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Amid growing regional uncertainty, the Australia-Japan relationship has gained new importance in recent times. And as Professor Purnendra Jain writes, a face-to-face meeting of prime ministers in Tokyo and the signing of a visiting military forces agreement has been a good start for relations under Japan’s new leader Yoshihide Suga.
The Quad, a loose strategic coalition of the Indo-Pacific region’s four leading democracies, is rapidly solidifying this year in response to China’s aggressive foreign policy. Following a recent meeting of their top foreign-policy officials in Tokyo, Australia, India, Japan, and the United States are now actively working toward establishing a new multilateral security structure for the region, writes Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.
Koichi Hamada, Professor Emeritus at Yale University, writes that with the departure of Japan's longest-serving prime minister Shinzo Abe, one of the biggest questions facing his successor, Yoshihide Suga, is what to do about Abe’s signature economic-policy plan.
The rise of an assertive China, the absence of American leadership, and the coronavirus pandemic have combined to pose unprecedented challenges to the countries of the Indo-Pacific. Former Japanese ambassador Sumio Kusaka argues they also provide the rationale for a new era in Australia-Japan relations and the consolidation of a ‘natural’ partnership.
Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has arrived with a suite of ambitious policy ideas, including plans to digitize government services and revive the country’s regional banks. But he has yet to come up with an overarching theme that strikes a chord with the public. Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief of The Economist, writes that Suga should declare that by 2030, Japan will be positioned to make the best possible use of its one and only natural resource – its people.