In the wake of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue, Ted Galen Carpenter assess the speech and subsequently delineates three measures that are critical to Shinzo Abe’s new policy declaration.

Despite three decades worth of effort in political, economic, social, cultural, and even military exchanges, the strategic mutual trust between China and the United States has not increased as significantly as expected. On the contrary, the past several years have witnessed an increase of "strategic deficit." An outdated, arrogant, and narrow-minded mentality characterized by "zero-sum" and "Cold War" still haunts their bilateral relations.

At the top of the agenda at this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, the major annual security forum in the Asia-Pacific region, were conflicts in the South China Sea