"I'm not paying much attention," my friend confessed, when asked about the Liberal Democratic Party leadership election. "In two weeks we'll have the answer and all this speculation will either be confirmed or denied."

His nonchalance is understandable since his job requires him to make sense not of the election itself but of its impact on foreign policy. So I countered: What if managing foreign relations, particularly those with the United States, shapes -- or should shape -- the election outcome? He put down his beer and sat up straighter.

It wasn't an especially profound observation. Hideshi Tokuchi, a former senior official at the Ministry of Defense, calls the alliance "one of the three pillars of Japan's national security strategy ... an indispensable element of Japan's policy" and of "vital importance for Japan's national security."