
With Japan’s recent embrace of collective self-defense, the U.S.-Japan alliance is once again in the spotlight.

Japan’s new guidelines for overseas operation by the country’s Self-Defense Forces are not aimed at Russia. On the contrary, Japan’s pro-active policy serves the maintenance of balance of power in North-East Asia, which in its turn fits the interest of Russia.

Japan’s new self-defense initiative is the right move at the right time: Japan has more to offer in service of regional and national security and it has earned the right to participate.

NATO is emerging from the Ukraine crisis without a new sense of purpose or direction. Yet the rest of the world is investing huge hopes in the Western military alliance.

In mid-2014, the United States' relations with China and Russia are substantially worse than those two countries' bilateral relations. The unique position that the United States has held since the 1990s as the dominant power in Eurasia is now history.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is placing a high priority on his country’s diplomacy in Southeast Asia, and policy coordination in the region is now firmly on the U.S.-Japan alliance agenda following last month’s Obama-Abe summit.

Rising democracies are becoming key players in global democracy promotion, but they often struggle to detach the external support they provide from their own transition experiences.

Russia’s recent showing at the Shangri-La Dialogue creates a sense of profound misreading of the audience. To craft its Asian strategy, Moscow needs to understand the complex processes now under way in the region and to foster an extensive network of official and unofficial contacts to all significant players.

If the Kremlin allies with China too closely, it will not only estrange Russia from most of Asian countries, but also may provoke China’s appetite to gobble the newly-born child of Russia, the Eurasian Union.

Japan is beginning to emerge from its prolonged economic stagnation following the success of Abenomics. But successful implementation of the administration’s action plan, adopted in January, is critical for sustained economic revitalization.