Stars and Stripes – Japan needs to further strengthen and evolve its alliance with the United States amid the region’s rapidly changing security environment, Japanese defense officials and other experts agreed Tuesday.
The consensus, which came during a symposium hosted by the nation’s Ministry of Defense in Tokyo, did not include specifics on how the two nations’ longtime alliance should move forward in the face of an increasingly aggressive China and uncertainty over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
However, Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya, speaking at the opening of the symposium, said his agency chose to review the country’s defense guidelines in December — five years ahead of schedule — because the “severity and uncertainty of the security environment has increased faster than expected when the last guideline was written” in 2014. The guidelines are usually reviewed every 10 years, he said.
