University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation

How do Japan and the United States fit into each other’s grand strategies? A grand strategy is one that relates means and ends, resources and objectives, economics and national security. The National Security Archive’s Project on U.S.–Japanese Relations Since 1960 is probing these issues through a major program of research and study into policymaking by both governments across a wide spectrum of diplomatic, security, and economic issues. This project has brought together scholars and officials (see Appendix) from both countries to discuss new studies, based on newly released official U.S. documents and interviews with former officials, that shed light on the policymaking and implementation processes in both governments.

This essay provides an interim report on the project, which is based on a series of four conferences. The first conference, held in March 1996 and co-hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution, focused on key turning points in U.S.–Japanese relations during the Nixon/Ford–Sato/Tanaka period. The second, held in La Jolla, California, in March 1997 and cosponsored by the National Security Archive and the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, focused on background studies and detailed policy case studies from the post-Nixon era. The third will take place in August 1998 at the East–West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. The capstone conference will be held in Japan in 1999. The participants of an informal policy roundtable (see Appendix), which followed the project’s second conference, included officials from both governments who discussed the full range of security, economic, and diplomatic issues addressed by the Research Fellows and fulfilled the objective of promoting dialogue