Abe’s Foreign Policy: Implications for the U.S.

On February 11, 2013, Sasakawa USA welcomed the Honorable Rust Deming for a private, off-the-record discussion on Prime Minister Abe’s foreign policy.

About the Speaker

Ambassador Rust Deming has spent much of his career working on Japanese affairs. In 2011, he spent six months at the State Department when he was brought back as Japan Director, and helped coordinate the U.S. government response to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in eastern Japan. In his distinguished thirty-eight year career at State he also served as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 1998 to 2000 and piror to that as the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau’s senior advisor to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

He also served as senior advisor to the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs in 1997. Frp, 1996-7, he was in Japan serving as charge d’affaires and before that as deputy chief of mission for three years. Ambassador Deming also worked as director of the Office of Japanese Affairs in Washington from 1991 to 1993. His last overseas post was as ambassador to Tunisia from 2000 to 2003. In addition to his current work at SAIS, he is also chairman of the Japan-America Society of Washington DC and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ambassador Deming received his BA from Rollins College and his MA in East Asian Studies from Stanford University.