When the history of the Kishida government is written, the bulk of the story will be devoted to its foreign and security policies, including the drive to raise the country’s regional and global profile as it tries to play a more prominent role on the world stage. It has been a steady march, driven by both national and international projects.
Considerable progress was made this week in a series of meetings with counterparts in various endeavors, the heart of which is the Japan-U.S. alliance.
At the meeting of the Security Consultative Committee (SCC), the regular gathering of the two countries’ foreign and defense ministers, often referred to as the SCC or “the two-plus-two”) the participants agreed to establish a new U.S. joint force headquarters for United States Forces Japan (USFJ) to assume "primary responsibility for coordinating security activities in and around Japan."