all those subjects within the larger telos not only of modern capitalism but also of humanity’s struggle for democracy reaching back to the Greeks.”

If this cultural-historical-political-social mixture was what Joshua Jelly-Schapiro aimed for in this book, I think he pretty much succeeded.

Fourteen years ago, Japan was devastated by one of the deadliest tsunamis in modern history. Now a prophetic manga is fueling anxiety of a repeat. Could such a calamity occur soon again?

On Friday, March 11, 2011, at 14:46 hrs, disaster struck Japan. One of the largest earthquakes—officially the Great East Japan Earthquake—on record (magnitude 9.0) occurred just off the northeast Pacific coast of the main island of Honshu. The shaking lasted for a full five minutes—a terrifyingly long time when one entirely loses orientation, may not be able to stand up, with everything falling around you, walls and houses crumbling, the rumble of the earth drowning all other sounds—triggering a massive tsunami. Because the epicenter was so close to the coast, there was hardly any warning or time to evacuate. The first waves reached the Sanriku coast in the Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures within ten minutes, completely overrunning the towns and ports leaving total destruction in their wake. Up to 18,500 people perished. The tsunami also caused the meltdown of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Miyagi Prefecture, the worst nuclear accident ever to hit Japan and the worst in the world only after Chernobyl.

Now some people, are again fearful to visit Japan. This is because of a manga comic, published in 1999 and re-released in 2021, warns of a catastrophe hitting Japan in July 2025. The only reason why this comic might scare people off is that it originally predicted, correctly it turned out, a major disaster in Japan in March 2011. The Future I Saw, by the artist Ryo Tatsuki, imagines a massive tsunami caused by a rupture in the undersea fault line between the Philippine and Eurasian plates. As a consequence, the number of tourists, especially from China and Hong Kong, has dropped significantly and some people have decided to postpone their trips to Japan. Tatsuki herself says that she is no prophet.

The scenario itself is not entirely unrealistic. Tsunamis are triggered by undersea events, most often large earthquakes at fault zones, but sometimes by volcanic eruptions or massive landslides deep in the ocean. The Pacific Rim where Japan is located is seismically highly active. The Sanriku Tsunami was the fifth most deadly in the past two centuries or so. The deadliest of all was the Indian Ocean Tsunami on Boxing Day of 2004 when an estimated 230,000-280,000 people perished in half a dozen countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. This was the second time the Sanriku coast was devastated by a tsunami: on June 15, 1896, another tsunami killed some 22,000 people in the same area with waves reaching the height of 30 meters.

Tsunamis are so deadly because of the massive amounts of water and the speed at which they travel. In deep water, the waves remain low but they spread fast in all directions from the epicenter. Tsunami waves have been measured to move at 800 km/h. As they approach shallower coastal waters they slow down, condense, and rise to frightening heights.

This is what destroyed so much of the Sanriku coast. Kesennuma, a port in Miyagi, was gone. I have visited the town both before and after the disaster. First the tsunami swept across the entire low-lying valley. When it receded, fires that ensued as gas pipelines were destroyed finished the job burning down the entire old wooden town. Kesennuma port had been the center of the Pacific shark fisheries just because of the shape of its natural harbor. Now this same geographic advantage had provided the tsunami with a perfect entrance to the harbor bowl allowing the water to rise unhindered into the town.

Tohoku’s largest city, Sendai, situated on higher ground and away from the sea was largely spared from major damage. The city airport closer to the coast was not so lucky. Cameras showed the massive wave sweeping slowly across the runways. Large jet planes floated away like toy models. Aerial shots from the close by mountain areas showed huge liquefaction of the soil, again in slow motion, wiping away entire villages, houses crumbling and washing down the slopes into the sea. 

So what are the chances that such a disaster repeats itself in the near future, if not later this month? It is impossible to give a precise answer to that question. Statistically, major tsunamis globally take place about twice in a decade. The likelihood of one striking a specific major urban is low but it is plausible that one of the major cities around the Pacific Ring of Fire will be struck by a large tsunami in the coming few decades.

The cities most at risk include the Tokyo-Yokohama conurbation, the largest city complex in the world with over 40 million inhabitants. This is also Japan’s economic heart, so a major disaster there would be highly destructive for the country and would disrupt the entire world economy.

Other likely targets include Manila and Jakarta on the Asian side, and Lima and Santiago de Chile in South America, as well as Los Angeles and San Francisco in California. Honolulu in the middle of the Ring of Fire is also vulnerable. In fact, all of these cities have in the past experienced disruptive earthquakes and tsunamis.

