General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is currently in China after a stop in Japan, during which he talked with Foreign Minister Aso -- and possibly Defense Minister Kyuma, as Steve Clemons wonders, following the rumors surrounding Vice President Cheney's visit -- about a range of technical issues related to alliance …
Tag: US-Japan alliance
Alliance or agreement?
Talks resume in Beijing on the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and the big story is that Japan and North Korea came to blows over the abductions issue.This was always the danger of Japan's pushing the abductions issue at all costs in the face of the North Korean stone wall: the US will have to …
Assertive Japan
Michael Green's review of Kenneth Pyle's Japan Rising in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, is now online here (via RealClearPolitics). I previously discussed a draft version of Pyle's book here.I find Green's review interesting because it gets at the ambiguities of Japan's re-emergence. Green (and Pyle) are correct to point out that Japan's strategic …
Alliance-changing technology?
The image above comes courtesy of this article at Defense Industry Daily.It illustrates the workings of Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), a system of pooling radar and sensor data among warships and other platforms to provide a more complete image of the battlespace:The Cooperative Engagement Transmission Processing Set (CETPS) AN/USG-2 coordinates all task force Anti-Air Warfare …
Driving a wedge in the alliance
Once again a response to a post deserves a fuller response. Adamu of Mutantfrog Travelogue noted in reply to this post:You keep saying that America is abandoning Japan, but wouldn't a grand nuclear bargain that works be more in Japan's interest than letting the whole thing fall apart over the abduction issue?It's a fair point. …
All going according to plan…but whose plan?
I can't say that I'm surprised to hear that North Korea delayed the start of normalization talks with Japan in Hanoi, right after reports out of New York suggested that the US and North Korea had positive talks.The unfolding of events seems almost too scripted to be real: just as international opprobrium falls on Abe's …
Continue reading All going according to plan…but whose plan?
Fireworks in Hanoi?
On Wednesday, 7 March, talks in the Japan-North Korea normalization working group are set to resume in Hanoi.I'm not entirely clear on what to expect. Since the six-party agreement last month, Japan has ratcheted up the pressure on North Korea to come clean on the abductions issue -- Abe once again urged North Korea to …
Negroponte chides Congress
The Japan Times reports that US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has criticized Congress for the comfort women resolution, saying, "Our view is what happened during the war was most deplorable. But as far as some kind resolution of this issue (is concerned), this is something that must be dealt with between Japan and …
Changing bases
The Economist this week has an article that suggests that local officials in cities hosting US bases may finally be acquiescing to the plans formulated by Washington and Tokyo.I think there's still a ways to go before the May 2006 agreement is fully on track, but it seems that Tokyo is finally willing to exert …
Cheney comes and goes
The vice president has swooped in, addressed US navy personnel in Yokosuka, talked and dined with Prime Minister Abe and Foreign Minister Aso (I wonder if Aso had anything to say about the "comfort women" resolution currently being debated in Congress), met with the parents of abductee Yokota Megumi, and is now en route to …
Tobias S. Harris 