The OSIPP–IRC and Osaka University says goodbye to the Fellows of the Southeast Asia Partnership in a Dynamic Asia Fellowship Program as their time in Japan comes to an end and they pack up en masse and travel for the next stage of the program which takes place in Washington D.C. in the United States.
To conclude their four-week stay in Japan, the researchers attended an international conference in Hiroshima. Read the report from Carmina Yu Untalan, Associate Researcher at the IAFOR Research Centre.
"The New International Relations Template and Japan’s Indo-Pacific Vision"
The U.S.-Japan-Southeast Asia in a Dynamic Asia fellows attended an international workshop on, “The New International Relations Template and Japan’s Indo-Pacific Vision” at the Hiroshima Peace Institute in late January 2019. The event, sponsored by the German think tank, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, gathered several scholars and policy experts from the United States, North and Southeast Asian institutes to openly discuss issues concerning what appears as an emerging East Asia regional order following the United States' relative decline as a superpower and the rise of China.
The international conference "The New International Relations Template and Japan’s Indo-Pacific Vision” at the Hiroshima Peace Institute.
The event kicked-off with the keynote speech of Professor Khong Yuen Foong from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, entitled “The shifting contours of the international relations landscape”, where he talked about the emergence of a US-China-led bipolar East Asian regional order. Subsequent speakers discussed the Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy (FOIP) from the broad perspectives of their countries, such as the United States, China, Japan, India and Indonesia. Some of the outstanding issues that transpired during the workshop include, the importance of including history and reconciliation issues in foreign policy discussions, conceptual dissonance in interpreting “free” and “open” among the key actors and the possibility of finding a common ground for cooperation rather than conceiving the emerging order in the prism of rivalry and conflict.
The Fellows raised pertinent questions about the political and economic implications of the Indo-Pacific to both the United States and East Asia, which the experts keenly addressed. Overall, the workshop was very helpful in informing the fellows of how East Asians view the Indo-Pacific strategy and US-China relations, as they prepare for their stint in Washington. D.C. in the United States.
Meet the Research Fellows
Meet the Fellows of the Year 1 Cohort (January-March 2019) of the U.S. – Japan – Southeast Asia Partnership in a Dynamic Asia Fellowship which is run with the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, Osaka University; The East-West Center, in Washington DC; and supported by The Japan Foundation, and the U.S. Embassy Tokyo.
The interviews took place around Osaka University's Toyonaka Campus, their home base for the first month of the Fellowship.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ERaJ012vhY?rel=0&w=560&h=315]More Information:
Read the announcement of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre/East West Center collaboration
Read about the Program on the East-West Center in Washington Website
Read about the Programme on the IAFOR Research Centre website
