American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, April 4, 2013 (USAF/Brett Clashman)
Major Akinori Hosomi vanished on a cool evening in April 2019 while flying one of the world’s most modern and deadliest aircraft — the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter.
When the 41 year-old pilot took off from Misawa Air Base in northern Japan on the night of April 19, there was little sign of trouble. An experienced pilot with sixty hours on the F-35A, the multirole jet he was flying was state-of-the-art and the mission profile was to be another routine night-training exercise. Yet his plane fell into the Pacific Ocean without so much as a distress call on the part of the pilot.
Akinori Hosomi’s remains were recovered from the seabed months later leaving behind a mystery about the first fatal crash for the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons system. (more…)
View of Tokyo, Japan from the World Trade Center Building (Unsplash/Louie Martinez)
The European Union and Japan have finalized a trade agreement that would create the world’s largest open economic zone when it comes into effect in 2019.
The deal cuts tariffs, harmonizes product regulations and liberalizes public procurement for a market of 600 million people.
The EU and Japan account for 28 percent of the world’s economic output.
In a joint statement, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe said the deal demonstrates their commitment “to keeping the world economy working on the basis of free, open and fair markets with clear and transparent rules.” (more…)
Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and Donald Trump of the United States listen to Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg of NATO making a speech in Brussels, May 25 (NATO)
American allies are coping with Donald Trump’s disruptive presidency in similar ways, a collection of essays in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine reveals:
All feel they need to step up and defend the liberal world order as Trump is determined to put “America first”.
They worry that a new era of American isolationism could make the world poorer and less safe.
Leaders are doing their best to rein in Trump’s worst impulses and most of their voters understand the need for pragmatism, although they have little faith in this president. (more…)
European and Japanese leaders have announced a landmark trade agreement on the eve of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, where America’s president, Donald Trump, is expected to press his case for protectionism.
The treaty has yet to be finalized. A summit in Brussels was hastily arranged to “send a strong signal,” as the EU’s trade commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, put it earlier this week.
“We believe we should not build walls or raise protectionism,” she said. (more…)
American and Japanese ships conduct a joint naval exercise in the Pacific Ocean, November 19, 2014 (USN/Chris Cavagnaro)
Strategic thinkers have proposed closer cooperation between Japan and NATO for more than a decade. The circumstances are now such that this could become a reality.
Japan has surprised many by weakening its post-World War II pacifist posture, increasing defense spending and investing in fifth-generation warplane technology. These reforms are an invitation to NATO to engage more seriously.
Part of the work is being done for it. Japan’s security pivot brings the island nation in closer alignment with the United States. This, in turn, brings Japan closer to NATO.
Japan’s reinterpretation of its constitutional self-defense clause could be a stepping stone to collective self-defense. It has already taken part in multinational military exercises and contributes to peace and stability missions around the world. Its security doctrine is well in line with NATO’s. Both sides are committed to upholding democracy and the rule of law and advancing the cause of international security.
Areas of cooperation could include counterterrorism, cybersecurity and peacekeeping. Both sides would benefit from an open exchange of experiences, ideas and technologies in these regards.
Japan also holds a wealth of experience when it comes to responding to and managing human crises, like natural disasters. NATO’s civil response capacities, in turn, can serve as an example for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and the two can be mutually reinforcing. (more…)
American president Barack Obama speaks with German chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders at the G7 summit in Bavaria, June 11 (Bundesregierung)
Geopolitics is about trends. Individual events add up to patterns; patterns melt into inertia; inertia gains social gravity; inevitably, maps are redrawn, regimes fall and through the litany of news reports we wonder how it all came about.
So while it is beyond cliché to do a yearly review, for geopolitics, it’s also extremely useful. What were the trends in 2015 and where might they go in 2016 and beyond? Let’s get super. (more…)
American and Japanese ships conduct a joint naval exercise in the Sea of Japan, June 1, 2017 (USN/Z.A. Landers)
Ironically, the final vote was accompanied by a fist fight but it’s official: Japan may go to war again. The third largest economy on Earth entering the geopolitical sphere as a military power is absolutely huge. For Beijing, it’s a disaster. For DC, it’s the geopolitical coup of the decade. And for Japan, it’s increasingly necessary.
There is an expression in Japan: kumo o tsukamuyou. It translates roughly into “like grasping a cloud.” We might call it “wishful thinking.” The proverb springs to mind when reading Japan’s former defense minister Yuriko Koike’s recent commentary.
In it, Koike presents her perspective of the challenges Japan has to face in East Asia. She believes these challenges are easy to enumerate for they all depend on one factor alone: liberal democracy. Those closest to it are under pressure by those farthest from it. China, Russia and North Korea are problems, Japan, the United States and their allies are the solution.
Koike’s is an ideal world in which the leader of the world’s biggest democracy could only possibly choose to ally with likeminded democratic powers and thus India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, is dutifully expected by Koike to team up with the alliance being formed to contain China’s assertiveness in the East and South China Seas.
Yuriko Koike, though, might have another thing coming. Not only is Modi not the obvious ally she believes him to be; the government in Tokyo itself may very well have other plans. (more…)
When President Barack Obama departed Japan last week, on the first leg of a four country Asian tour that will also take him to Malaysia, the Philippines and South Korea, the headlines were that he had failed to reach a trade accord with Tokyo. The sticking point of agricultural subsidies, which have always been the major stumbling block, halted progress on the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership. But American and Japanese negotiators are actually said to be making real progress on this issue with the outlines of a compromise taking shape.
