February 05,2015 Special Forum

The Foreign Policy of Abe Shinzo: Strategic Vision and Policy Implementation

On January 5, 2015, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo reaffirmed that his government will continue to pursue a “proactive contribution to international peace” in his first press conference of the new year. When asked about the statement he is anticipated to issue at the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in relation to his government’s view on Japan’s past history, Abe confirmed that it w..

James Przystup , Tatsumi Yuki*
ASEAN , collective self-defense , Futenma base , India , Japan-US alliance , ODA , Territorial Disputes
February 05,2015 Special Forum

US-Japan Relations under Abe Shinzo

When Abe Shinzo became prime minister for a second time, the reaction in Washington was decidedly mixed. In both the Obama administration and the policy/intellectual community of Japan-watchers, two sets of expectations and two sets of concerns quickly emerged. The first expectation was that Abe would focus on reviving the Japanese economy, as he had promised after assuming the LDP presidency on S..

Glen S. Fukushima
Abenomics , Futenma base , Japan-US alliance , rebalance , Shinzo Abe , TPP , Yasukuni Shrine
January 27,2015 Country Reports

Country Report: Russia (January 2015)

Russian publications have had to react to an unexpectedly difficult environment at the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015. Counting on increasing polarization in the Asia-Pacific region, they observed Xi Jinping soften his opposition to the United States in meeting with Barack Obama in November. Intending to separate troubles in Europe from aspirations in Asia, Putin found the spillover so seve..

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Olga Puzanova)
BRICS , FTAAP , India , Look East policy , Maritime Silk Road , TPP
December 30,2014 Open Forum

Washington Insights: December 2014

The November summitry—APEC, the EAS, and the G20 as well as concomitant bilateral, trilateral, and other multilateral meetings—stimulated rethinking about regional relations. In Washington, this took the form of reassessments of how the US rebalancing was proceeding, renewed examination of the broader regional context, and reactions to appeals from Koreans to give further thought to reunificat..

Editorial Staff
Asia for the Asians , Bipolarity , hedging against China , triangularity , US rebalancing
December 30,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: China (December 2014)

The prevailing Chinese narrative is zero-sum, blaming Japan unsparingly and the United States, if in a less vitriolic manner, for regional fragmentation when a path to integration is within reach. Not only is there no hint of any mistakes made by China at any time since the 1949 revolution, there is no indication that compromise is part of resolving problems. The voices of the small group of acade..

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Dong Jiaxin*)
Japanese containment , New Cold War , Sino-ROK alliance , US-ROK alliance
December 09,2014 Open Forum

The New Fulcrum of Asia: The Indo-Japan Entente and the Rise of China

A new and potentially pivotal alignment of India and Japan is forming in response to China’s rise. This still informal security and military partnership implicitly premised on countering an ever-more-powerful China reflects deep common apprehensions about China’s rise and will probably take increasing substance in coming years. This entente marks a crucial failure of China’s diplomacy to rea..

John W. Garver
1962 War , Abe Shinzo , Arms sales , India , military exercises , ODA , Security alignment , war memories