April 29,2016

Japan, China, and the United States in an Uncertain Asia

Since the territorial dispute erupted, there has been limited contact between the leaders of Japan and China. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and President Xi Jinping have met only once since the initial meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Beijing in November 2014, when they decided to put an end to their standoff. The military risk reduction agreement that they so..

Sheila A. Smith
Alliance Coordination Mechanism , Maritime Self-Defense Force , Senkaku Islands , State Oceanic Administration
April 29,2016

The Japan-US-Russia Triangle in 2016

The Washington-Tokyo-Moscow triangle has intermittently drawn attention since the 1950s for its potential to shift Japan’s foreign policy and alter the course of great power balancing. Until the late 1970s, Tokyo’s soft stance—a territorial deal in return for an autonomous foreign policy or an energy program boosting the Russian economy—was of prime concern, although it never ..

Gilbert Rozman
2 + alpha , Abe-Putin courtship , G-7 sanctions , Hikiwake , Northern Territories , Ukraine
April 29,2016

Reviving the US-Japan-Korea Triangle in South Korean Diplomacy

On March 31, 2016, President Obama, President Park, and Prime Minister Abe held a summit in Washington, DC on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit. They agreed to be united in responding to provocative actions by North Korea and to enter into discussions for upgrading security cooperation, as well as to work toward steady implementation of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reso..

Park Cheol Hee*
December Accord , Fourth nuclear test , History consciousness , Japanese militarism , Northeast Asian Trilateral Summit , UNSC resolution 2270
April 29,2016

Synopsis of the German Marshall Fund’s Japan Trilateral Forum, March 1-2, 2016

Why is it important to forge a global triangular framework under the auspices of Washington, Tokyo, and Brussels? Triangularity was assumed to exist during the Cold War, but Japanese horizons remained seriously limited and Europeans relied heavily on US power in East Asia. A triangle of this sort was posited as the emerging structure in the early 1990s before China’s rise and Japan&rsqu..

Editorial Staff
AIIB , Asianism , Populism , Post-modern Syndrome , Refugee crisis
April 29,2016

Navigating Historical Tensions: Pragmatic Leadership, Empathy, and the United States Factor in Japan-South Korea Relations

The year 2015 was, arguably, an important turning point for Japan’s relations with South Korea. Since the advent of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) administration of Prime Minister Abe in 2012, and the election of Park Geun-hye as South Korea’s president in 2013, political relations between East Asia’s most vibrant democratic polities had been in the doldrums. Despite rep..

John Nilsson-Wright
Abandonment-Entrapment model , Han Miracle , Kono Statement , Yasukuni Shrine