Japan in Focus

I am fortunate to participate in projects on Japan or Asia hosted by other experts. Each month, I will share these with you in Japan in Focus. This month, we have three highlights to share.

The first project to share is the Alliance Online database, created by Japan Chair Chris Johnstone and his team at CSIS. I was interviewed for the project and helped Chris launch it on a live online discussion on July 23. This is the first online resource that brings together the documents that tell the story of the development of the U.S.-Japan alliance. A narrative of the postwar highlights that shaped the U.S. alliance with Japan includes scholars as well as policymakers who were involved, including Chris himself. Chris’s aim was to help current and future policymakers understand the history, the language developed to define how our two militaries and others would work together, and the expansion of our bilateral agenda to include shared Indo-Pacific and global priorities and partnerships. For students of alliance management, this resource will provide you with the foundational narrative and documents that inform government policy today.

Second, the U.S.-Japan alliance is being revamped. On July 28, 2024, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met in Tokyo with Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Kamikawa Yōko and Minister of Defense Kihara Minoru to announce a profound change in the U.S.-Japan alliance. The operational command of Japan Self Defense Forces (JSDF) will be integrated into the Joint Operations Command (JJOC) in 2025, and United States Forces Japan will be reconfigured to become their operational counterpart. The aim is to allow the two militaries to plan together for crises, and if necessary, for combat. Alongside this decision to integrate command, these talks also initiated ministerial-level consultations on extended deterrence and included plans for Japan to increase its production of Patriot III missile defense systems to add to U.S. stocks as the war in Ukraine continues. More on this to come. 

Third, I participated in a fascinating discussion on the Indo-Pacific stake in the Arctic hosted by the University of Alaska and the East-West Center led by Elizabeth Wishnick of the Center for Naval Analysis. In a panel with James Brown and Shoichi Itoh, moderated by Wishnick, I was asked to consider how the Arctic figures in the U.S.-Japan alliance agenda. Short answer? Not so much, but there are ways Tokyo and Washington can coordinate their multilateral strategies to ensure equitable and transparent governance looking forward.