The aim of this essay is to establish a framework for discussing the future of U.S. military strategy and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. This report provides the reader with a picture of contemporary U.S. defense policy, and an understanding of Japan's defense policy environment. In pursuit of these goals this paper: (1) examines current U.S. defense policy; (2) reviews U.S.-Japan security relations from 1945 to the present; (3) traces trends in U.S. military strategy over the past eight years; (4) assesses current domestic constraints on Japanese security policy-making; (5) places the U.S.-Japanese security alliance in its Asian context; and (6) evaluates the need for the U.S. to develop an integrated strategy to encourage Japan to assume a more active international security position.
--Author's foreword.
