Yomiuri ran an editorial on reviewing the prohibition on the right of collective self-defense today, arguing that debate "ought to deepen."The occasion for this editorial is the government panel's recommendation that MSDF vessels be permitted to counterattack if, when sailing with US warships, the US vessels come under attack. In this case and the case …
Tag: US-Japan alliance
When in doubt, talk about how to make Japan great again
"Now the vote likely will pivot on scandal and mismanagement of the country's enormous pension system. This is a shame. The election really should be about Mr. Abe's vision for a more activist international role for Japan."So says Michael Auslin, AEI's newest Japan scholar, whom I previously discussed in this post, in which I discussed …
Continue reading When in doubt, talk about how to make Japan great again
How many angels fit on the end of an SM-3?
James Auer, director of Vanderbilt's Center for US-Japan Studies and Cooperation, spoke tonight at Temple University Japan to a large audience composed of US and Japanese diplomats and policymakers, scholars, and others interested in the US-Japan alliance.Auer is one of the elder statesmen of the alliance, having served in Japan while in the US Navy …
After the Yoshida Doctrine, what?
Over at Shisaku, MTC notes in a thoughtful post on the Yoshida Doctrine, "Yet even now, sixteen years down the line, the Yoshida tradeoff rules as the master narrative underpinning all discussion of Japan's security options."Yet I wonder if the Yoshida Doctrine lives on only as a function of the institutional and constitutional constraints that …
Learning to be self-reliant?
If I could draw, I would have drawn something exactly like this cartoon in today's Yomiuri:The caption on this cartoon reads, "Troubles at home, worries in America," Abe's dual American "worries" being the looming comfort women resolution and Christopher Hill's nuclear bargaining.It didn't need to be this way, did it? As I wrote last week, …
Is that a prediction or a threat?
For the second time in the past week, the Japanese media has noted concern that the comfort women resolution will worsen US-Japan relations.Last week, Kato Ryozo, Japan's ambassador to the US, warned, "This resolution, which is not grounded in objectivity, is not good for US-Japan relations."Now Mainichi reports that in New York on Monday, on …
Brave new alliance?
Korea's Chosun Ilbo reports that the US government — both Congress and the White House — are not pleased by the ad published in the Washington Post signed by Japanese legislators that lays out "the facts" of the comfort women issue (previously discussed here). While the Chosun Ilbo relies on an unnamed source in Washington …
Into the realm of the symbolic
While I obviously recognize that Asahi and Yomiuri approach public affairs from drastically different perspectives, I have never thought that they were living in different worlds.Until today.In Asahi, prominently featured on the front page, was an article on a Japanese Communist Party report suggesting that a special Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces (JGSDF) unit conducted surveillance …
Asking old questions anew
(This is the second post discussing George Packard's Protest in Tokyo; see the first here.)When I last discussed Packard, I spoke about how his exploration of Japanese thinking behind the first US-Japan security treaty revealed that independence was the dominant theme in Japanese foreign policy thinking throughout the 1950s. Independence has, of course, been a …
Building a new relationship in Shangri-La
Contrary to coverage of the Sino-US relationship that greeted the publication of the latest Pentagon report on Chinese military power, Secretary of Defense William Gates is in Singapore, setting out the terms of Sino-US security cooperation (and building on visits to China by General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral …
Tobias S. Harris 