Abstract

While Japanese leaders claim that the state of the Japan-US alliance has never been better, an increasing number of European leaders and experts argue that Europe can no longer rely on the US. How could we make sense of the state of US alliances under Trump? What similarities and differences can we find in Trump’s approach to the US alliances in the Asia-Pacific on one hand, and NATO on the other? Enhancing burden-sharing is of top priority for the Trump administration. But how can we measure it? Just focusing on the amount of defence budget cannot be adequate.

Short Biography

Dr Michito Tsuruoka is an Associate Professor at Keio University, based at the Faculty of Policy Management, Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC). Prior to joining Keio in 2017, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Ministry of Defense, from 2009. He is concurrently a Senior Fellow at The Tokyo Foundation. During his tenure at NIDS, Dr Tsuruoka was seconded to the Ministry of Defense as a Deputy Director of the International Policy Division, Bureau of Defense Policy (2012-2013), where he was in charge of multilateral security and defence cooperation in Asia, mainly the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus) and ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and spent one year as a Visiting Fellow at Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), London (2013-2014). Prior to joining NIDS, he was a Resident Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in Brussels (2009) and served as an Adviser for NATO at the Embassy of Japan in Belgium (2005-2008).

Dr Tsuruoka studied politics and international relations at Keio University, Tokyo, and Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. and received a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. His areas of expertise include international security, contemporary European politics, nuclear policy and Japan’s foreign, security and defence policy.