Roundtable with Professor Mori, Keio University
Thursday 31 October 2024
On Thursday 31 October, the Perth USAsia Centre hosted a roundtable discussion with Professor Satoru Mori, professor of contemporary international politics at the Faculty of Law, and Deputy Director of the Keio Center for Strategy at Keio University in Tokyo.
As three quarters of the Quad, Japan, Australia, and the US play a significant role in advancing security and development in the Indo-Pacific. And this collaboration is only deepening – Japan remains a frontrunner for an extended AUKUS arrangement, expected to contribute to the defence pact’s technology-focused pillar II.
This trilateral partnership is assuming increasing importance as Japan grapples with uncertainty in its immediate neighbourhood –facing historic tensions with China, a volatile North Korea, and the question of Taiwan.
Professor Mori joined us to discuss how the upcoming US presidential election may impact Japan’s approach to intensifying geostrategic competition in the Indo-Pacific, and shared his perspective on how Japan’s political system and recent election shape its foreign policy.
Speaker
Satoru Mori, Professor, Faculty of Law, Keio University; Deputy Director, Keio Center for Strategy (KCS)
After receiving his bachelor’s degree in law from Kyoto University in March of 1995, he completed his master’s degree at both the Graduate School of Law at Kyoto University and Columbia University School of Law in the U.S. He then joined Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Foreign Service Civil Service Recruitment Type I Examination. After retiring from the Ministry, he earned a doctorate in law from the University of Tokyo Graduate Schools for Law and Politics in 2007.
He became an associate professor at the Faculty of Law of Hosei University in 2008 and was promoted to professor in 2010, serving until March 2022. During this period, he was also a visiting scholar at Princeton University (2014-2015) and George Washington University (2013-2015). He assumed his current position in April 2022, and his research currently focuses on U.S. Asian strategy, including U.S.-China and Japan-U.S. relations, advanced technology and defense innovation, and U.S. strategic history during the Cold War. Since 2018, he has been a Senior Researcher at the Nakasone Peace Institute. He served as a Special Advisor and Senior Fellow at the National Security Secretariat from 2016 to 2019. He is also a member of the Ministry of Defense New Defense Policy Roundtable since 2020. In 2022, he was convened by the National Security Bureau for expert hearings on the review of three defense documents. Since March 2023, he has held the position of Deputy Director of Keio Center for Strategy, Keio Global Research Institute.