If Japan and the United states come to a bilateral agreement as a prelude to broader negotiations among the participants in the Trans Pacific Partnership, it would constitute a significant development for the region and global trade. It would also give Japan’s prime minister, Shinzō Abe, his third economic reform “arrow” to stimulate the island nation’s economy and Obama a diplomatic victory as well as renewed momentum for his Asia pivot.
In addition, the United States will have provided an alternative to the supposed “Beijing Consensus,” the state centered economic model championed by China’s rise that many observers in Asia predicted would gain in popularity at the expense of free markets. (more…)
An American B-52 Stratofortress bomber leads a formation of American and Japanese fighter jets over Guam, February 21, 2011 (USAF/Angelita M. Lawrence)
America sent a strong signal on Tuesday of its position in a territorial dispute between China and Japan when it conducted bomber overflights of the Senkaku Islands. The island chain has been at the center of tensions in the Sino-Japanese relationship for some years and lies at the heart of an Air Defense Identification Zone that China declared just days ago.
Chinese authorities’ announcement of the ADIZ unilaterally requires all aircraft wishing to operate within a broad zone of the East China Sea to register their flight plans and other identifying information ahead of time. Failure to comply would, according to the government in Beijing, lead to proportionate responses from its armed forces. The implication being that this applies to the military and merchant aircraft that regularly service and patrol the Senkaku Islands which are administered by Japan and known in China as the Diaoyu Islands. (more…)
As Japanese go to the polls Sunday to vote in elections for the upper house of parliament, all eyes will really be on the margin of victory for Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s ruling coalition. Judging from the latest polls, and from the results of municipal elections in Tokyo last month where Abe’s Liberal Democrats won handily, the premier can expect to gain control of the upper chamber and claim a mandate for his policies that could fundamentally change the world’s third largest economy and its role in the region.
After the elections, the real drama will start. Abe will be expected to move forward and provide greater details about his plans to restructure the Japanese economy, the so-called third arrow of “Abenomics.”
In addition, Abe could change Japan’s national-security strategy which would transform the role of the military for the first time since the end of World War II. (more…)
Shinzō Abe received a vote of confidence on Sunday when his party came out the big victor in local assembly elections in Tokyo. The victory could bode well for his Liberal Democratic Party’s chances in key national elections for the upper house of parliament next month.
Sunday’s election to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly is viewed as an endorsement for Abe and his reform plan. His party gained twenty seats after the vote. In alliance with the conservative New Komeito, it now holds a comfortable majority. Both parties had all of their candidates elected.
The outcome is especially important in light of Abe’s legislative goals and the Liberal Democrats’ control of the lower house of parliament. If the party takes control of the upper house, the prime minister will be given a freer hand to pass structural economic reforms he believes are necessary to spur economic growth. He has also said he wants to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution to allow the military to participate in more overseas missions. (more…)
Since Shinzō Abe was an archery player in college, it is apt that his plan for turning the Japanese economy around is described as encompassing three arrows. Last December, when it became clear that the Liberal Democratic Party would emerge victorious in lower house elections and return Abe as prime minister, “Abenomics” sparked confidence in a public hungering for reforms.
Indeed by spring, there was growing belief that the economic reforms might just beat deflation and lift Japan out of its doldrums. The Nikkei 225 stock average had climbed some 80 percent by May from its November lows and the yen‘s value had greatly depreciated, encouraging exporters. In addition, there was evidence that inflation was starting to creep back into the economy.
But after five months in office, the market began to get nervous about the lack of details in a key part of Abe’s plans: the restructuring of the economy, the “third arrow.” This nervousness soon translated into volatility in the Japanese market, creating further uncertainty. The third arrow would always be the hardest to push through because it encroaches upon Japan’s vested interests. (more…)
Prime Minister Shinzō Abe of Japan, accompanied by more than one hundred business executives, is in the middle of a four nation trip intended to secure much needed energy resources and to bolster trade. His itinerary underlines the quandary Japan faces as it grapples with finding alternative energy sources while its nuclear plants remain idle since the 2011 Fukushima power plant disaster.
Abe’s first stop was Russia. The two countries acknowledged in a joint statement that relations remained “abnormal” in the face of an unsigned bilateral peace treaty officially ending World War II. Abe and Russian president Vladimir Putin instructed their foreign ministries to revisit the issue and also find ways to improve Japanese-Russian relations in general.
The major impediment preventing a treaty from being signed has been the status of the four islands situated north of Japan’s Hokkaido and south of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula that the Soviet Union took in 1945 during the final days of the war. Japan refers to these islands as its Northern Territories while they are known in Russia as the Southern Kurils. The islands are surrounded by rich fishing grounds and believed to posses oil and natural gas deposits offshore.
The issue was left unresolved in the 1956 Japan-Soviet joint declaration which restored relations. At the time, Japan rejected an offer to return two of the four southernmost islands closest to it as inadequate by the Soviets. (more…)
With American and South Korean intelligence predicting a missile launch by North Korea in the coming days, Japan announced a series of measures to protect its territory and calm nerves among its population. This comes as South Korea raised its military watch alert level to “vital threat” and its president vowed to respond to any provocations.
As the stream of bellicose statements from North Korea continued and reports indicated that it has prepared missiles on its east coast ready for launch, Japan’s defense minister Itsunori Onodera on Sunday directed the island nation’s military to be ready to shoot down a North Korean rocket should it threaten Japan. The navy sent anti-missile ships to the Sea of Japan and Patriot batteries were deployed in and around the capital Tokyo as well as elsewhere in the country. (more…)
