Thanks to Congressman Hank Johnson (D – Georgia), the debate surrounding the relocation of American troops to Guam just got messier. One might say its reached a tipping point…. It makes you wonder why the Hatoyama administration hasn’t raised the same concern for their tiny island.
“China’s involvement in the AfPak issue is, and will likely remain for some time, generally convergent with U.S. interests, given a basic continuity in China’s strategic outlook toward Washington,” concluded a recent think tank report by Michael Swaine, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (follow the link for a pdf download). […]
The House Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and Global Environment held a hearing yesterday on US-Japan Relations. The subcommittee brought together a panel of experts (half in government, half think tankers) to discuss the current state of the Alliance and the best possible ways to strengthen ties. I found it surprisingly […]
The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington D.C. think tank, has a new project on its research agenda: Tocqueville On China, an intellectual experiment that channels the penetrating observations of the French political observer Alexis de Tocqueville in order to elucidate the current state of China’s civil society. According to the project’s mission statement, this […]
How did Commodore Matthew Perry convince the Tokugawa bakufu to accept his terms and conditions, and open up Japan? A persuasive Power Point presentation, according to Hayashi Yuuji. This is just too good to keep to myself – apologies to non-Japanese readers.
Just as quickly as Japan watchers fell silent on Futenma, they’ve picked it back up. This is nothing if not expected: it wasn’t until PM Yukio Hatoyama and his party offered up a policy proposal for the protracted re-negotiations that much else could be said on the topic. They promised an answer by May, and […]
US Special Envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, is making the rounds in Beijing this week to drum up support for the stalled six-party talks – the diplomatic framework first implemented in 2003 that seeks to peacefully resolve the security concerns springing from North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Although Ambassador Bosworth has still not indicated […]
It seems that my interest in Northeast Asian rapprochement is shared with many others. Indeed, since writing a recent post on Japan’s effort to rein in its historical rows with its neighbors, I’ve discovered a number of interesting takes on the issue. Anyone interested in understanding Sino-Japanese relations and the latent historical tensions that affect […]
Recent events in Iran have brought its relationship with China into sharp focus. Yesterday’s crackdown on protesters commemorating the revolution in Iran elicited numerous comparisons to Tiananmen Square (though not nearly on the scale of the comparisons made in the aftermath of the June 12th protests). The government’s crackdown on internet activity smacked of the […]
I opened my email today to find, once again, a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece of commentary from PacNet, the newsletter maintained by the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Pacific Center in Hawaii. Since signing up a year ago I have consistently enjoyed fresh looks on political affairs in the Asia-Pacific and have often found […]
A little over three months into the Hatoyama administration and it is now clear that the new government is taking engagement with its East Asian neighbors seriously. Major missions of DPJ lawmakers to China and high-level cabinet meetings with South Korean counterparts have signaled a newfound interest in and commitment to diplomacy and détente in […]
Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis gave an insightful speech last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that addresses the Obama administration’s trade priorities in the Asia-Pacific and outlines the complex challenges (regional architecture, rising China, and others) that will undoubtedly temper the US trade policy stance for years to come. This […]
Henry Hoyle, the China Blogger here at FPA, has a great post up about a grand rapprochement between Japan and China in 2010. He is certainly not alone in wondering what might come of a more robust bilateral relationship. Speculation of a so-called “grand rapprochement” is pervasive, as many are eager determine how, and by […]
Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Friday. His words offer up a broad assessment of the regional challenges confronting the US and adumbrate, in broad strokes, the “principles of US engagement in the Asia-Pacific.” In one revealing passage, Campbell states, “the […]
The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan, what many perceive to be the cornerstone document of the US-Japan Alliance, was inked on January 19, 1960 – exactly 50 years ago, yesterday. This anniversary comes at time when some analysts, both American and Japanese, point to the modern nadir of […]