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Article snippet: TOKYO — Few foreign leaders have courted President Trump as assiduously as the prime minister of Shinzo Abe. Since Mr. Trump’s election victory in November, Mr. Abe has been an eager guest at Trump Tower in New York and at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort, where the two men bonded in February over golf and responded to a North Korean missile test in full view of diners. Now, as Mr. Trump and the leader of nuclear weapons program, Mr. Abe’s relationship with the president is being tested. The North’s accelerating military advances — and Mr. Trump’s volatile response — could complicate Japan’s close alliance with the United States and Mr. Abe’s political future. Mr. Abe, analysts say, has sought favor with Mr. Trump for two reasons: to blunt the president’s criticism of Japan on trade issues — a recurring theme for Mr. Trump during his run for office — and to ensure the president’s commitment to Japan’s defense. During the campaign, Mr. Trump sometimes suggested he would scale back the United States’ global military commitments, a policy that would have left Japan, an American treaty ally, exposed. But now, if anything, Mr. Abe faces the opposite problem: an American president who seems overtly eager to confront their mutual adversary, North Korea. “If it looks like the U.S. set off the chain of events that led to escalation, and Abe didn’t use his relationship with Trump to moderate that, it’s easy to imagine that there would be a domestic price to pay,... Link to the full article to read more