In countering China, U.S. sees a growing role for Japan

News Snapshot:

OKINAWA, Japan — The United States’ alliance with Japan is evolving to counter an increasingly “untethered” China, Washington’s envoy to Tokyo told NBC News in an exclusive interview this week. “They have been more aggressive, as we have, from purely a strategic standpoint of putting our roots down even deeper in the area at the behest of regional allies,” the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, said Thursday in Tokyo, referring to Beijing. The U.S.-Japan relationship “is evolving from one that was always focused on alliance protection” to one focused on “alliance projection,” Emanuel said. That means asserting U.S. and...