There isn't much I can add to MTC's comments on the New York Times's publication of the translation of Hatoyama Yukio's essay in Voice (which originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor). I am stunned that no one at DPJ HQ thought better of having Hatoyama's provocative essay appear — again — in an American …
Tag: Obama administration
The DPJ contemplates its opening moves with the US
In a survey of candidates' political attitudes, Mainichi found that DPJ and Komeito candidates overlapped more than Komeito and LDP or LDP and DPJ candidates. Whether the policy affinities between DPJ and Komeito candidates presages cooperation between the two parties after the election will depend on other factors, but what interested me about this survey …
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The coming DPJ tsunami?
Daniel Twining, writing at Shadow Government, Foreign Policy's blog for Republicans in exile from government in Washington, argues that the advent of a DPJ government could represent a "tsunami" for the US and Japan.Twining offers the standard Washington perspective on the DPJ: Japan has lots of problems, but who knows whether the DPJ can actually …
More on the Roos appointment
Considering the appointment of John Roos and other Obama donors to ambassadorial posts, David Rothkopf makes a strong argument against the relevance of ambassadorships in the first place:For really important relationships, we need permanent high-level representation. But those relationships are comparatively few and in those cases, we need a special breed of highly empowered, highly …
Roos to Japan
While the White House has not made the announcement official, the Nelson Report said that the Obama administration will be sending John Roos, Silicon Valley lawyer and major Obama fundraiser, to Tokyo as U.S. ambassador.(Click here to read this post in Japanese.)As Armchair Asia notes, this is a sign that Japan has indeed become normal: …
Benign neglect at work?
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 …
The conservatives undaunted
Abe Shinzo, former prime minister and favorite of many alliance managers in Washington, was in Washington, D.C. this past week, meeting with Vice President Joe Biden and delivering addresses at the Brookings Institution and the Ocean Policy Research Foundation's US-Japan Seapower Dialogue.Chris Nelson, eponymous author of The Nelson Report, concluded from Abe's visit that "he …
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 …
The birth of the post-1996 alliance
Prime Minister Aso Taro has arrived in Washington in advance of his meeting with President Barack Obama Tuesday.Despite Obama's welcoming Aso as the first foreign leader to meet with him in Washington, and despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Tokyo last week, the Japanese establishment continues to fret about the new administration's approach …
"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 …
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Tobias S. Harris 