Chief Cabinet Secretary of Japan, Yasuo Fukuda, incites controversy and criticism with his comments on Japan's longstanding nuclear policy.

President George W. Bush should challenge his Japanese counterpart to launch a joint initiative to create a U.S.-Japan “open marketplace”--free of tariffs, with minimal regulatory impediments, and an increasing freedom to do business--by the year 2010, argues Bruce Stokes in A New Beginning: Recasting the U.S.-Japan Economic Relationship.

During the twentieth century, as the United States grew into a world power, Americans confronted two major powers in Asia: China and Japan. Of course, there were and are other crucial factors in Asia, from the expansionist former Soviet Union to the unpredictable North Korea. But in this century, Americans struggled most of all to get their China and Japan policies right. There is no reason to believe that Chinese and Japanese issues will be less central to U.S. policy in the twenty-first century.

The U.S.-Japan security alliance is at a crossroads. The outcome of certain decisions to be made in 1998—the Japanese Diet's vote on legislation necessary to implement the new U.S.-Japan Guidelines for Defense Cooperation, the implementation of the recommendations of the Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO), and the nature of Japan's participation in the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system with the United States—will determine the path of the security relationship for years to come. One course will lead to a weakening of the alliance, with reduced obligations and expectations on both sides. The other is a path toward strengthening the alliance, with a greater mutual commitment to dealing with the Asian security challenges of the 21st century.