Prelude to a Japanese Revival

By John Minnich

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has arrived in Washington, D.C. — the third stop on his maiden voyage to the United States since assuming office in 2012. Over the next two days, he will hold a summit with U.S. President Barack Obama on U.S.-Japanese defense and trade cooperation, attend a state dinner in his honor and address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. In his speech before Congress, Abe will reaffirm Japan's commitment to promoting peace and security in East Asia and extol the virtues of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-country free trade agreement that spans the Pacific Ocean Basin and pointedly excludes China.
 
As always with such occasions, the real work, whether on revising guidelines for U.S.-Japanese defense cooperation or negotiating the finer points of Japan's accession to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, will take place long before Abe sits down with Obama. In this sense, his visit is largely symbolic. But this does not make it insignificant. The significance of Abe's trip, like that of the work that precedes and surrounds it, rests in what it tells us about Japan's strategy and what that strategy reveals about ...

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