With no end in sight for North Korea to back down from its hardline military stance, and continued worries about Chinese aggression in the region, there is no shortage of concerns that countries across the Asia-Pacific share. The challenge, however, is not identifying the common threats facing the world’s most populous region, or even coming up with potential solutions that could ensure continued growth across Asia. Rather, the biggest hurdle has been to push countries to focus on unity against the common threats, and not to be at loggerheads over their differences on secondary or even tertiary issues. For even as the possibility of outright military conflict in Asia continues to grow, such fears have not deterred East Asia’s most powerful nations from dwelling on the past and politicizing history to further their own positions today. Moreover, the manipulation of historical memory has become only one of many factors driving up nationalist sentiment across Asia, which increasingly destabilizes a region already fraught with tension, both real and perceived. For Japan, facing threats unprecedented since the beginning of the Cold War era and seeking to play an active role in leadership—especially against the background of Donald Trump’s unilateralism—the absence of consensus and urgency about imminent dangers in the region leaves it without a clear path forward. 

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