I spoke with Leo Lewis from the Financial Times about Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s 7 February summit with US President Donald Trump.
“You can imagine situations at this summit that could require grace, patience, and sangfroid. The question is whether Ishiba can deliver that,” said Tobias Harris, founder of political risk advisory Japan Foresight.
Harris added that aside from avoiding a diplomatic disaster, the risk for Ishiba was returning from Washington with a bigger problem than he left.
“Alliance management does not look like something the US administration is interested in spending time and energy on right now,” Harris said. “Whatever reassurances Ishiba gets may be short term . . . even if he and Trump get along and it goes OK, that doesn’t rule out chaos and uncertainty down the road.”
The entire article is available here.
Japan Foresight 