Jeffrey W. Hornung
Alliances are a bit like families: you may not have a favorite member, but there is always one you depend on most. Throughout the Cold War, NATO was the collective ally that the United States depended on most in its global effort to stop Soviet expansionism. But in the twenty-first century, with the growing slate of traditional and nontraditional security issues, many of which center on China, the United States’ new go-to ally is Japan.
Today, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will arrive at the White House for a state visit with U.S. President Joe Biden—the first such visit by a Japanese leader since 2015. The relationship has changed over the past decade but in ways that most Japan analysts could not have envisioned. Japan is now committed to spending close to two percent of its GDP on defense. This increase in funding is helping the country beef up its cybersecurity and acquire counterstrike capabilities to respond to enemy attacks. Japan has authorized the transfer of Patriot missiles to the United States and the export of advanced fighter jets abroad, and it is focusing on areas of national security that the country has long neglected. Altogether, these efforts demonstrate Japan’s determination to do more for its own defense and for the U.S.-Japanese alliance.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-Japanese relationship continues to change and deepen, including by expanding outside Northeast Asia—for example, aligning the foreign policy strategies of the United States and Japan to not just support a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” but to support what both countries now call a free and open international order based on the rule of law. The Biden administration should build on this momentum by elevating the alliance to an even more central status in U.S. strategy. Unlike in Europe, where the United States is one country in the multinational NATO alliance, U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific are separate, bilateral partnerships. Historically, this has been referred to as a hub-and-spoke system, in which the United States is the hub to each of its five treaty alliances (Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand), but those alliances, in turn, do not interact.
This structure no longer reflects reality and is a suboptimal way to deal with today’s security landscape. Given the central role Japan plays in U.S. thinking, Washington should seek out new methods of not just cooperating with Japan but leveraging its centrality to U.S. strategy to help promote the security and stability of the greater Indo-Pacific region. It is time to make the U.S.-Japanese alliance the hub of a growing confederation of regional groupings.
FROM PACIFICSM TO POWER
Just ten years ago, there was still an active debate over Japan’s strategic significance. Its economy was struggling, and its defense budget was limited. But developments over the past decade have laid these concerns to rest. After the United States abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal negotiated under President Barack Obama, Japan took the lead on the successor agreement, called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Tokyo has also promoted the rules and norms underpinning the international order through its Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy, which other countries—including the United States—later adopted as their own. In these ways, Japan has not only picked a side in the geopolitical competition unfolding between China and the United States; it has put itself front and center.
Japan also started spending more on its own defense and focusing on areas it had ignored, such as munitions stockpiles, long-range missiles, and active cyberdefense. It also began to exercise with militaries other than the United States’ and transfer military equipment abroad. In addition to signing bilateral security agreements with Australia and the United Kingdom—which enable these countries to conduct military exercises on each other’s soil—Japan also exported an advanced radar system to the Philippines and relaxed its defense export rules to allow the stealth fighter jet it is developing with the United Kingdom and Italy to be sold to other countries. Japanese leaders now talk more publicly about security issues far outside their own region, including Ukraine, but they also talk openly about possible roles Japan could play in a conflict brought about by a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
This Japan, one much more willing to involve itself in security affairs beyond its own defense, is exactly the kind of ally the United States needs in this moment of geopolitical competition. That reality is reflected in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy, released in 2022, which says that the United States “will support and empower allies and partners as they take on regional leadership roles themselves.”
THE SPOKES
The United States says it is focusing on “three pillars” in its alliance with Japan. First, it plans to modernize the alliance’s roles, missions, and capabilities by working with Japan to acquire the most modern equipment possible and train alongside U.S. forces to ensure greater interoperability. Second, it will optimize U.S. force posture in the region as each military service implements changes based on new operational concepts it has been developing. Third, it will emphasize multilateral networking in the region. It is that last item that arguably needs the most attention from Washington.
