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Author Archives: Luke Austin

Luke Austin has recently completed his MA with distinction in Governance and Global Affairs at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). He wrote his master’s dissertation on the levels of consistency and contradiction between actual policy-making and political discourse in the framework of EU-Russia relations. Luke also holds a BA in Japanese and Russian from the University of Leeds. He has previously interned for the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow.

Trump’s Second Presidency: Implications for Japanese Foreign Policy

If negotiations between Tokyo and Washington do not terminate positively,, there is the risk that their economic interdependence between Japan and China will increase to the point that former becomes dangerously vulnerable to geopolitical shocks, as was the case with Germany and Russia in the leadup to the latter’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Japan’s Afghanistan policy: ambitions and strategies in the graveyard of empires

While increasing tensions in the Indo-Pacific stemming from fears over the PRC’s increasingly threatening posture towards Taiwan, the global economic disorder generated by Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and approval ratings plummeting for the Kishida administration may preoccupy the Japanese government for the time being, it is highly likely that Japan's Afghanistan policy will be of largely economic, and less geopolitical nature.

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