Is Japan capable of grand strategy when it comes to foreign policy? Modern Japan faces challenges on every front: from a rising China and constrained economic growth at home, to an ever-present threat posed by an increasingly unstable North Korea, to an evolving and complex relationship with the West that for so long has served as the bedrock of Japanese foreign policy. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has garnered significant attention for his policies undergirding a path of "proactive pacifism" for Japan, but many questions remain unanswered with regard to what Japan's global role ought to be,...

Is Japan capable of grand strategy when it comes to foreign policy? Modern Japan faces challenges on every front: from a rising China and constrained economic growth at home, to an ever-present threat posed by an increasingly unstable North Korea, to an evolving and complex relationship with the West that for so long has served as the bedrock of Japanese foreign policy. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has garnered significant attention for his policies undergirding a path of "proactive pacifism" for Japan, but many questions remain unanswered with regard to what Japan's global role ought to be,...

This report is the first regional study in the CSIS Federated Defense series. The Federated Defense Project aims to shift the paradigm with key allies and partners from capacity building to a federated approach that would expand regional security and prosperity by joining regional allies and partners together in the pursuit of shared security objectives across the conflict spectrum. Federated defense should include forward-thinking strategies for how to develop and share capabilities and capacity, thereby more deeply integrating the US military with its allies and partners. In this report,...