Sasakawa USA Releases Book on Japan’s NDP Guidelines: Aligning U.S. and Japanese Defense Strategies for the Third Post-Cold War Era

Sasakawa USA released The New National Defense Program Guidelines: Aligning U.S. and Japanese Defense Strategies for the Third Post-Cold War Era, a policy analysis by U.S. and Japanese scholars and former defense officials that examines implications of Japan’s recently released National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG). Japan’s revision of the NDPG in December 2018 represents significant defense policy changes that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe engineered during his tenure since 2012, such as liberalizing rules for military equipment exports, introducing a limited form of collective self-defense, and expanding the scope of possible Self-Defense Forces.