After President Barack Obama met with Prime Minister Aso Taro at the White House in February, I suggested that " the administration may be prepared to follow through on an unstated policy of benign neglect: having given Japan its assignments (civilian reconstruction in Afghanistan, progress on realignment, etc.), the administration will now turn its attention …
Tag: Hillary Clinton Asia trip
The beginning of benign neglect?
Aso Taro has returned from his meeting with Barack Obama, the first such meeting between Obama and a foreign leader at the White House, as the Japanese media has repeatedly emphasized. The LDP website invokes this phrase like a mantra in its summary of the prime minister's visit, as if citing the name of the …
Aso follows Mori’s path
"President Bush will welcome Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to Washington for a working visit March 19. In addition to their important shared security objectives in the Asia-Pacific region, the United States and Japan have common interests on a broad range of global issues. The President looks forward to exchanging views with Prime Minister Mori on …
The Clinton-Ozawa meeting
After some waffling, Ozawa Ichiro has agreed to accept visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's request to meet. They will meet on Tuesday.Jun Okumura wonders how Mr. Ozawa will handle the range of issues on which he has criticized the alliance, leading some American Japan hands to dismiss Mr. Ozawa as an unreliable friend …
"We are supposed to be the problem solvers"
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Asia Society in New York on Friday on the eve of her departure for a trip to East Asia that will include stops in Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and China.Her speech is worth a look, because I do think she succeeds at indicating how the Obama administration …
Continue reading "We are supposed to be the problem solvers"
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Ozawa
The US State Department is reportedly sounding out the DPJ on the possibility of a meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro when Secretary Clinton visits Japan next week.Sankei reports that it would be the first ever meeting between a US secretary of state and the leader of a Japanese …
A new course on the abductees
Kawamura Takeo, the chief cabinet secretary, told reporters Monday that the government is working to arrange a meeting between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the families of Japanese abducted by North Korea.As MTC wrote of a dinner Secretary Clinton had with Asia experts in advance of her trip, "Members of the Bush Administration …
A twenty years’ crisis
"Japan is an economy that is almost certainly producing well below its productive capacity - that is, the immediate problem facing Japan is one of demand, not supply. And it gives every appearance of being in a liquidity trap - that is, conventional monetary policy appears to have been pushed to its limits, yet the …
Is she or isn’t she?
Despite reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be going to Asia on her first foreign trip, none seem to have the State Department's confirmation that she will in fact be going to Japan, South Korea, and China in the coming weeks.CNN cites "diplomats familiar with the planning."The LA Times cites "a foreign diplomat …
Tobias S. Harris 