The revised Defense Guidelines outlining future military cooperation between Japan and the United States should be viewed as a “floor” upon which to build further bilateral defense cooperation and not as a “ceiling” preventing further, deeper cooperation. This was one of the major findings of the October 2000 Special Report on The United States and Japan: Advancing Toward a Mature Partnership produced by the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS). The so-called Armitage-Nye Report (after its two primary authors, Richard Armitage, a former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Reagan administration, and his Clinton-era counterpart Joseph Nye) calls for an expanded Japanese role in the transpacific alliance, while noting that the uncertainties of the post-Cold War regional setting require a more dynamic approach to bilateral defense planning between Washington and Tokyo.