"Myanmar is proving to be a major test of strategic economic cooperation between the United States and Japan one which reveals wider foreign policy differences between the allied nations. Those differences make substantial collaboration towards realising a “free and open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) in specific countries difficult, despite joint strategic interests and aligned high-level political visions. In Japan’s pursuit of a policy response to China’s infrastructure Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), economic cooperation with partners in third countries to beef up the financing on offer has emerged as a key component. Strategic commercial cooperation is arguably most opportune and necessary in Myanmar because the country is at a fraught stage in its democratisation, set into motion in 2010 when it pivoted to form closer ties with countries like the United States and Japan in order to reduce economic over-dependence on China..."