Robert Zoellick, former deputy secretary of state and architect of the Bush administration's "responsible stakeholder" approach to Sino-US relations, has an op-ed in the FT -- subscription required -- in which he calls for a new "Shanghai Communiqué."He wrote:Chinese leaders place value on determining the principles that should guide policy. That is sound logic. Yet …
Tag: East Asian international relations
Sunday in Yokosuka
I was the guest of a friend -- thank you, again -- to the 18th annual Yokosuka sumo exhibition. Some pictures follow:Banners outside the Yokosuka taiikukan where the exhibition was held; the banner for the yokozuna Asashoryu is on the leftNo explanation necessaryEntrance of the top-grade wrestlersThe exhibition was attended by a number of VIPs, …
Waiting for Wen
It seems that today is a China kind of day, as Chinese Premier Wen begins his three-day visit to Japan today.The much-quoted purpose of this trip is to "melt the ice" between Japan and China.Call me a skeptic, but I think I'm with the Carnegie Endowment's Minxin Pei, who wrote in an op-ed in the …
Asia’s Rip Van Winkle
Georgetown's Casimir Yost, director of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, was in Tokyo last week giving a series of talks. I saw him at the US Embassy's Tokyo American Center on Friday.In the course of his talk, Yost made an interesting point about how the US has been distracted from Asia by Iraq, …
Comfort women, not on the agenda; how about drift?
So reports Jiji regarding the meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Abe scheduled for the end of this month during Japan's Golden Week holidays.This is not altogether surprising; despite Ambassador Schieffer's voicing concerns about Abe's response to the congressional comfort women resolution (mentioned in this post), I would be shocked if the issue was …
Continue reading Comfort women, not on the agenda; how about drift?
Japan feels the heat
Based on the coverage in Japan's newspapers, it seems that Japan was blindsided by the US-ROK free-trade agreement. Perhaps Japanese observers did not quite believe that negotiators would be able conclude an agreement before time ran out. Of course, the agreement's passage in both the US and South Korean legislatures is hardly a foregone conclusion, …
Gauging Japan’s normalization
Two articles provide a solid, realistic look at the process of Japan's normalizing its security policy and possibly reducing its dependence on the alliance with the US in its grand strategy.The first, by David Pilling in the FT, provides a belated report on Prime Minister Abe's speech to graduates of the National Defense Academy. (I …
Putin meets Hu
I feel like the title of this post could be the beginning of a corny geopolitics-themed Abbot and Costello parody.But seriously, the Japanese media seems to be keeping a close eye on the meeting in Moscow between Presidents Hu and Putin. This Mainichi article, for example, calls attention to the two countries agreeing to strengthen …
Japan’s friends, kept at arm’s length
The Japan Times today has two op-eds that illustrate Japan's troublesome ties with the US, its ally, and South Korea, its wealthy, democratic neighbor and former colony.The first, by journalist Hanai Kiroku, calls for a US-Japan economic partnership agreement (EPA), to follow on the heels of the Japan-Australia EPA currently under negotiation. Given the scale …
The ever-shifting balance
I was slightly remiss in this post yesterday, because I should have said more about just how successful North Korea's diplomacy has been through all this.North Korea has the Bush administration bending over backward to assuage North Korea and keep negotiations on track, and -- with an assist from the US Congress -- has Japan …
Tobias S. Harris 