April 5, 2024

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IntelBrief: As Regional Challenges Mount, Japan Strengthens Partnerships and Alliances

AP Photo/Mari Yamaguchi

Next week, U.S. President Joe Biden will host Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington to discuss the two countries’ decades-old alliance. It will be the first time the U.S. has hosted a Japanese prime minister as a state guest since Shinzo Abe visited in 2015. During the visit, the two are expected to formalize plans to restructure the U.S. military command in Japan to strengthen operational coordination and interoperability between the allies. The anticipated changes have been some time in the making, as U.S. and Japanese defense officials have met dozens of times over the past several months. In preparation for the leaders’ meeting, the head of Japan’s National Security Council, Takeo Akiba, met with his U.S. counterpart Jake Sullivan and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin last week, signaling the possibility of a major upgrade to the alliance.

Spurred on by China’s increasing assertiveness in the region, Japan has sought to establish itself as a leader in Pacific security. Accordingly, the U.S. and Japan have ramped up security cooperation over the course of the last decade. Japan hosts roughly 55,000 U.S. servicemembers and now regularly participates in joint readiness exercises alongside U.S. forces, both in Japan and around the Indo-Pacific. Despite Japan’s growing importance as a key security partner, the U.S. military command there, U.S. Forces Japan (USFJ), is granted only limited operational authority – reflective of an era when the U.S.-Japan alliance was little more than an afterthought in Washington. Correcting this has been a long-term priority for Tokyo and its defense establishment, where there is understandable frustration over the burdensome requirement to coordinate operations with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) based 19 time zones away in Hawaii. To mitigate this operational friction, the U.S. military may either grant USFJ the support structures and authorities it would need to respond to a crisis or establish a separate joint task force to handle such contingency scenarios. Though the restructuring will stop short of establishing a joint military command akin to the one shared between the U.S. and South Korea, it will significantly improve integration and wartime preparedness.

China’s rapid military modernization and increasingly frequent provocations over disputed territories have convinced Japanese policymakers to break with decades of pacifist tradition and begin bolstering their defense capacity. The precedent set by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine deepened concerns in Tokyo over potential Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait and around the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, a territory claimed by both Japan and China. Just last month, U.S. INDOPACOM commander, Admiral John Aquilino, echoed these concerns when he said the U.S. believed the Chinese military is planning to be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027.

Navigating strict constitutional constraints, Japanese officials have taken previously unthinkable steps in recent years to prepare for such a regional crisis. Most recently, authorities announced plans to establish a much-needed overarching joint command to coordinate the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ (JSDF) air, ground, and naval components. In a series of national defense and security policy documents released in late 2022, Japan announced plans to double its defense spending from one percent to two percent of GDP by 2027. The strategy documents also emphasized the need to develop an effective counterstrike capability to defend against missile attacks. Japanese sailors have already begun training on U.S.-made Tomahawk missile systems. Perhaps as a hedge against overreliance on U.S. support, Japan plans to co-develop a sixth-generation stealth fighter with the U.K. and Italy by 2035. These changes and recent decisions to loosen restrictions on arms exports have stirred considerable debate in Tokyo about Japan’s role as a pacifist country. The Kishida administration, acting with a real sense of urgency to address defense shortfalls, has argued that Japan’s geography, particularly its proximity to North Korea, Russia, and China, necessitates the changes.

In addition to bolstering defense capabilities, Prime Minister Kishida has pursued a strategy of regional engagement to reinforce Japan’s security. Japan’s Minister of Defense Minoru Kihara recently met with counterparts from 14 South Pacific Island countries in preparation for a leaders’ summit scheduled for July. This broad engagement in the South Pacific is a significant foreign policy shift intended to prevent Tokyo from being strategically outflanked in what U.S. strategists call the ‘Second Island Chain.’

While in Washington, Prime Minister Kishida will participate in a trilateral meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and President Biden. Since assuming office in 2022, President Marcos has sought to rehabilitate security partnerships that had eroded during former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s term. Just last month, President Marcos signed an order to strengthen his government’s ability to confront threats to peace and territorial integrity in the South China Sea. Although the document did not explicitly name China, confrontations between Chinese and Philippine vessels are common in the area. The leaders’ meeting will provide an opportunity to coordinate approaches to regional security and reaffirm bilateral security agreements with the U.S.

Perhaps the most significant diplomatic shift to result from Japan’s increasingly proactive foreign policy has been the rapprochement between Japan and South Korea. Disagreements over Japan’s colonial history in Korea have strained relations between the countries for decades. Yet, in recent years, Tokyo and Seoul, both U.S. allies, have found common ground on a host of regional security initiatives. U.S. officials have sought to encourage closer cooperation between the two. Last August, the three leaders attended an unprecedented trilateral summit at Camp David. The meeting culminated in a joint statement in which the leaders agreed to increase senior-level exchanges on diplomatic, economic, and security issues and deepen their defense relationships in several areas, including information sharing, joint military exercises, and protection of emerging technologies. There appears to be a sincere desire to make good on these commitments, as officials from the three countries have held dozens of planning and coordination meetings since August. This flurry of activity occurs as all three countries serve on the UN Security Council (UNSC), offering a rare window of opportunity for agenda-setting on North Korea and cooperation beyond the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. is a permanent member of the UNSC, and Japan and South Korea will each serve a term as a non-permanent member until the end of 2024 and 2025, respectively.

Though the three leaders will hold a second meeting coinciding with the NATO summit in Washington D.C. this July, the long-term viability of trilateral relations could be jeopardized by domestic politics. All three countries have major elections scheduled for this year, and both the U.S. and Japan may have new national leadership by the end of the year. Prime Minister Kishida, whose party has had to weather several scandals since he took office, is losing popular support due to frustrations over his domestic policy. Rapprochement with Seoul has been a personal priority for Prime Minister Kishida and a change in leadership could derail the efforts to mend the relationship. If President Biden cannot win reelection, there are credible concerns his successor will allow for, and perhaps more likely instigate, the erosion of U.S. security partnerships in the region.