Indonesia and its capital Jakarta are particularly at risk from a repeat of an event like the 2004 earthquake and tsunami. Another risk is posed by the active volcano, Krakatoa. Its violent eruption caused a massive tsunami on August 27, 1883. It destroyed two-thirds of the island and killed some 36,000 people, making it the second deadliest event in recorded history.

Hawai’i due to its location has experienced three tsunamis claiming lives in the past eight decades. The worst one was on April 1, 1946, when a 8.6 magnitude earthquake in the Aleutian Islands sent a tsunami racing across the ocean. It destroyed most of Hilo on the Big Island, killing 159 people. As the earthquake that instigated the tsunami took place in Alaska thousands of kilometers northeast of Hawai’I, no one was prepared when the huge waves washed into the islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

When the 9.5 magnitude—the strongest ever recorded—earthquake hit Chile on May 23, 1960, Hilo, 10,000 km away from the epicenter, was again collateral damage and 63 people died there (the range of the casualties overall varies significantly, from 1,000 to 6,000). On November 29, 1979, a local 7.7 magnitude earthquake shook the Big Island causing two deaths. Such a locally generated tsunami gives hardly any warning time for people to escape.

All of the cities exposed to high tsunami risk are constantly monitoring the situation. Japan, with its multi-hazard risk and frequent earthquakes (in fact, a 5.5 magnitude earthquake shook the southwestern Kagoshima Prefecture while I am writing this on the 3rd of July), is arguably the best prepared country in the world. In this, it is helped by its advanced technologies and well-educated, self-disciplined population. Japan employs a national earthquake and tsunami early warning system operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency. It informs people of impending danger through sirens and phone alerts. It has recently deployed drones on the sea in front of popular beaches for tsunami detection. Detailed evacuation maps are maintained by local governments down to the neighborhood level.

Furthermore, millions of people in the country participates in drills and education sessions. September 1st is the National Disaster Prevention Day, with the date commemorating the Great Kantō Earthquake that destroyed Tokyo in 1923.

Scientists in Japan give an 80 percent chance for a mega-quake taking place along the Nankai Trough in the coming 30 years. This revised assessment has led the authorities to require municipalities and businesses to enhance their preparedness plans, to strengthen building earthquake resistance, stockpile food and other necessities, and to update evacuation plans.

Earthquakes and tsunamis cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty. A major event is certain to cause significant damage to infrastructure and the economy. The death of thousands of people in such eventuality is unavoidable. The best we can do is to be aware of the risks and be well prepared. That is our best chance of saving lives.

[Originally published on https://juhauitto.substack.com on July 4, 2025.]

 

We need continued innovation to stay on top of global challenges.

The horizon looks bright thanks to science and technology (photo by author in Montenegro).
As World War II was winding down, the U.S. quietly spirited out multiple scientists from Nazi Germany. Many of them had been eager supporters of Hitler’s war effort but that didn’t prevent America from wanting them. These bad guys were too good to let go. They would be essential to building America as a world power: militarily, technologically, medically, educationally, and in so many other ways.

In the end, the secret program dubbed Operation Paperclip brought over some 1,600 German scientists and engineers. These were not the earlier migrants, like Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had escaped Germany to the US in 1933 and 1936 respectively. No, these men (and they all were men) had been crucial wheels in propelling the Nazi war machine.

Wernher von Braun was the lead engineer of the V-2 rocket program, while Arthur Rudolph was the technical director for the same at the Mittelwerk facility. The program used forced labor extensively, including from concentration camps. Both became key figures in the American space and defense industries. (Rudolph ended up leaving the country in 1984 when the Justice Department started investigating his wartime activities.) Kurt Debus who became the first director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and oversaw the launch operations of the Apollo program, had worked on V-2 rocket launches and was a member of the SS before coming to America.

Hubertus Strughold developed medical protocols for manned spaceflight earning the nickname “father of space medicine”. He was accused of conducting unethical medical experiments on prisoners of war.

Not everyone continued with strategic research. Heinz Haber, a former Luftwaffe officer, turned himself into a popular science communicator in Disney’s employ.

The point I’m making here is that American policymakers understood the importance of scientific research to solidify the country’s global leadership. Before the war, Germany had been the world’s scientific leader. Now its scientists, although some were politically and ethically less than kosher, were to make pivotal contributions to the U.S. supremacy during the Cold War.

