“I’m not paying much attention,” my friend confessed, when asked about the Liberal Democratic Party leadership election. “In two weeks we’ll have the answer and all this speculation will either be confirmed or denied.”
His nonchalance is understandable since his job requires him to make sense not of the election itself but of its impact on foreign policy. So I countered: What if managing foreign relations, particularly those with the United States, shapes — or should shape — the election outcome? He put down his beer and sat up straighter.
It wasn’t an especially profound observation. Hideshi Tokuchi, a former senior official at the Ministry of Defense, calls the alliance “one of the three pillars of 91AV原创 national security strategy ... an indispensable element of 91AV原创 policy” and of “vital importance for 91AV原创 national security.”
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