Julian Ryall of the South China Morning Post reports that USS Preble is the only American destroyer with the advanced Helios laser weapon that can intercept aerial threats such as drones and missiles. Ryall writes: A US warship equipped with the advanced Helios laser weapon is being forward-deployed to Japan’s Yokosuka naval base, south of […]
Plainspoken Populist will be Japan’s Next PM
Japanese ministers have chosen a “plainspoken populist” as the country’s next Prime Minister. Philip Patrick reports in The Spectator: The sixty-seven-year-old Shigeru Ishiba will become Japan’s new prime minister on October 1 after winning a surprisingly exciting play-off vote against his rival Sanae Takaichi. For a moment it looked as if Japanese MPs were set […]
Japan Enters Technical Recession
Japan’s GDP shrank unexpectedly in the fourth quarter of 2023, putting the country into a technical recession. A technical recession occurs when a nation’s GDP drops for two consecutive quarters. That shouldn’t be confused with an official recession, which is usually determined by a group of economists such as the NBER in the United States. […]
How Important Is America’s Relationship with Japan and the Philippines?
Ryan Ashley of War on The Rocks tells his readers the U.S., Japanese, and Philippine trilateral relationship is off balance and is a pivotal deterrent to Indo-Pacific tensions. He writes: As geopolitical tensions rise in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S.-Japanese-Philippine security trilateral is rapidly emerging as a potentially pivotal defense arrangement. It has already garnered widespread […]
Does Japan Know What It’s Getting Into?
In Spectator World, Jason Morgan, an associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, Japan, discusses the move by Japan to bulk up its military and strengthen the bond between itself and the United States. He writes, skeptically, of the move: In December 2022, for example, the Japanese prime minister, Kishida Fumio, announced plans for a […]