After World War II, USA prioritized scientific research without which it would lose out to the Soviet Union and other rivals in the world. This prioritization has continued up until this year. It was understood that science, technology, and innovation were necessary for national strength and advancement. Although much of this was driven by the space race and the military-industrial complex, there were enormous spillovers to other important areas, including medicine, telecommunications, energy—and not least semiconductors, computing, and eventually the Internet.

At the same time, America built world class research institutions, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Laboratories conducting cutting-edge research in energy and technology. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) became a star among medical research establishments in the world. Federal funding ensured an environment where scientific inquiry and innovation in medicine, engineering, and basic science thrived.

This also boosted the country’s image and attractiveness. Its universities became global magnets for scientific talent. Many international collaborations, from the International Space Station to the Human Genome Project, featured American institutions and scientists.

All these developments played a crucial role in driving the U.S. economy and positioning the country as world leader in virtually all fields of human endeavor. It became to be seen as truly the land of opportunity and progress. Its soft power was unparalleled, influencing aspirations, opinion, and culture world over.

It now seems that this era of progress and enlightenment may be coming to an end, at least temporarily. The recent cuts to science funding are previously unimaginable. The Big Beautiful Bill, which has not yet passed all Congressional hurdles, proposes to cut NSF funding by 55% from $9 billion to $3.8 billion (by contrast, the budget of its Chinese counterpart is $30 billion).

NIH faces a proposed reduction of 40%, from $47 billion to $27 billion, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would have to accept a 44% cut from $9.2 billion to $5.2 billion.

NSF currently funds 24% of all basic research outside of medicine. In fields like engineering the NSF contribution is much higher. For instance, in computer science, NSF funds about 80% of basic research, from which private companies, as well as the government, benefit so much.

The cuts enacted as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seem to rely on keyword searches to weed out “woke” programs. According to a friend working at NSF, out of the some 30,000 awards made by the Foundation, maybe 50 or 60 can be classified as “woke“. Cutting entire categories of programs is throwing the baby with the bathwater. The Social Sciences and Humanities includes soft targets, such as anthropology, but also the entire economics research program. A program that has produced 20 Nobel laureates is being cut because it falls under “education.”

Apart from the scientists who moved here before and after World War II, USA has continued till this day to attract global talent. There are currently more than 1.1 million foreign students in American universities. Slightly over half of them come from just two large countries: India and China. The third largest country of origin is South Korea, but its share is an order of magnitude smaller. It is followed by Canada and Vietnam.

In top universities the share of foreign students is particularly high. Harvard, the administration’s object of ire, has some 7,000 foreign students, translating into about a quarter of its entire student population. (Xi Mingze, the daughter of China’s supreme leader, graduated from Harvard in 2014 and has stayed in the USA since then.)

Even more dramatic is the fact that in STEM subjects, including mathematics, engineering and computer science, more than half of graduate students are foreign-born. The US tech companies depend on them to stay competitive.

Apart from the importance of cross-cultural education and experience benefiting both sides, foreign students, who usually pay full tuition, are also an important source of income for universities. NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, estimates that foreign students contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy in the 2023-2024 academic year.

The number of international students, however, is dropping rapidly as their backgrounds are scrutinized and universities are being pressured to reign in allowable research topics. This doesn’t affect only pro-Palestinian students from the Middle East. Even a Finnish doctoral student had her visa and Fulbright scholarship canceled upon a re-evaluation of her research topic (racism in teacher education). There are also concerted efforts to revoke foreign students’ visas and to deport those who participate in political activism. Friends tell me that they have to go further down the lists of applications as top candidates opt out and instead choose to go elsewhere. Countries like Canada, Australia and some European nations are the obvious beneficiaries, but some (especially from Asia and Africa) opt to go to Japan and even China. In the words of one European student who canceled his application to the USA: “Would you choose to go to a university in the 1930s Germany?”

It is not only foreign students who leave or simply don’t come in the first place. Also more established professionals have made the decision to leave. The move of three high-profile professors—Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore and Jason Stanley—from Yale to the University of Toronto caught some headlines, at least in academic circles. At the same time, the interest of U.S. physicians to relocate north of the border will potentially be a greater problem.

Apart from Canada, China is clearly one country that is willing and ready to take advantage of the closing of the American academia. Its rapid rise has been the result of conscious policy decisions and investments into scientific capabilities and innovation in emerging areas, such as AI, quantum technology, and materials science. China has by now caught up with the U.S. in several areas and even surpassed it in some metrics. Between 2018 and 2020, China published 23.4% of the scientific papers in the world, compared with 16.5% by the USA. It also leads the world in high-impact research. In particular, China has taken leadership in natural sciences. In 2024, China accounted for over 40% of global patent applications in material science, double that of the USA. China’s spending on research and development (R&D) reached $496 billion in 2024.

