TOKYO, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be heading to the United States for a formal summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Friday followed by a round of golf with the new president at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
A game of golf seems quite fitting considering Abe rushed to be by Trump's side following his shock election win last November.
The Japanese leader spared no expense in presenting the now president with a golf driver reportedly worth around 4,500 U.S. dollars.
However, if Abe is hoping to get anything approaching a return on his investment and see the Japan-U.S. alliance continue unaffected, he'll likely be parting with far more than sports equipment in the days and months ahead, observers here have said.
While Japan's weighty trade deficit with the U.S. was its second-largest in 2016, totaling 68.94 billion U.S. dollars, and along with Trump's recent accusations levied at Japan of it devaluing its currency while claiming Japan's major automakers like Toyota are not playing fair, Trump, who fancies himself as the "King of the Deal" will certainly have the upper hand against Abe in Washington and, indeed, on the links in Florida.
According to Akio Takahara, of the Graduate School for Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo, for Abe the maintenance of the U.S.'s security umbrella is of paramount importance and any deviation from this or the alliance's renegotiation would strike at the core of Japan's relationship with the U.S. and its position in Asia.
Takahara said that the faintest possibility of a downgrading or renegotiation of the U.S.-Japan alliance could shatter the pacifist psychology underpinning Tokyo's strategic outlook and require Japan to endure the trauma of revisiting Article 9, the "war clause" enshrined in its constitution.
"It would be almost impossible to think about that situation," added Takahara. "For instance, if Trump decides to pull out from Japan, which is very unlikely, but if that happens we have no other choice, do we? We'd have to completely rethink our security policy."
And this is a scenario that Abe most certainly doesn't want to face and despite being given some recent assurances from U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis over the issue, the unpredictable nature of the Trump administration, and, the man himself, means that nothing is set in stone, regardless of how well Abe plays the back; and Abe, some analysts have said, is nervous and overly-eager and this could play nicely into the "King of the Deal's" hands.
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