Robert Ward
Greater agency for Japan in the US–Japan alliance
Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio’s state visit to the United States between 8 and 14 April was historic. Not only did Kishida address a joint session of the US Congress, becoming only the second Japanese prime minister to do so since Abe Shinzo’s address in 2015, but the visit also included the first trilateral leaders’ summit between Japan, the Philippines and the US and a US–Japan joint statement that in effect recalibrated the now more than 70-years-old bilateral security alliance. Kishida’s visit said much about how significantly Japan has itself changed in recent years in terms of its strategic posture, and it also highlighted Japan’s rapidly rising importance to the US, not only in the Indo-Pacific but also beyond.
The US–Japan Joint Leaders’ Statement is notably long, at over 5,000 words. This compares with just over 2,000 words for the statement issued after the summit between US President Joe Biden and prime minister Suga Yoshihide in April 2021, which was also the first held with a foreign leader in Biden’s presidency. This reflects not only the breadth of areas in which the US and Japan are now cooperating, from defence to economic security, but also an important shift of emphasis towards the practical implementation of functional changes to the relationship. One example of this is the bilateral ‘upgrade’ to ‘respective command and control networks’ to improve interoperability and to strengthen the alliance’s deterrence and response capabilities.
Relatedly, the joint statement underscores the increasing role played by Japan in the alliance in terms of its defence capabilities broadly, as well as in new domains such as space. This trend is not new. One can trace attempts to secure a greater role for Japan in the alliance back to prime minister Nakasone Yasuhiro’s push for ‘autonomous defence’ (jishu bōei ron) in the 1980s. But it was the upgrading of the Guidelines for US–Japan Defence Cooperation in 2015, which was enabled by prime minister Abe Shinzo’s reforms early in his 2012–20 administration, that accelerated the move to greater Japanese agency in the relationship. The joint statement speaks of ‘synchronising strategies’ between the US and Japan. This would not be possible without Japan being able to play a larger role in the relationship.
The alliance’s increasingly global reach
While the 2021 Biden–Suga statement refers to a ‘global partnership for a new era’, it is the Biden–Kishida statement that fleshes this out. Thus, while the former geographically confines itself to the Indo-Pacific, the latter makes explicit twice how the ‘Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic regions [have] become ever more interlinked’. Russia’s illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine has made this so, not least by driving closer strategic cooperation between Russia and China as Russia seeks to thwart efforts by the US-led coalition to isolate it, as well as by forging closer security links between Russia and North Korea. This linking of the European and Asian security theatres was noted by Kishida in his 2022 keynote speech to the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, when he observed that ‘Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow’. With Russia, North Korea and China all direct or indirect neighbours of Japan, Tokyo feels particularly exposed to cooperation between the three countries.
Reflecting the need to amplify the global nature of the bilateral partnership, the joint statement also has a strong focus on cooperation with ‘like-minded partners’ across the region. The US–Japan–Philippines trilateral summit was particularly important in this regard. Like Japan with the Senkaku islands (called the Daioyu islands in China), which Japan controls and China claims, the Philippines also has a dispute with China over Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Furthermore, Japan and the Philippines sit on either side of Taiwan and form key portions of the United States’ defensive ‘first island chain’. Concerns about China’s coercive behaviour in the region have been the proximate trigger for the Philippines’ desire for closer strategic relations with the US and Japan since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr took office in mid-2022.
Defence links between Japan and the Philippines, which is also a security-treaty ally of the US, are already strong. A likely Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) between Japan and the Philippines would increase operational efficiency between the two countries’ armed forces, supplementing Manila’s existing Visiting Forces Agreements (VFAs) with the US and Australia, as well as Japan’s existing RAAs with the United Kingdom and Australia. The importance of the trilateral grouping to the US and Japan was, however, also evident in the ambition outlined in the three leaders’ Joint Vision Statement to broaden engagement with the Philippines to include economic development and economic security. Furthermore, the Philippines is slated to receive grant aid from Japan’s newly established Official Security Assistance programme.
‘You are not alone. We are with you.’
Kishida’s speech to Congress highlighted how both Japan and the global geopolitical landscape have changed since Abe’s speech in 2015. While Abe’s speech focused on the change in the bilateral relationship since the end of the Second World War from ‘late enemy’ to ‘present friend’ and on Japan’s ‘new self identity’, Kishida’s was made amid a bleaker global geopolitical backdrop and revealed Japan’s concerns about future US global commitment. His exhortation to the US to overcome the ‘undercurrent of self-doubt … about what [America’s] role in the world should be’ was striking, as was the speech’s pivot point just over half-way through of ‘[y]ou are not alone. We are with you.’ With one eye on growing US isolationism and a possible return of an ‘America First’ administration should Donald Trump return to the White House in 2025, Kishida’s speech also focused on Japan’s contribution to the US economy, citing the approximately US$800 billion that Japanese companies have invested in the US and the one million ‘American jobs’ that have been created as a result.
Notwithstanding his current domestic political travails, Kishida’s April visit to the US highlights how he has been able to build on the activist foreign-policy legacy bequeathed to him by Abe’s second administration. Importantly, Kishida has implemented reforms to give Japan’s foreign policy a stronger security base. Given the deterioration in Japan’s strategic environment, which the 2022 National Security Strategy notes is ‘as severe and complex as it has ever been since the end of World War II’, Japan’s desire to boost its defence capabilities is now a vital support to the United States’ own efforts to support the international rules-based order. Indeed, this reinforcement and expansion of Japan’s security capabilities under his watch is already likely to form the largest element of Kishida’s own legacy as prime minister. This is quite something for a politician long seen as one of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s leading doves.
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