Science is essential to tackling global challenges, from climate change and biodiversity loss to feeding the still growing global population. Similarly, we will rely on medical science to enhance our quality of life and longevity. When the next pandemic arises (and there is no question that there will be a next one) we need both scientific advances and international cooperation to cope with it. Both of these are currently under the gun.

The beginning of June marks the start of the Atlantic hurricane season. It is predicted to be above-average in intensity, with 13-19 named storms of which 3-5 may grow to be Category 3 or stronger. At the same time, institutional capacity to deal with them is rapidly brought down. The budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is proposed to be cut by 26%, from $6.1 billion to $4.5 billion, with plans to entirely eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is in chaos, with hundreds of employees including more than two dozen senior staff leaving the agency. None of this bodes well for the country’s ability to forecast, prepare for, and respond to weather-related disasters that are without doubt on the horizon.

Both for the safety and well-being of people at home and for international competition, science and technology are essential. As we know, nature abhors a vacuum and there are other nations that are eager to fill it, should the U.S. abandon its leadership. We’d all be worse off for it.

[Originally published at https://juhauitto.substack.com on June 2, 2025.]

 

People in Finland are getting tired of cuts to the welfare state and the anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent years.

On Sunday, April 14th, Finland had regional and local elections where subnational units, cities and communes elected their representatives. The results were a radical turnaround from the previous national elections in 2023, that ushered in the current right-wing coalition government. This time, the opposition Social Democratic Party gained the most and became the largest party, while the coalition government partners generally lost their shares. Most significantly, the anti-immigration Finns Party suffered a crushing blow.

I arrived in Helsinki soon after and was able to gauge the sentiments of some of the denizens of the capital city where I was born and spent the first 25 years of my life. The admittedly completely unscientific sample consisting of people in my circle nevertheless provided some insights into why this change happened. Mind you, the people I talked with represent a range of very different political views, although they all are from Helsinki and all have been academically educated.

Since the fall of the government of the Social Democratic prime minister Sanna Marin (famous for her social media presence, featuring dancing and partying), Finland has been governed by a right-wing coalition led by Petteri Orpo of the largest conservative party in the country, the National Coalition Party (NCP). In the parliamentary system of Finland where there currently are nine national parties represented in the parliament, no single party will ever come even close to garnering an absolute majority of votes. Consequently, all governments are coalition governments pulled together by the biggest winner of any election. The current government brings together members from the NCP, the Swedish People´s Party (SFP/RKP), the Christian Democrats, and the populist Finns Party. SFP and the Christians are minor players, respectively with 4.3% and 4.2% of the votes in the 2023 elections, but Orpo brought them along to pull together enough for a ruling majority.

The Finns Party with their 20.1% share of the votes in the 2023 election rose to the second place just behind NCP. With this, they laid claim to a large number of seats in the government, including that of the Minister of Finance: Riikka Purra’s rather extreme views regarding immigrants have shocked many citizens, while gaining approval from her supporters.

The government embarked on an unabashed assault on the welfare state that has long been the foundation of the Finnish society, as in its Nordic neighbors. The government policies have focused on cutting public services, including support to health care, students and the unemployed. International development assistance faces reductions of one-quarter of the funding. The government program also includes tax cuts for firms and the wealthy, while the value added tax was increased resulting in higher costs for everyone, including those with the fewest means.

Finland has been ranked the world’s happiest country for eight years in a row. Most of my compatriots scoff at this distinction: we don’t feel that we’re particularly happy—and certainly don’t show it by dancing or hugging each other or smiling excessively. In fact, there’s an old saying in Finland advising us that s/he who is happy should hide their happiness (Kell’ onni on se onnen kätkeköön). The UN-sponsored World Happiness Report ranks countries based on a single question of subjective feeling. But it also looks into areas such as income, healthy life expectancy, social support, generosity, freedom to make life choices, and perceptions of corruption. It clearly doesn’t measure individual happiness. Molly Young in a perceptive article in the New York Times Magazine makes the distinction between “affective” and “evaluative” happiness. The Finnish kind is more the latter, like contentedness.

