In 2011, President Obama called for a "return to Asia",which resembled another policy shift in the 1990s.Focusing on a critical shift in American foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific region,this paper conducts a case study on the formation process of the New Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Alliance in the mid-1990s. This critical period at the beginning of the post-Cold War era was marked not only by the collapse of the Soviet Union,but also by several new dynamics in Asia-Pacific international relations,which included the rise of China,the nuclear development of North Korea,new tensions across the Taiwan Strait,and the likely drifting away of Japan from the U.S.-Japan Alliance. This study provides a detailed analysis of the historical background and changing dynamics of the U.S.-Japan-China triangular relationship. In particular,it provides an in-depth examination of the internal workings of U.S. foreign policy-making as well as the policy debates in Japan during the beginning of the post-Cold War era. It also includes a discussion of China's reaction to this change. This paper presents the notion of a "Strategic Action Core Force" (SACF),including the key driving forces behind U.S. foreign policy formulation and implementation in the above-mentioned critical strategic shift. A key group in the making of the New Guidelines in Washington was a "troika" of the policy elites also known as the "Harvard network". These were three top officials with academic backgrounds,serving in the U.S. defense and foreign policy establishment—Joseph Nye,Ezra Vogel and Kurt Campbell. The study also documents the SACF's interaction and engagement with its Japanese counterpart. It demonstrates that the SACF played an instrumental role in producing the New Guidelines, which successfully stopped the drifting tendency of Japan away from the United States. This new policy not only strengthened the strategic bilateral relations between the U.S. and Japan,but also enhanced overall U.S. leadership in the region. This successful transition in U.S. foreign policy served the best of the U.S. national interests while persuading Japan that it served Japan's national interests as well (a real-world example of Joseph Nye's concept of "soft power"). This paper not only emphasizes the importance of the strategic core force in the American for directions. This critical shift has had long-lasting implications for the challenge of Asia-Pacific international relations,which constitutes the foundation of current Obama Administration policy in this region. <<