As US and Japan keep an eye on China, Biden-Kishida meeting to yield outcomes on ‘remarkable’ scale: insiders

US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will unveil nearly six dozen “deliverables” in security, economic and people-to-people areas on Wednesday, senior Biden administration officials said hours before the leaders met.

“We will judge it to be a remarkable summit,” one of the officials said of the projected number of outcomes. “Seventy is not common. Occasionally we have a dozen, maybe 20 at the outside. This is probably the largest number of substantial deliverables that we’ve seen of its kind.”

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The officials declined to provide specifics but indicated that many would relate to reorganising and integrating their two militaries and new joint operating command structures. Some 54,000 US troops are stationed in Japan.

US officials warned that even after particulars were disclosed, the reorganisation would take months as the two defence bureaucracies wrangle over details and implementation.

Other announcements on Wednesday are expected to involve tapping Japan’s formidable manufacturing expertise to fill gaps in the overstretched US military-industrial structure with construction of US naval vessels, aircraft and other equipment years behind schedule.

Also expected are several people-to-people announcements: an artificial intelligence partnership between Carnegie Mellon and Keio universities, several Japanese firms and Microsoft; a US$50 million tie-up between Washington state’s University of Washington, the University of Tsukuba, Amazon and Nvidia; and the creation of a US$12 million fund to promote high school exchanges between the two countries.

Beyond the deliverables, officials said, this week’s