The fact that Finland has ranked so high on this happiness list for such a long time is largely due to the extensive welfare state. Finland is a high-income country with relatively small differences between the rich and poor, at least compared with the USA. We have world class education (although the standards have sunk somewhat in recent years) and universal healthcare. We have a lengthy life expectancy, which stems partly from that access to healthcare, but also from the clean environment and relatively healthy lifestyle, with most people enjoying outdoors activities in nature. Importantly, the Finns have a high level of trust in each other—a lost wallet is likely to be returned to the rightful owner; and we generally trust our elected officials and government employees to be honest. It’s one of the least corrupt countries in the world (which obviously doesn’t mean everyone is squeaky clean).

The welfare state is of course expensive and has resulted in soaring public debt. It reached 82.1% of GDP in the last quarter of 2024 (which is bad, or not so bad, depending on what you compare with; for neighboring Sweden the percentage is just 46.18% but for the mighty USA it is 97.8%—and counting). Maintaining the welfare state translates into a high rate and highly progressive taxation, which is a constant complaint you hear in Helsinki. The current government’s strategy is to shift the tax burden from firms and wealthy individuals to the everyman, relying on the universally discredited trickle-down theory. When it cuts services at the same time, the result is people being squeezed. Which is not popular.

As a result, the biggest winner in the April elections were the Social Democrats, which collected 22.5% of the vote and became the largest party. The voters’ message was clear: no more cuts. However, the money has to come from somewhere. A professor friend of mine, who is quite unhappy with the current government, also indicated that he would not vote for the Social Democrats because of their profligate spending.

One of the issues plaguing Finland is productivity, which is affected by the population structure. Like most European countries, Finland’s population is aging rapidly (most Asian countries, too, including China and Japan are facing the same trend). Another scientist friend of mine attributed many of Finland’s economic problems to this fundamental issue. The dependency ratio—that is, persons below 15 or over 65 years of age compared to working age population—is now 61.1, with 23.6% of people older than 65. With the below-replacement birth rate of just 1.3 children per woman, and the longevity (79.0 years for men and 84.2 years for women), aging of the population structure is inevitable

Except for immigration. Without it, the Finnish population actually decreased by 17,956 people in 2023. In the same year, net migration to the country was 57,914, thus more than compensating for the decline. The immigrants also tend to be younger, working age adults. Like elsewhere in Europe and the United States, immigration is a hot political issue. The neighboring countries—Russia, Estonia and Sweden—have always been top origins of immigrants, with the addition of Ukrainians since Russia’s attack on the country (while the inflow of Russians has been halted by closed borders). However, it is the immigrants and asylum seekers from countries like Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, and Kurds from Iran and Turkey, who get most of the attention.

The Finns Party built their platform largely on opposing immigration and they were for some years very successful in their strategy. Now the latest election results suggest otherwise. They received only 7.8% of the vote in the regional elections and even less (7.6%) at the municipal level.

Russia with which Finland shares a 1,340 km-long border is a problematic neighbor, not least in recent years. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and beyond prompted Finland to abandon its traditional neutrality and join NATO in 2024. This decision was supported by an overwhelming majority of Finns, including those I talked with. The highly popular President Alexander Stubb has provided solid leadership in the country and beyond when it comes to foreign policy. (Stubb who started his presidency in 2024 came from NCP. However, in Finland when elected, the president habitually gives up his party affiliation to truly unify the entire nation.)

One friend, an art historian told me that, while she has never been a fan of Russia and has never visited Moscow, she used to travel regularly to St. Petersburg, a cosmopolitan city with handsome architecture and great art collections, only about 380 km from Helsinki. There used to be a lot of cross-border traffic while the border was open. My friend confessed to being a bit nostalgic about the trips but she accepts that the city being off-limits is the price we have to pay.

All parties, including the traditionally anti-NATO Left Alliance, supported Finland’s membership in the military alliance. However, a recent poll shows a decrease in trust in NATO since President Trump has cast doubt on American commitment to come to the aid of fellow NATO members. Still, two-thirds of the Finns support NATO membership. Due to Russia’s proximity and the wars Finland fought with the Soviet Union (1939; and 1941-42), Finland, unlike many other Western European countries, never neglected its own defense or relied solely on US security guarantees. In 2023, it spent 2.4% of its GDP on defense and has pledged to increase spending to 3% before the end of the decade. This obviously poses further budgetary challenges and competes with other needs of the welfare state.

