jeffrey hornung is a senior political scientist at the rand corporation, a us based think tank and researchoutside of the usjapan alliance, the most thatjapan has had with defense relations, the robustness has been with australia. japan, for years, has been looking to increase its defence ties with europe, uk among them. and so this is really a landmark agreement, the fact that they�*re taking their defence relationship to the next level. and as we�*ve heard in shaimaa�*s report, japan is boosting its defense spending. and president biden is, of course, arriving injapan today and will be meeting with mr kishida against the war in ukraine, the growing threat of china that will likely be the top of the agenda of the conversation and the g7 summit. sure. in the g7 summit, they�*re going to be talking about a wide array of issues, whether it be global health, economic or security. but with the bilateral summit, i think we can expect to see a lot more security focused interest, be that the chinese provocations in and around japan. continued aggression or continued build up by north korea as well