The world is entering a period of great geopolitical uncertainty and potential instability. Under Donald Trump, the United States is systematically undermining the pillars of the international order that it largely built and on which its global influence depends. Cracks are beginning to show in the foundations of China’s rise. Brexit is threatening to diminish both Britain and the European Union. Russia continues to try to undermine Western liberal democracy and destabilize its hinterland. Amidst these worrying trends and developments, Japan stands as a beacon of prosperity and stability. Can it assume a global role commensurate with its wealth and power? What would a Japan-led international order look like? This event is presented as a partnership between the Balsillie School of International Affairs, the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the Japan Futures Initiative.
About the speakers
Yoshihide Soeya is Professor of political science and international relations at the Faculty of Law of Keio University. His areas of interest are politics and security in East Asia, and Japanese diplomacy and its external relations. He received Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1987, majoring in world politics. He served as the Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies of the same university for six years until September 2013, and as the Director of its Center for Contemporary Korean Studies for five years until March 2016. Recently, Dr. Soeya was a Japan Scholar of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. from September 2013 to January 2014, and a Korea Foundation Fellow affiliated with the ASAN Institute in Seoul in March-May 2014. His most recent publications in English include “The Rise of China in Asia: Japan at the Nexus,” in Asle Toje, ed., Will China’s Rise be Peaceful? Security, Stability, and Legitimacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), and “The Case for an Alternative Strategy for Japan: Beyond the Article 9-Alliance Regime,” in Michael J. Green and Zack Cooper, eds., Postwar Japan: Growth, Security and Uncertainty since 1945 (Washington D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2017).
Masayuki Tadokoro is Professor of International Relations at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. Born in Osaka, he attended Kyoto University and the London School of Economics. Previously he was a professor at the National Defense Academy. In 1988-89, he stayed in Washington D.C. a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and in 1991 he taught for a semester as Fulbright Scholar in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh. His primary field is international political economy, but he works also on Japanese foreign and security policy. His publications in English include, “After the Dollar?”, International Relations of the Asia Pacific 10:3 (2010); and “Why did Japan fail to become the ‘Britain’ of Asia”, in David Wolff et al., eds., The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective (Brill, 2007). He also edited with David Welch and Yoshihide Soeya, Japan as a ‘Normal Country’?: A Nation in Search of Its Place in the World, (Toronto U.P. 2011).
David Welch is a CIGI senior fellow and professor of political science at the University of Waterloo located at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. An award-winning author and scholar, David is an expert in foreign policy decision making and international security, with an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region.
