Prénom de l'expert

Céline

Nom de l'expert

PAJON

On the eve of the Vladivostok Summit, should we expect any significant progress in the laborious rapprochement between Japan and Russia?

If some African countries are on their way to achieving dynamic economic growth, many are also still struggling with a lack of economic and social infrastructure, latent governance issues and often complex and risky security environments. In this context, both Japan and European countries, especially France, are making efforts to increase not only their development assistance, but also private investments and security cooperation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

There is still a big gap between the discourse and the reality of what Japan wants - and what it can achieve in Africa.

France’s current presidential campaign has created an unprecedented situation fuelled by revelations and a total absence of restraint, but it has not truly taken account of the disruptions of the last year: Brexit, the attempted coup in Turkey, the election of Donald Trump, the recapturing of Aleppo by Bashar al-Assad, Xi Jinping’s declarations about “economic globalization”, or the behavior of North Korea. The debate, or rather its absence, can be looked at in two ways.

China’s rise, US rebalancing in Asia, historic defense reforms in Japan, the adoption of new Guidelines for bilateral cooperation: the Japan-US alliance has reached a turning point in its history.