Primorsky Krai is the eastern most point of East Europe, so east at that point that it stops looking like Europe and starts looking like Asia. So far east, that one tour guide at the state museum of Primorsky Krai, described Vladivostok as the edge of the world, and if the flat earth theory held true, then we’d fall off if we went any further east.
Read Here – The National Interest
South Korea’s decision to end an intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan, part of a widening rift between the two U.S. allies, has the Pentagon on edge — and not just because it arrives amid stalled efforts to persuade North Korea to denuclearize. “China is the biggest winner here,” said Rob Spalding, a former senior official on President Trump’s National Security Council.
World leaders who gather in Osaka, Japan, for the G20 summit this week will begin a conversation on worldwide data governance—and though they are deeply divided on the question of who should control data, some nations could seek to devise a system that excludes China.
As the Indo-Pacific concept becomes a more central part of India’s foreign policy, here are five ideas for this Indo-Pacific desk to consider, all of which aim to advance the shared vision of a “free, open, and inclusive Indo-Pacific” promoted by India, the United States, Japan, and others.
Japan’s Emperor Akihito, who is abdicating after three decades on the Chrysanthemum Throne, has been much more of a global leader than a national one. That sets him apart from his father – and from many of the world’s current leaders.
Obama talked of pivoting to Asia. Donald Trump made Asia pivot to America. In the last two years, Trump has done much to increase U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific region. But much more needs doing. A fast start is well and good, the Indo-Pacific contest is a marathon, not a sprint.
For the past seven years, Japan has competed against the Chinese initiative, not only by reforming its lending practices and increasing funding for development assistance, but also by articulating a vision for what Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called “quality” infrastructure investment and seeking international partners to advance these principles.
There is no question at this point that the relative sizes of the U.S. and Chinese economy today are much closer than those of Japan and the U.S. in the interwar period. And long story short, underselling the size of the Chinese defense budget and overselling the size of the Chinese economy does tend to obscure the magnitude of China’s defense buildup.
The Japanese and Canadian governments have failed to manage effectively the reputational, economic, and geopolitical implications of the legal cases against Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn and Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou. And, in a globalized world, the risks posed by such cases are likely to grow.
Japanese policymakers often seem like the economic equivalent of Winston Churchill’s take on Americans that they can be counted on to do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities. There’s nothing new or innovative about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s revival scheme. Abenomics is merely a list of reforms Tokyo should have tackled 20 years ago. Instead, they exhausted every possible alternative, often several times, until delay was no longer an option.
