Japan’s first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, says her role model is the “Iron Lady,” Margaret Thatcher.
Whether or not Takaichi becomes the next Thatcher depends on whether she, like her idol, can win over not just fellow conservatives in her Liberal Democratic Party and opposition leaders, but the trust and respect of foreign leaders from Washington to Brussels, and perhaps most importantly, throughout the Indo-Pacific region.
That would not be an easy task at any time, let alone a time of historic change and confrontation in the Indo-Pacific on nearly every front. The region’s security architecture development depends on three main factors, which include great-power rivalry and regional fragmentation, as well as new cooperative frameworks.
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