Finland is a country where people live close to nature and it is not surprising that the Greens have been relatively strong. This time around, too, they gathered 9.1% of the vote. I was curious why more Finns don’t vote for the Greens (in fact, their share nationally was almost identical to that of the Left Alliance). I asked two of my friends—a musician and a university professor—about their views. Both gave similar answers, having to do with too broad a coalition of special interests, which dilutes the focus and reduces the excitement regarding the Green agenda. This influence of special interests may be similar to the situation of the Democratic Party in the US.

So far, I’ve written about the country as a whole. Helsinki is a bit of an anomaly. Of Finland’s 5.6 million people, about 1.4 million live in the capital region. There NCP remains dominant, although the Social Democrats almost caught up with them. Although the Greens lost somewhat as compared with the 2021 municipal elections, they still remained the third largest party with 17.9% of the vote. In Helsinki, the Finns Party received only 5.5% of the vote. This reflects the fact that Helsinki is the wealthiest, best educated and most cosmopolitan place in the country. Both the NCP and the Social Democrats are largely supported by urbanites and well-educated people. The same goes for the Greens, while the Finns Party and the Center Party tend to be popular outside of the cities.

Like elsewhere, Finnish politicians and people alike face difficult choices. One fundamental tension is between the financial burden of maintaining the welfare state and the growing fiscal deficits. The need to invest more into defense also competes with other priorities.

The Russian war against Ukraine and the generally unstable situation in Europe and the world, has diverted attention from other issues, such as climate change. Still, a recent survey by the Ministry of the Environment shows that almost everyone (91%) is worried about climate change and global biodiversity loss, and 97% of the respondents believe that clean nature enhances people’s health and well-being.

Another tension appears between the need to maintain Finland’s productivity and working-age population and the perceived problems caused by immigration. While Finland overall is still a fairly low-immigration country, as compared with many other European countries, such as France and Germany (apart from policy, there’s no doubt that the northern climate and the challenging language contribute to this), there has been an increase in recent years. This is felt especially with regard to non-European immigrants whose culture may make assimilation in the Finnish society harder. While 85% of immigrants live in cities, the opposition to them is highest outside, as the support to the Finns Party shows.

As population ages in all major regions of the world, except in Africa, and the UN projects that the global population will start shrinking during the second half of this century, many countries have tried establishing pronatal policies encouraging people to have more children. We do have to have a serious debate of population and whether its continued growth is needed or there are other ways to deal with the challenges (look especially to Japan). But that’s an entirely different discussion for another day.

It will be interesting to see which way future directions in the Finnish politics will turn. As a Finn living outside of the country for many years, I for one will be watching it carefully.

[Originally published at https://juhauitto.substack.com on May 12, 2025.]

 

What an evening. The packed Strathmore music center hallcould barely contain itself during the 2-hour show by the Cuban pianist andband leader Chucho Valdés and Irakere, the band he established half a centuryago. And here they were again, under the steerage of their legendary leader.

The 83-year old maestro was in excellent shape The sheervirtuosity of all of the players was stunning, but that’s not the point. Thepoint is the musicality and the originality of the music, the joy and thegenuine warmth. Irakere is primarily a jazz band but in a Cuban show peopleexpect to dance. The usual strategy, Valdés has said, is for the band to playjazz for the first half of the concert, then switch to pure salsa.

There were three percussionists—one primarily on congas,another with bongos and other smaller percussion, and one behind a drum kit—whowith their seamless interplay and polyrhythms provided the backbone of themusic. The drummer was Horacio “El Negro” Hernández and one of the percussionswas Roberto Jr. Vizcaino Torre, but I missed the name of the other. They weresupplemented by the bassist José A. Gola on his 5-sting fretless guitar.

There were four horns, each with a distinct sound. Every oneof them could hold their own with any bebop player. Early on in the concert, alyrical Latin balled featured the tenor sax player Carlos Averhoff Jr. soloingon a soprano (his father, Carlos Averhoff Sr., was himself an influential saxophonist).I swear, this was possibly the best soprano sax solo I have ever witnessed—andI’ve seen them all, from Wayne Shorter down. The sound was just amazing and thefluidity of how he soloed before returning to the melody was reminiscent ofIrakere’s original sax star, Paquito d’Rivera.

The maestro himself was dressed in white trousers and a darkblazer, sporting his trademark beret. He walked a bit stiffly but his pianisticabilities remain undiminished. He seems to be able to produce whatever heimagines on the keyboard—and his imagination is equally endless. There were momentswhen he’d play fast tremolo chords on his right hand, while soloing on theleft. Take another early piece in the concert, a tango. It started with a Valdéssolo intro which contained musical elements from Latin to free jazz—and asudden quotation from Mozart for a few bars. In the main tango theme, therhythm section joined in. Suddenly the swing changed totally and the tuneturned into a piano trio jazz piece with a walking bass accompanying Chucho’sfast speed improvisations. Equally suddenly and seamlessly, the jam turned intoa brief mambo as the percussionists rejoined, before leading back to theoriginal tango.

