Green knows Japanese foreign policy like few others. He argues that Shinzo Abe, who served as Japan’s Prime Minister from 2006 to 2007 and then from 2012 to 2020, refocused Tokyo’s strategy in a way that will persist, despite his tragic assassination in July 2022. Proactive rather than reactive, he created the concept of a “loose and open Indo-Pacific” that has become an integral component of American thought; increased military cooperation between the two allies; consolidated the quasi-alliance of Australia, India, Japan and the United States known as the Quad; and resurrected the deserted Washington Trans-Pacific Trade Compact in the form of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (to which the United States has not yet joined). These projects reflected a “maritime and cosmopolitan” technique that aims to ensure Japan’s access to surrounding oceans based on the rule of law and the free flow of trade. In Southeast Asia, Abe has complicated “values-based diplomacy” and positioned Japan as a trusted component for countries seeking to protect themselves against China. At home, he anchored the vision of him in a hardened security establishment. Despite its inability to bridge intractable differences with South Korea, Japan “currently has arguably the clearest conceptualization, consensus, and implementation of a grand strategy of any democracy facing China’s hegemonic ambitions. ” in the Indo-Pacific.
