A JCIE team of up-and-coming policy experts has been studying relatively unexplored areas— outside of the traditional realms of hard security and trade—where greater US-Japan cooperation and coordination can help revitalize the bilateral partnership and complement ongoing efforts to strengthen the alliance. The US-Japan Papers present the findings of several members of the team.

An Enhanced Regional Architecture for East Asia: Managing Globalization, Power Transition, and Domestic Fragility [December 2011, PDF 466K]

Satoru Mori proposes that Japan and the United States team up to make the East Asia Summit more action-oriented by helping to create an East Asia Cooperation Council to negotiate concrete rules of the road for member states and coordinate cooperative initiatives on regional issues.

US-Japan Cooperation on the Reform of International Organizations [December 2011, PDF 615K]

As the global balance of power shifts toward Asia, Phillip Lipscy argues that the United States and Japan should play a greater role in reforming international organizations to meet the challenges of the 21st century by advocating for a redistribution of voting rights, a decentralization of functions, and other structural changes.

A New Framework for US-Japan Development Cooperation [December 2011, PDF 608K]

Analyzing the impact of the Common Agenda and other bilateral US-Japan efforts to cooperate on development assistance, Jim Gannon calls on the two countries to launch a new development initiative that focuses on East Asia.

Freedom of Navigation and the US-Japan Alliance: Addressing the Threat of Legal Warfare [December 2011, PDF 360K]

Tetsuo Kotani urges the United States and Japan to work together more closely to combat efforts by China and other countries to exploit gaps in international law and use "legal warfare" to ensure freedom of navigation in Asia Pacific and elsewhere.

Revitalizing US-Japan Collaboration on Global Health [December 2011, PDF 416K]

As health issues become a major challenge to stability and prosperity in our increasingly globalized world, Erie Sase and Susan Hubbard propose that Japan and the United States leverage one another's respective strengths for joint initiatives to improve public health in developing countries in Africa and Asia.

The Rise of China and the Changing Regional Security Architecture [December 2011, PDF 487K]

Arguing that China's rise and the course of US-China bilateral relations will play a predominant role in determining the future shape of Asia, Ryo Sahashi proposes that Japan take a nuanced approach that strengthens the US-Japan alliance while helping reshape the regional order to embed China as well as Japan and the United States more deeply in cooperative initiatives in the region.

About the Project

Between 2008 and 2011, JCIE sponsored a study on an "Enhanced Agenda for US-Japan Partnership" to explore how revitalized US-Japan cooperation can better address common challenges, strengthen regional and global stability, and ultimately make the bilateral alliance more robust and versatile. The project brought together a group of 10 promising young policy experts to focus on emerging issue areas where there is the potential for deeper bilateral cooperation between the two countries, such as maritime security, international development, and global governance. (Read more about the project...).

Roundtable Report: Report from the September, 16, 2011, project roundtable organized by JCIE and the German Marshall Fund.

This initiative has been made possible by the generous support of the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.