Category Archives: Report

米日財団： 「米学界からの警鐘：消えつつある日本外交・日米関係の専門家」

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静かな危機が迫っているが、これは回避可能な危機でもある。米国の大学生の間には依然として日本への関心が極めて高く、筆者自身その現場を目にしてきた。日米両国の政府・社会のあらゆるレベルで強固かつ健全な日米関係に関心を持ち、その恩恵を受けている財団や企業、経済界のリーダー、慈善家のごく一部でも、日本外交政策や日米関係に関する教職や研究センター、その他の新規事業に対するエンダウメントや基金・補助金を通じて、状況を一変させることはできる。
一方、何もしないことの代償は大きく、学術界をはるかに超えて広がるだろう。米国の主要研究大学は、不釣り合いなほど大きな割合の政府・業界・市民社会のあらゆるレベルにおける将来の学者や指導者を教育・育成する場であるだけでなく、若いアメリカ人とその地域社会にとって、日本への理解と親しみ、そしてアメリカにとっての重要性を初めて知る機会でもある。
日米関係や日本研究を米国の学界で支えることは、外交・安全保障分野に限らず、米国全体で日本や日米パートナーシップに関する専門知識の供給源を維持するために不可欠なのだ。
現代日本外交・安全保障政策や日米関係に関する次世代の教育者・専門家を育成するため、新たな投資による総合的な啓発が急務となっている。
アメリカの学界ではこの分野はいままさに岐路に立っている。差し迫る危機に対処するため、行動すべき時は「いま」である。

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U.S.-Japan Foundation: “Japan: the Indispensable Ally, Except in U.S. Academia…”

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Though a quiet crisis looms, it is an avoidable one. There remains an extraordinary level of interest in Japan among college students in America… If even just a small fraction of the US and Japanese foundations, corporations, business leaders, and philanthropists who care about and benefit from robust and healthy US-Japan relations at all levels of government and society elected to provide funding to endow faculty positions, research centers, and/or other new initiatives to support research, teaching, and programming on Japanese foreign policy and US-Japan relations, it would be a game-changer.

On the other hand, the costs of inaction would be significant and extend far beyond academia. Major US research universities are not only the education and training grounds for a disproportionate share of future scholars and leaders across all levels of government, industry, and civil society, they are also the key to giving many young Americans and their surrounding communities exposure to and a familiarity with Japan and its importance for America that most would otherwise lack.

Supporting Japan studies in US academia—and not only in the foreign policy space—is essential to keeping a pipeline of expertise on Japan and the US-Japan partnership flowing across all of America, both within the academy and beyond.

It is past time for new investments to collectively inspire future generations of educators and experts on contemporary Japanese foreign and security policy and US-Japan relations.

The field stands at a critical juncture. To address this looming crisis, the time to act is now.

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AEI: “10 Years After ‘the Pivot’: Still America’s Pacific Century?”

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No Time to Waste

Ten years ago, the Obama administration pledged that the United States would pivot to Asia. It rightly identified the region as the “key driver of global politics,” called the US role “irreplaceable,” and articulated a compelling vision for leadership along six lines of action. The Trump administration repeatedly spoke of the Indo-Pacific as its priority theater and competition with China as a defining foreign policy challenge. Yet the record of the past decade reveals a recurring gap between rhetoric and action.

Although circumstances have improved significantly under Biden, after nine months warning signs are emerging. Notwithstanding the efforts of the administration’s Asia team, the United States is not back in the region—at least not yet. As the new administration and Congress look to learn from US missteps over the past decade, three top priorities should be: (1) re-centering US strategy on Asia, rather than China; (2) embracing a positive regional economic agenda; and (3) rebalancing significantly enhancing diplomatic and military resources to prioritize the region.

Despite America’s recent struggles, the importance of Asia to US interests and the core strategic logic of the pivot have only become clearer over the past decade. In addition to the rapidly growing region’s inherent economic and strategic importance, Asia is the central stage of a competition that will define key standards, rules, and norms of regional and global geopolitics and geo-economics for decades to come. This competition is not some far-off, future challenge. It is already here.

US leaders must humbly reflect on the shortcomings of past efforts and invest in a comprehensive agenda focused on positively shaping the region’s future. In the months and years ahead, the administration and Congress will have to act far more proactively, affirmatively, and multilaterally to ensure that this will truly be America’s Pacific century.

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

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“…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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