Amid a rapidly changing balance of power and worsening frictions across the Taiwan Strait, this talk will survey the historical evolution of Japanese perspectives on the U.S.-Japan security alliance’s and the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ potential roles in a “Taiwan contingency.” Though Tokyo’s nuanced positions and policies vis-à-vis Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait have generally been overlooked in the U.S.-China-Taiwan centric academic literature and policy discourse, Japan is a critical front-line player. The policy choices Japan’s leaders make have long been—and will inevitably remain—crucial variables affecting cross-strait deterrence, U.S. response options, and how things may play out if deterrence fails. Since early November, Beijing’s dizzying array of threats and coercion against Japan in response to an impromptu Taiwan-related remark by Japan’s prime minister throw into sharp relief the real-world importance of nuanced understanding of these issues.
Adam Liff is a professor of East Asian International Relations at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He serves as the founding director of its 21st Century Japan Politics and Society Initiative (21JPSI). Beyond IU, he is a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, as well as a faculty associate and associate-in-research at Harvard University’s Program on US-Japan Relations and Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, respectively.
The lecture is sponsored by the Liu Institute's Chinese Working Group. The event is free and open to the public.