Already under consideration before North Korea's nuclear test last week, the LDP's push to include plans for an indigenous capability to strike North Korea to preempt an attack on Japan has picked up speed over the past week. On May 26th, Prime Minister Aso Taro reminded reporters that since 1955 preemptive self-defense has been considered …
Tag: East Asian international relations
The emergence of Middle Power Asia
Over the past week, we have seen more signs of the shape that international relations in East Asia will take over the coming decades.I've written before about the role that middle powers — most notably Japan, Australia, South Korea, ASEAN acting as a bloc, and to a lesser extent India — will play in the …
A future for values diplomacy?
Daniel Twining, currently a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund and formerly an Asia policy staffer at the State Department's policy planning staff and an adviser to John McCain, offers his recommendations to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Shadow Government, a new blog at Foreign Policy featuring the writing of conservative and Republican …
An open letter to Ambassador-designate Nye
Dear Professor Nye:Congratulations on your appointment to the position of United States Ambassador to Japan.Your arrival comes at an auspicious time. It appears exceedingly likely that during your ambassadorship the Liberal Democratic Party will be bounced from power and replaced most likely by the Democratic Party of Japan, although possibly a ragtag coalition as in …
Alliance addenda
After seeing the response to my recent post on the US-Japan alliance, I find it necessary to develop a few ideas further.First, MTC rightly points out that an alliance based on the partnership of Japanese conservatives and their counterparts in Washington is by no means doomed, because the organizations pushing this line "deal death as …
Japan’s revisionist problem
In my critique of Tamogami Toshio's essay, I asked, "Just how widespread are these views in the JSDF?"Jun Okumura quickly provided some sort of answer: more than fifty SDF members submitted essays in the contest won by General Tamogami. Sankei reports that the number of ASDF members who submitted essays is actually seventy-eight by the …
Recommended Book: Asia, America, and The Transformation of Geopolitics, William Overholt
With the prime ministers of Japan and Australia, the US secretary of defense (and other defense ministers in the region), and the Republican presidential candidate issuing statements on the future of Asia over the past month, it has been a fascinating time to ponder the shape of the region over the coming years, especially as …
Asia’s future is in the hands of its middle powers
Hugh White, a professor at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, has been waging a determined fight against Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Asian regional vision in a series of articles and blog posts.The crux of his critique can be found in the title of a speech he gave in Tokyo earlier this month: …
Continue reading Asia’s future is in the hands of its middle powers
Rudd’s vision
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, arriving in Japan Sunday for a four-day visit, delivered a foreign policy address on Wednesday of last week that has sparked a major debate in Australia about the future of Asian multilateralism.In the speech, Mr. Rudd laid out his vision for an Asia-centered Australian foreign policy that sounds remarkably like …
The new Fukuda doctrine
On Thursday of last week, Prime Minister Fukuda gave a keynote foreign policy address at the fourteenth annual International Conference on the Future of Asia, hosted by Nikkei in Tokyo.Not for the first time Mr. Fukuda gave me reason to lament his political troubles at home, as he gave a speech that was stunning in …
