The SRC (Hokkaido Univ.) -CNAPS (The Brookings Institution)
Joint Symposium on
“The US-Japan Alliance: Beyond Northeast Asia” is to be held on May 8, 2009

Hokkaido University’s Slavic Research Center and the Brookings Institution’s Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies have co-organized a symposium on “The US-Japan Alliance: Beyond Northeast Asia” to be held in Washington DC on May 8, 2009. This event aims to involve US foreign policy communities on Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe --- which have little interests in Japan’s commitment to these areas --- and to reshape Japan’s presence and image within the US Northeast Asian policy circles. “Getting Japan right” in the US is an urgent task. In the US, “conventional wisdom” has led many to assume that Japan unilaterally leans on the alliance with the US because of their worries about a future confrontation with an emerging China. Most experts in Japan, however, foresee a peaceful and stable cooperation between China and Japan as neighbors in the region and do not necessarily overplay the concern with China as the prevailing US perception of Japan suggests. In addition, Japan’s foreign policy does not focus solely on China and China-related issues, but has a broader perspective beyond the region even if it is still yet to be strategically well-coordinated through other areas. The symposium will bust the US perception of Japan’s foreign policy while revealing some pertinent realities of Japan’s foreign policy. Japan’s foreign policy and its global commitments must be re–assessed in order to enhance the US-Japan alliance.

Japan’s delegation consists of Tomohiko Uyama (SRC), Osamu Ieda (SRC), Yoshifumi Nakai (Gakushuin Univ.), Shinji Hyodo (National Institute for Defense Studies), Keiko Sakai (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies), Osamu Yoshida (Hiroshima Univ.) and other SRC staffers. Brookings has also assembled a “strong team,” which includes Richard Bush, Stephen Cohen, Johannes Linn, Michael O’Hanlon, Steven Pifer, and Justin Vaisse. This event is sponsored by the Japan Foundation (CGP) and partly supported by the project on “Comparative Research: Major Regional Powers in Eurasia” (Project leader: Shinichiro Tabata). Akihiro Iwashita, the SRC director, will directly manage and coordinate the event. His contact address is iwasi@slav.hokudai.ac.jp.

Symposium program for May 8　See this site.
Seminar program for May 7

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