Brookings: “Japan’s new security policies: a long road to full implementation”

Pointing out the difficult road ahead is not meant to minimize the significance of the ambitions contained in Japan’s new national security and defense strategies, or to suggest achievement is unlikely. Rather, the intent is simply to highlight that despite the bold steps forward already taken by the Kishida Cabinet, there remain many unknowns about what will come next, and how bumpy the path forward is likely to be. One thing is certain: a lot of hard work — in both Tokyo and Washington — lies ahead.

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Brookings: “China, Japan, and the East China Sea: Beijing’s “gray zone” coercion and Tokyo’s response”

“…This paper focuses on the competition between China and Japan over their festering territorial dispute in the East China Sea. Though political frictions over the Senkaku (Diaoyu in Chinese) Islands are decades-old, since a 2012 contretemps over the islands led Beijing to begin regular, provocative deployments of government vessels into the islands’ contiguous zone and territorial seas, the dispute has become the most significant geopolitical flashpoint and locus of security competition between China and Japan today…

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Brookings Foreign Policy Interview: “The Stress Test: Japan in an Era of Great Power Competition”

In September 2019, Brookings Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Bruce Jones convened seven Brookings scholars and affiliates — Richard Bush, Lindsey Ford, Ryan Hass, Adam Liff, Michael O’Hanlon, Jonathan Pollack, and Mireya Solís — to discuss Japan’s present and future path in this era of great power competition. The edited transcript below reflects their assessment of the current state of Japanese strategic choices.

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