Japan’s Indo-Pacific leadership aspirations

As a major regional power and key US ally, Japan has a special role in influencing security and economic outcomes in the Indo-Pacific region. To begin with, Japan’s position relies on Tokyo’s alliance with Washington, which stations 50,000 soldiers on Japanese territory and provides the archipelago with extended nuclear deterrence. The United States is also Japan’s second-largest trade partner and a partner in democratic values. Japan’s ability to promote a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ depends on the growth and adaptation of this alliance, as well as on cooperation with other partners.  

The biggest challenge in this regard is China’s revisionist role in East Asia — covering Taiwan, the South and East China Seas, technology competition, predatory economics and military modernisation. North Korea and Russia (especially given its strategic partnership with China) also pose security risks, while destabilisation from climate change looms on the horizon. 

To meet these challenges, Japan must strengthen its US alliance in the short/medium term, which requires alliance management and investing more in defence capabilities, high-technology security, supply-chain resilience and cybersecurity. These investments should be made with an eye to military compatibility with the United States and regional economic statecraft. Tokyo must also consider other difficulties such as demographic decline and sustainable energy transition.

The natural extension of the US–Japan alliance is the re-establishment of US–Japan–South Korea trilateral cooperation. Washington, which operates a comprehensive alliance with Seoul, has prioritised developing trilateral ties as a basis for maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific. 

The Biden administration organised a trilateral meeting on the margins of the June NATO Summit to which both South Korea and Japan were invited as ‘global partners’. This collaboration could address issues such as economic and technological security, supply-chain resilience, climate change, global health, non-proliferation, and maritime security and freedom of navigation. A more ambitious move could involve opportunities for tripartite ballistic missile defence cooperation and coordinated preparation for helping defend Taiwan. 

Both Tokyo and Seoul, under South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, acknowledge the need to develop forward-looking bilateral ties to improve trilateral relations with Washington. Yet historical animosity and domestic political hurdles persist. Preparations for upper house elections in July limited the policy space available to the Fumio Kishida government to ease rapprochement with Seoul. Now bolstered by election victory, Kishida would be well served to extend an olive branch to Yoon.

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