ABSTRACT
More than fifty years has passed since Japan, a defeated wartime power, resumed its position as a key player in Asia-Pacific relations under the US security umbrella and as a power ordained to play a major role in shaping regional and global prosperity. Japan is now exploring how it should reconstitute its politico-strategic identity at a time when newly emergent regional and global forces are instigating immense structural and normative change in Asia and around the world and when the future application of American power is increasingly uncertain. Australia likewise has closely linked its own security to affiliation with US regional and global strategy and this pattern has only intensified over the past ten years of conservative government ensconced in Canberra.
