As Korean scrambles to build diplomatic links from scratch with a Donald J. Trump administration, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe moved swiftly to schedule a summit with the U.S. president-elect in New York next week. While Korean President Park Geun-hye spoke over the phone with Trump for about 10 minutes Thursday to reaffirm his support for the U.S.-Korea alliance, Abe and Trump held a 20-minute phone conversation and agreed to meet on Nov. 17.

Heading home from a weeklong visit to the U.S., Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stopped off Saturday morning for a nostalgic tour of USC, where he was a student in the 1970s. The brief visit to USC was Abe’s final event in the United States before he headed to Los Angeles International Airport, after a week of diplomacy and economic discussions.

In foreign policy today—especially the open-sourced, open-marketed version we now know as modern public diplomacy, small is beautiful, nimble is necessary, and bold can be risky. The Abe Doctrine combines two slogans (a) Beautiful Japan with (b) Bold Japan.

The Japanese government announced last week that it would provide aid for the first time to foreign militaries through its Official Development Assistance (ODA) program. The move is part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s aggressive diplomatic efforts to build Japanese influence and ties, particularly in Asia, on all levels, including military.

This lavishly funded PR program more than triples the strategic communications budget over last year’s ¥20 billion, essentially an admission that Japan has been losing the international war of words — and thus global support for its positions — during Abe’s tenure. Given that Seoul and Beijing have been playing hardball in getting their sides of the story out, Tokyo is responding in kind.

Japan is stepping up a campaign to promote a “correct understanding” of its wartime past, in a move that may anger China and South Korea ahead of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in August.