I think Saturday Night Live captures the worst fears of many Japanese elites in this sketch.But, then again, as John Maynard Keynes is supposed to have said, "If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has."http://widgets.nbc.com/o/4727a250e66f9723/4b0b748a91567d7c/4741e3c5156499a7/5f484dfa/-cpid/1a3043b2ad5dc52
Tag: Sino-US relations
"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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Obama already passing Japan?
The US State Department has told the Yomiuri Shimbun that it intends to initiate a high-level "comprehensive strategic dialogue" with China that will address political, economic, and security issues and will include an exchange of visits by Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.Naturally, Yomiuri's report is quick to note that many Obama …
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 …
The alliance is dead, long live the alliance
Barack Obama's inauguration is just about a month away. His transition team is gradually filling in cabinet-level positions. His Asia and Japan policy teams are as of yet unknown, however, leaving Japanese elites to continue to fret about Japan's place on the Obama administration's agenda.They have good reason to worry.The reasons to worry have nothing …
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Two crises
In the comments section of this recent post, I have been accused of overstating Japanese decline and understating the US decline.I have actually said very little about the economic crisis in the US — and what I have said about Japan is not particularly new. For the most part I have simply updated an argument …
Komori on US China policy
Komori Yoshihisa, veteran correspondent and Washington-based editor of the Sankei Shimbun, was invited to speak to Nakagawa Shoichi's "True Conservative Policy Study Group" last Friday, where he explained the reality of US China policy and contemporary attitudes in Washington towards the US-Japan alliance.He provides a summary of his remarks at his blog.For the most part, …
A dangerous word
AEI's Michael Auslin, weighing in on the feud over China's denying US Navy ships access to Hong Kong at Contentions, argues that US credibility has suffered from a failure to respond to China's behavior other than by sending the USS Kitty Hawk back to Japan via the Taiwan Straits.He says, "A number of my Asia-wonk …
Ozawa to China
Despite the extension of the Diet session, Ozawa Ichiro, DPJ president, will still be going to China with nearly fifty DPJ members of the Diet from 6 to 8 December. Mr. Ozawa will meet with Hu Jintao and mark the thirty-fifth anniversary of the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations.Mr. Ozawa's visit comes just as turbulence in …
Hold steady on China
Following the ASAT test conducted in January of this year, the behavior of the PLA is once again providing China hawks in the US with reason to bang the war drums (or perhaps just the containment cymbals, not that those are any less distressing). The latest incident, of course, involves China's last-minute rejection of a …
Tobias S. Harris 