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In a way, the feeling that we are stuck in time is appropriate. After all, long before his stop in Tokyo this weekend to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump had revived old arguments about Japan's supposedly unfair trade practices.
Indeed, looking back, from a Japanese perspective, one of the most bewildering aspects of Trump's presidential campaign was his revival of Japan-bashing, his rhetoric a throwback to Japan's short-lived tenure as an economic superpower in the 1980s (when, coincidentally, he came of age as a self-stylized celebrity tycoon versed in the art of "deal-making").
And yet, the President's trip makes it quite clear that despite the fall of the Berlin Wall, nuclear disarmament, and the disintegration of the Soviet empire, the Cold War never really ended in East Asia. Instead, while the actors may have changed, Cold War concepts of nuclear deterrence and power-balancing are still the central principles by which the US President and East Asian leaders are conducting their diplomacy today.
This is actually not so surprising considering East Asia harbors two of the world's last remaining communist regimes: China and North Korea. That the West has not truly "won" here is perhaps a fact too easily overlooked because China is inextricably intertwined with Western economic interests. It is only when a serious security threat overshadows the region's economic agenda that we realize the precariousness of the situation. The words and actions of Kim Jong Un remind all of us in the West, and in East Asia's liberal democracies, of this simple fact.
So, for Japan, expect business as usual -- the perpetuation of the Cold War status quo allows the country's postwar order, including decades of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party, to continue. The only difference could be a more hawkish foreign policy from Japan under Abe, whose brand of ultranationalism promotes conservative aspects of the imperial institution that the emperor himself may not even wish to revive.
Ultimately, the ever-tighter, or "even-greater" US-Japan alliance is a testament to the reality that the Cold War is far from over. As Trump moves on to the next leg of his Asia trip in South Korea, the East Asia Cold War drama will continue, for now at least, with a changing, yet ever more bizarre cast of characters.