There is nothing equivalent to NATO in the Indo-Pacific, but the United States has successfully established several “mini-lateral” agreements in the region that are rooted in U.S. treaty alliances and a shared concern about China. None of these deals are collective security agreements like NATO’s North Atlantic Treaty; instead, they include diplomatic groupings such as the Quad (composed of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) and technological partnerships such as AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). There are also economic arrangements such as the Chip 4 semiconductor grouping, which links Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Washington and Tokyo together also belong to trilateral groups with Australia, the Philippines, and South Korea, respectively, as the third party. The benefit of these groupings is their agility and adaptability, which allow like-minded countries to address a specific issue quickly if needed.
Japan is central to all these relationships in ways that other Indo-Pacific countries are not. For example, Japan is the only country that can boast economic prowess on a global scale, various degrees of defense ties with all other U.S. mini-lateral partners, widespread diplomatic influence, and advanced capabilities for all three services of the Self-Defense Forces (Ground, Maritime, and Air) that are now enjoying increased funding. And as Kishida’s visit to Washington shows, although Japan is not a formal member of AUKUS, it is now poised to take part in the second pillar of the agreement, which focuses on advanced capability development, by promising closer ties with Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States on developing an array of advanced capabilities and sharing technology. Japan is also one of NATO’s “partners across the globe,” which means it participates in the alliance’s discussions of mutual security concerns and cooperates in numerous security areas, such as arms control, maritime security, and space. No other U.S. Indo-Pacific ally plays such a key role in so many groupings of allies.
REINVENT THE WHEEL
It makes sense that the next evolutionary step in U.S. strategy should be to formalize this central role that Japan plays in the broader U.S. global network of like-minded partners. In lieu of an Asian NATO, networking existing mini-lateral relationships built around the U.S.-Japanese alliance offers a possible way forward. In other words, the U.S.-Japanese alliance should be the hub, and the rest of the Indo-Pacific countries and their many mini-laterals should be the spokes.
The U.S.-Japanese alliance hub could provide a focal point to discuss current security challenges—such as China, North Korea, and Russia—with U.S. allies and partners to help coordinate policies to deal with these actors, both in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Although the growing patchwork of mini-laterals is convenient for the United States, it does not lend itself to coordination. To avoid disjointed approaches that could result in fragmented action or diluted outcomes, the United States should encourage other allies toward greater alignment in their regional strategies through reinforcing the main pillars of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific. And to avoid duplication and inefficiency in their security and development assistance programs, like-minded countries should coordinate more fully with the United States and Japan to make the most of their collective efforts.
Members in this network of relationships can also do a better job of sharing information to boost everyone’s situational awareness. The United States and Japan are the only two allies capable of providing regular regional reach with their defense capabilities without detriment to their own national defenses. But other allies could share relevant information from their intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets with the U.S.-Japanese alliance to ensure greater situational awareness among the collective whole. Improved coordination can also help partners address concerns in emerging domains such as space and cyberspace. The U.S.-Japanese efforts in these domains are already advanced and therefore provide a good road map for other allies. Over the long term, the United States and Japan could also work to weave today’s separate trilateral military exercises into bigger multinational exercises.
This new “super grouping” should not jump into collective security arrangements or form a NATO-like defense pact. And other countries wouldn’t need to subordinate their independent foreign policy strategies or bilateral alliance relationships to the U.S.-Japanese alliance hub. A confederated approach would complement bilateral alliances, not replace them. The goal of this new alignment would be to better rationalize and align strategies to collectively cope with the challenges brought on by state and nonstate actors. Someday, there could be a joint security declaration, an agreement among like-minded partners that defines, in a nonbinding manner, broad areas of common interests and cooperation. But there are too many political and diplomatic issues that would have to be resolved to get to that step.
Many describe NATO as the United States’ indispensable alliance—and it remains a top priority. But given the geopolitical shift to the Indo-Pacific, it is time to make the U.S.-Japanese alliance far more central to American grand strategy.
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