Noriko Hashimoto discusses the legal and political arguments around the deployment of Japan's self defense forces (SDF) for overseas missions, going beyond the constitutional debate to question the broader concept of national contributions to international society.

The fertile lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and the wheat planes just south of Basra were, until the 1980s, the base of a robust agricultural sector in modern Iraq. This essay traces the steady and tragic decline of the Iraqi food system over the last 3 decades, emphasizing