We heard strong solos from the alto saxophonist Luis Beltránand both trumpeters who provided a study in contrasts. The lead trumpeter Eddiede Armas Jr. played with the rubbery fluidity, associated with Duke Ellington’slong-time lead trumpeter William “Cat” Anderson, reaching stratospheric heights.His colleague, Osvaldo Fleiter, played some neat solos on flugelhorn, but thesound of his trumpet was broad and clear as a traditional Spanish horn player’s.

At midpoint, Chucho announced the arrival of the singer. EmilioFrias entered the stage in all black, except for a golden blazer. After that,the evening turned into an unmitigated salsa party. Despite the change inatmosphere, the band continued to play the complex arrangements sharply andwith nuance. The dynamic range was remarkable, as a high point was reached withthe horns blaring, only to be followed by a soft and sensitive sequence withdelicate harmonies. On occasion, Valdés abandoned the piano and crossed thestage to stand in front of the horn section conducting them with his movements.

My jazz heart was rejoicing as people kept dancing andswaying during the lengthy instrumental passages. At one point, all hornplayers were trading fours on top of a one-chord salsa vamp producing trulyinspiring snippets.

The crooner entirely captivated the audience, making usdance and sing along. The horn players produced the background vocalsresponding to the lead singer’s exhortations. I watched their elegantlysynchronized, almost minimalistic dance steps while the rhythm was boiling.

When it came to end the show, the band didn’t just bow andwalk away. They gathered into a cluster at the center stage. The horn playerskept on playing their riff while the singer continued to sing as they allexited stage left. Needless to say, the audience would not allow their exit tobe the end: loud claps and calls were rewarded by a lengthy encore.

I feel lucky that I finally, after all these decades offandom, managed to catch Chucho Valdés and Irakere live.

 

This is a fact-filled book written in a highly readable andlively style. I found it very satisfying on several fronts, although I cansympathize with some of the reviewers who disagree with Hal Brands’ point of view.He makes no effort to hide where he is coming from, seeing the democratic Westas something worth defending, and the USA as the necessary guarantor to thefree world.

 

Brands draws upon the geopolitical theories and traditions ofHalford Mackinder, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Nicholas Spykman, and others. This is oneof the attractions of the book. As a trained geographer myself, I’ve alwaysthought that geopolitics was unfairly criticized for decades. Sure, it was originallyassociated with the Swede Rudolf Kjellén and the German Friedich Ratzel both ofwhom were something of social Darwinists and whose ideas were embraced by the Nazis.Brand’s view is nuanced and his application of the perspective is intelligent. Hesums it up: “Geopolitics tempered by democracy was stark but rarely evil.Geopolitics with an autocratic bent was poison, pure and simple” (p. 31). Badapplication of an approach should not be a reason to ban the entire discipline (forexample, genetics has been misused for bad purposes but it nevertheless is avital science).

 

The first two-thirds of the book is dedicated to a backwardlook at the 20th century: the two World Wars, the Cold War, and the quartercentury of peace and prosperity following the fall of the Soviet Union. The finalpart looks at the “second Eurasian century” which we are currently living anddraws lessons from the past.

 

It is easy to see why readers of a certain persuasion wouldobject to Brand’s interpretation. He readily acknowledges the American mistakesand overreactions in building and defending a safe and free world. Often, indefending democracy, America ended up crushing it and supporting oppressiveregimes that it saw to be on its side. Scores of people died in wars from Vietnamto Iraq and many smaller skirmishes. However, Brand is unabashedly of the viewthat the US-dominated world after World War II has been, in the balance, hugelypositive to everyone, and that US involvement in the world—especially thecentral Eurasian continent and the surrounding seas—is a necessity for the worldand its people to prosper.

 

He does see the threat posed by rising isolationism.Although the book was published in 2025, the manuscript must have beencompleted prior to the November 2024 elections. Brand writes: “If America makesa habit of electing aspiring strongmen, it may not remain a democraticsuperpower. And don’t think for a second that troubled autocracies can’t bringa world of woe” (p. 219). Unfortunately, it seems this is where we stand forthe moment.

