United States-Japan Relations and International Institutions After the Cold War
Like most conference volumes, this book is uneven in quality, but it has an impressive density of ideas. Peter Cowhey’s thoughtful discussion of the U.S.-Japanese trade rivalry shows why the countries have different preferences. The United States prefers deeper integration and formal rules, and its major challenge is squaring the bilateralism sometimes required to promote deeper integration with the multilateralism that best reconciles its diverse global interests. Takashi Inoguchi’s insightful essay discusses ‘contrasting conceptions’ of human rights in the Asia-Pacific and the United States. Jitsuo Tsuchiyama skillfully utilizes international relations theory to explain the alliance’s origins and the reasons it is likely to continue.
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