James L. Schoff has been Senior Director at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA since 2021. He leads the U.S.-Japan NEXT Alliance Initiative, a forum for research and dialogue that seeks to help improve the alliance and how it serves shared interests, preparing it for new challenges.
Previously, Jim was a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Asia Program for 9 years, where his research focused on U.S.-Japan relations and regional engagement, Japanese politics and security, and the private sector’s role in Japanese policymaking. Before then he served as senior adviser for East Asia policy at the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense and prior to that as director of Asia Pacific Studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA).
At the Department of Defense, Schoff was responsible for strategic planning and policy development for relations with Japan and the Republic of Korea. He also spearheaded trilateral initiatives and regional security cooperation issues, including North Korea and missile defense, disaster relief, and maritime security.
From 2003 to 2010, Schoff directed Asia Pacific Studies at IFPA in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he specialized in East Asian security issues, U.S. alliance relations in the region, and nuclear nonproliferation and extended deterrence. Prior to joining IFPA, he served as program officer in charge of policy studies at the United States-Japan Foundation in New York, following six years living in Japan and other parts of Asia working in the fields of business, education, and journalism.
Schoff has written extensively on East Asian security and foreign policy issues. His publications include: “Updating Alliance Strategies to Sustain Nuclear Deterrence,” (Sasakawa USA, 2025), “Allied on AI Assurance: Technology to Enhance AI Safety and Security,” (Sasakawa USA, 2024), Uncommon Alliance for the Common Good: The United States and Japan after the Cold War (Carnegie, 2017), a chapter in Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age; Power, Ambition, and the Ultimate Weapon (Georgetown University Press, 2012), and Tools for Trilateralism: Improving U.S.-Japan-Korea Cooperation to Manage Complex Contingencies (Potomac Books Inc., 2005).