Dear SSJ-Forum Colleagues,

I am writing to let colleagues know about a new (short) book that I just published last week entitled, Japan's Foreign and Security Policy Under the 'Abe Doctrine':
New Dynamism or New Dead End? (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 114 pages)

I am hoping it should be of interest because the Abe administration has been so proactive and posed so many questions on the foreign and security policy front, and also because we are now running into a very interesting period of the submission of a raft of security legislation to the National Diet for consideration.

The book description is as follows:

Prime Minister Abe Shinz?'s foreign and security policy-highly charged with ideological and historical revisionism-contains the potential to shift Japan onto a new international trajectory. Its degree of articulation and energy makes for an 'Abe doctrine'
capable of displacing the 'Yoshida Doctrine' that has been Japan's guiding grand strategy in the post-war period. Abe has already begun to introduce radical policies that look to transform national security policy into a more muscular military stance, bolster US-Japan alliance ties to function increasingly for regional and global security, and attempt to encircle China's influence in East Asia. The 'Abe Doctrine' is dynamic but also high-risk. Abe's revisionism contains fundamental contradictions that may ultimately limit the effectiveness, or even defeat, the doctrine, and along the way inflict collateral damage on relations with East Asia and Japan's own national interests.

And here is a preview of the contents:
1. Introduction: From 'Yoshida Doctrine' to 'Abe
Doctrine'?

2. The Origins and Ideological Drivers of the 'Abe
Doctrine'
Ending the 'post-war regime', restoring great power status Constitutional revision Historical revisionism, challenging the K?no Statement, patriotic education Yasukuni Shrine and challenging the Tokyo Tribunals

3. Japan's National Security under Abe

National Security Strategy, National Defence Programme Guidelines, State Secrecy Law Breaching the arms export ban, militarisation of ODA Collective self-defence made reality Radical new security precedents

4. The 'Abe Doctrine' and US-Japan Relations

Revising the US-Japan Defence Guidelines, Futenma relocation, TPP negotiations Fears of abandonment, resistance in Okinawa, trade blockages Distrust over revisionism and Yasukuni Who is entrapping whom?

5. Japan's Relations under Abe with China, the Korean Peninsula, and ASEAN Encircling China More progress with North Korea than South Korea?
Abe isolates Japan, China encircles Japan?
Sino-Japanese stalemate?

6. Conclusion: 'Abe Doctrine' as Revolution or Contradictory Failure?
Three great contradictions
Resentful Realism redux

Many thanks and again hope the book will be of interest and worth some debate.

Chris

Christopher W. Hughes, PhD, FAcSS
Professor of International Politics and Japanese Studies Chair of the Faculty of Social Sciences Head of Department, Politics and International Studies

PA Jess Phillips
Tel: 02476 151732
Email: j.phillips.2@warwick.ac.uk

Co-Editor The Pacific Review
http://www.tandf.co.uk/Journals/titles/09512748.asp
Research website:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/hughes
Department of Politics and International Studies University of Warwick Coventry, CV4 7AL UK
Tel: 44-(0)2476-572631
Fax: 44(0)2476-572548
c.w.hughes@warwick.ac.uk