Japan looks beyond US alliance for help to deter China military
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is looking beyond his country’s alliance with the US to deter China, bolstering security ties with democracies from Australia to Europe.
On his tour of Group of Seven countries last week, which came after the biggest overhaul of Japan’s security policy since World War II, Kishida told French President Emmanuel Macron that the security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific were indivisible. He signed a deal on mutual troop access with UK premier Rishi Sunak and agreed with Italian leader Giorgia Meloni to upgrade defence ties.
Japan’s alliance with Washington – complete with its “nuclear umbrella” – remains the cornerstone of its strategy, and US President Joe Biden endorsed the country’s more robust security strategy in a meeting with Kishida at the White House on Friday. Yet Japan’s deepening unease about the dangers in its neighbourhood has prompted a fresh push to build a bulwark of other partnerships.
Concerns linger in Japan that Biden could be succeeded by a less sympathetic US leader, said Euan Graham, a Singapore-based senior fellow for Indo-Pacific Defence and Strategy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Donald Trump, for instance, repeatedly questioned the fairness of the US-Japan alliance during his years as president.
“They can’t rely on the US entirely, both for political reasons and in simple scale terms”, Graham said. “They need extra help, and that’s where Canada and the other G-7 countries come into play”.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea’s growing missile prowess and rising tensions around Taiwan – including Chinese military exercises that involved throwing missiles into waters near Japan – have all contributed to its concerns. Last year Kishida became the first Japanese prime minister to attend a Nato summit.
On each stop of his five-country tour, Kishida explained Japan’s defence expansion and regional security worries. It culminated with a joint US-Japan statement that blamed China and North Korea for making it necessary to ramp up the nation’s military capability.
“In managing relations with China, it is absolutely necessary for Japan, the US and Europe to work together as one,” Kishida said in a speech at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on Friday.
Eagerness to get involved with a wider range of partners manifested itself in last year’s decision to work on a next-generation fighter jet with the UK and Italy, rather than with the US. Japan is set to negotiate an information-security agreement with Canada as part of a joint action plan sealed last year, which includes joint military exercises and defence exchanges.