Amid new geopolitical tensions in Asia and new challenges to the old international establishment, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday made his own promises of "war never again" and celebrated his country's alliance with the United State by paying a visit to Pearl Harbor, where in 1941 more than 2,400 American soldiers died under a Japanese attack.

Standing next to US president Barack Obama he solemnly vowed that Japan “must never repeat the horrors of war again”.  Both leaders sent the world a message of tolerance and reconciliation, according to El País, leading Spanish newspaper.

The visit was a geopolitical gesture, an exhibition of the close relationship that both countries developed since the end of World War II. With Obama and Abe at the head - two very different politicians, the first a progressive internationalist; The second a right-wing nationalist - the relationship has experienced one of the most tuned moments.

Abe has been a key player in Obama's strategic turnaround to Asia, designed to counteract China's boom. Both promoted, for example, the TPP, the free trade agreement with a dozen countries of the Pacific basin.

But the Asian twist has been left half-way. The rise of the Islamic State in the Middle East and the war in Syria, and Vladimir Putin's expansionism of Russia, prevented Obama from devoting his full attention to the Asia-Pacific region.

And the victory of Donald Trump, a politician who won the November 8 elections by stirring up xenophobia, leaves these movements in the air. In the election campaign Trump doubted the validity of the alliance with Japan. And it has already announced the US withdrawal from the TPP.

As reported in El País.