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April 24th, 2024 | 9:37 PM ET

A New Era in the U.S.-Japan Security Partnership

Posted: May 31st, 2016

Last Friday, Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima after the city was destroyed by an American atomic bomb on August 6 1945. Although the President did not apologize for the act, he did use the occasion to advocate nuclear nonproliferation, mourning the day when “a flash of light and a wall of fire… demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.”

However, this long-anticipated gesture of goodwill is more than just a platform for the nuclear issue or recognition of a past tragedy. As Japan expands its Self Defense Forces and inches ever closer to revising a 70-year old Constitutional ban on maintaining an offensive military, the President’s visit may also mark a new era in America’s alliance with its most important security partner in East Asia.

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