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 …
Tag: US-Japan alliance
What is Ozawa’s angle?
Ozawa Ichiro, a week after his meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has focused attention once again on the DPJ's approach to the US-Japan alliance, a day after two prominent DPJ members gave their own perspectives on the future of the alliance (mentioned in this post).Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Ozawa indicated that under a …
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 …
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"
Exchange on the alliance
East Asia Forum has some comments by Aurelia George Mulgan regarding the article I co-wrote with Doug Turner for Policy Innovations last year, along with my response to Professor George Mulgan.
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 …
Benign neglect
After being misled twice (perhaps thrice) by premature reports in Japanese newspapers regarding some aspect of the Obama administration's Japan policy — despite articles in both Asahi and Yomiuri, the administration has yet to announce an ambassador to Japan, and the State Department has yet to confirm that Hillary Clinton's first foreign trip will take …
Tobias S. Harris 