 

Although a multipolar world would seem desirable at the faceof it, the contenders to fill the other pole posts—notably China and Russia—donot provide an attractive alternative. In fact, these revisionist powersrepresent illiberal authoritarian regimes that would limit free speech andcivil liberties in their spheres of influence. Western Europe without the USwill not be able to resist. Brand makes a strong case for a broad coalition ofdemocracies to cooperate, in terms of politics and policy, innovation and technology,and military. Citing Harry Truman in 1948: “America must pay the price forpeace.” Brand’s final warning: “There is no law of nature that expansion mustfail and tyranny must be vanguished. There is no guarantee that history takesthe path of progress” (p. 245).  As thebook shows, the 20th century history is full of examples wherethings could have gone badly wrong.

Two-thirds through the book, Robert Kaplan worries that this book fits in no category: "It is not military strategy, political  science, original archival history, conventional long-form journalism, traditional travel writing, memoir, or literary criticism" (p.237). He's right about that, although it has elements of all or most of the above. Kaplan, a renowned geopolitical analyst, has written 20 books of which I have read about half a dozen before this one. It is thus clear that I like his writing and his perspective on contemporary affairs. His work is always anchored in history and geography, which gives it more depth than most others. (It has to be said that many academic geographers are highly critical of Kaplan's analysis, judging him to be something of a geographical determinist and of a somewhat conservative bent; I do not subscribe to this view and, on the contrary, appreciate Kaplan's traditional approach to political geography.)

This book was, however, a harder read than any of the others that I have read. Kaplan has a fascination with history that takes him way back in time to Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. He is also deeply interested in architecture and culture, including religion. Consequently, the early parts of the book, focusing on Trieste and Venice in Italy, are rather heavy, with much emphasis on the above aspects. Throughout the book, he expends much effort to pondering the relationship between the past powers (the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, Venice...) and the influences of Catholism, Eastern Orthodoxism and Islam. There is also an extraordinary amount of introspection. 

At least to me, the book gets more interesting as the author travels down the eastern Adriatic coast, from Slovenia through Croatia, Montenegro and Albania ending up on the island of Corfu. In these parts, he talks more to people--historians and other academics, politicians, journalists and others--which adds much needed color and points of view bringing the analysis to recent history and the present. Kaplan, in my view, is in his own element when discussing the geopolitics of the region. I personally learned a lot about the history of the Adriatic and especially the Balkans.

In the final part, Kaplan ponders the future of Europe, not in the long term but what comes next and which way it will develop. He also discusses the state of nation states and the tensions between multiculturalism (as today experienced in cities), identity, and the nationalist and populist instincts that currently prevail. These are thoughtful passages.

Jennifer D. Sciubba, currently President and CEO of Population Reference Bureau, is a political demographer. She is a leading expert in how population trends and composition affect politics and social relations -- and vice versa. This is what makes her analysis more interesting than your run-of-the-mill books on demography. My own background was originally in population geography, so the fundamentals that Sciubba explains in the book are very familiar to me.

Beyond those fundamentals, there is a lot of interesting and insightful in the book. For example, Sciubba points out that neither rapid population growth nor aging are per se not inherently problematic. Instead, their impact depends on the governance, political and economic circumstances. While fertility has dropped to below replacement levles, resulting in population shrinkage without immigration in most parts of the world (including Europe, North America, Japan, China, even Brazil), it remains very high in most of Africa where the societies' ability to accommodate the large cohorts of new entrants into labor force are generally weak. Sub-Saharan Africa contines to be the place with the largest growth in population. Almost 90% of world's population growth until mid-century will take place in lower-middle and low-income countries. This will pose challenges in terms of political stability and pressures to migrate. Sciubba also points out that it is not to poorest people from the poorest countries who migrate, because migration requires a certain amount of financial resources as well as skills to navigate the complex challenges of international migration. This fact casts doubt on the oft-heard justification for foreign aid to help people where they are, so that they will be discouraged to move.

A feature that makes Sciubba's book a lively read is her ample use of historical and current examples to demonstrate the more technical or theoretical points. They range from the impacts of China's one-child policy to the Rwandan genocide; from the relationship between aging societies and peace, to implications of Nigeria's youthful population. (I have to point out an odd slip: At one point, Sciubba places the southern African country of Botswana in the Sahel.)

Although Sciubba mentions climate change in several places, as acting as a stressor and as a driver of migration, it features fairly little in the book. That of course could be the focus of a separate book in itself.

A worthwhile and entertaining read, I'd recommend this book to anyone interesting in how population trends, fertility, mortality and migration shape society all over the world.