By Eric Vandenbroeck
and co-workers
The Presence Of Kishida In Kyiv
And Xi In Moscow
As much of the world was
focused on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s high-profile visit to Moscow last
month, it was lost to many observers that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida
was in Kyiv at the same time on an equally consequential visit. Making an
unannounced trip to see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Kishida offered
Japan’s solid support.
Three themes
immediately stood out from the simultaneous presence of Xi in Moscow and
Kishida in Kyiv. First, it pointed to East Asia’s active and growing role in
shaping European security, perhaps for the first time since the medieval Mongol
invasions. If China joins Iran in more actively supporting Russia in Ukraine,
it would have profound implications for thecourse of
the war—and the map of Eastern Europe. South Korea has emerged as a major
weapons supplier to Poland, which is transforming into NATO’s most important
military frontline state. The presence of the so-called AP4 (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea)
at NATO meetings is becoming routine.
Second, Kishida
underlined that China’s view of the war in Ukraine is not necessarily the view
in the rest of Asia.
And third, the
parallel visits exposed the hollowness of Xi’s claims to be a neutral
peacemaker in Ukraine. Even as some European leaders, like French President
Emmanuel Macron, have hailed Xi as Europe’s savior who can mediate an end to Russia’s war,
Kishida’s meeting with Zelensky served to highlight the one-sided nature of
Beijing’s so-called peace initiative in Ukraine.
Traveling to Ukraine
seems to have given a bounce to Kishida’s
sagging ratings at
home, but it also underlines the definitive break from decades of Japanese
passivity on the world stage. Although it was perhaps coincidental that Kishida
found himself in Kyiv at the same moment that Xi was in Moscow, his trip to
Ukraine illustrated Japan’s emergence as a geopolitical actor to be reckoned
with.
To be sure, the
remaking of Japan as a key power in the security sphere began under the late
Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister who undertook the onerous task of getting
Japan to rethink its role in Asia and the world and shake off the political
shackles of the past. Abe made much progress on revamping Japan’s national
security policies during his two tenures as prime minister, from 2006 to 2007
and from 2012 to 2020.
But few expected
Kishida to build on Abe’s strategic legacy. Abe’s shoes were big to fill, and
Kishida was widely viewed as weak. The Ukraine crisis, however, offered a huge
opportunity that Kishida seized
with both hands to radically reorient Japan. If Abe had to struggle to get his
ideas accepted bythe political class, Russia’s attack
on Ukraine has heightened popular awareness of the fundamental changes in Japan’s
security environment. That a major power armed with nuclear weapons could
invade a neighbor with impunity, seeking to unilaterally change borders by
force, shook Japan to the core. Kishida’s plans to double defense expenditure over the next five
years; modernize the military to better deter North Korea,
Russia, and China; and take on a larger regional
security role have
thus found less resistance.
Long viewed as
passive and pacifist, Japanese foreign policy seemed to produce few strategic
ideas of its own. Tokyo was happy to follow Washington’s lead while
avoiding challenging Beijing. Over the last decade and a half, however, Japan
has begun to develop new geopolitical approaches, promote them, and get them
accepted by allies and partners.
None of Japan’s
foreign-policy innovations are more important than the invention of
“Indo-Pacific” as a geostrategic concept and the establishment of the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad), both of which are now integral to
Asian geopolitics. Abe first outlined both ideas in an address to the
Indian Parliament in
August 2007. It was one thing to frame new ideas in a speech—and entirely
another to get others to see their merit.
The initial international
response to both ideas
was skepticism among Japan’s friends and outright hostility from Beijing. But
Japan’s sheer persistence and a rising China’s growing assertiveness saw
Tokyo’s Quad partners—Australia, India, and the United States—come around to
accepting Abe’s ideas.
In late March,
Kishida also traveled to India to offer an
upgraded vision for the Indo-Pacific that outlined a range of ideas to strengthen the
region’s security, and he presented a more ambitious Japanese contribution to
realizing it. This includes joint military training, and cooperation on
maritime security.
A third important
innovation from Japan was to transcend the “hub and spokes” system that defined
the postwar U.S.-led security order in Asia. While Japan attaches great
significance to its bilateral alliance with the United States, it has
recognized the importance of
directly connecting the spokes. Japanese efforts to build bilateral strategic partnerships
with other countries in the region complement Tokyo’s alliance with Washington
and deepen the basis for regional security amid growing Chinese military power
and diplomatic assertiveness, with its destabilizing impact on the region. The
strongest of these new regional relationships are with Quad partners Australia
and India, but ties to South Korea and the Philippines are strengthening as
well.
A key goal of Japan’s
regional strategy is to strengthen the defense infrastructure and capabilities
of Indo-Pacific states. If the Abe administration sought to give Japan’s
substantial overseas development assistance a strategic character, Kishida is
now developing a framework for overseas
security assistance. These
new Japanese initiatives have full U.S. support, with Washington eager to see
its allies and friends become stronger by collaborating with each other and
making themselves more capable in coping with the challenge from Beijing.
Just as important as
Japan’s role in developing a new security architecture for Asia are Tokyo’s efforts
to tie Europe to the Asian security order. Similar to the way Abe’s
Indo-Pacific concept imagined the strategic unity between the Indian and
Pacific oceans, he also recognized the deep interconnection between security in
Europe and Asia.
It was nearly five
years ago that Abe was inviting Britain and France, Western Europe’s leading
military powers, to contribute to Asian security. Abe understood that
isolationist pressures on U.S. foreign policy—which became so visible during
the presidency of Donald Trump—meant that Asia couldn’t rely solely on the
United States for its future security. Abe looked beyond the region for further
partners to manage Indo-Pacific security challenges.
Since then, many
European powers, including France, Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands, have
outlined Indo-Pacific strategies. The 2022 U.S.
National Security Strategy issued
by the Biden administration also underlines the need for allies and partners in
Europe and Asia to work together.
One of Abe’s last
acts before his life was cut short by an assassin was to raise the question of
Washington’s extended deterrence in Asia and to call for a debate on
deploying U.S. nuclear weapons in the region. So far, Kishida has rejected
nuclear sharing with
the United States, and he has repeated the Japanese commitment to nuclear
disarmament and nonproliferation. But the issue of a U.S. nuclear security
commitment to Asia is unlikely to go away as China continues to modernize
and expand its nuclear arsenal.
Underlying Japan’s
new security vision is a clear recognition of the Chinese threat to Asia.
Unlike many of its European peers who were or still are unwilling to come to
terms with Russia’s or China’s aggressively revisionist ambitions, Tokyo has
not let its massive economic exposure to Beijing get in the way of dealing with
it. Proximity surely helped Tokyo perceive the problem clearly, but Japan had
to overcome the inevitable constraints presented by the dangers of sharing a
contested maritime frontier with China.
Equally significant
has been Japan’s decision to highlight the implications of Russian
aggression against Ukraine. In arguing that “Ukraine is the future of Asia,”
Kishida has pressed Japan and Asia to see the implications of a nuclear-armed
power unilaterally changing the territorial status quo.
With its increasingly
clear-eyed security policies, Japan is reminding the West—especially Europe,
which had become geopolitically complacent in the decades after the Cold
War—that coping with the challenges presented by China and Russia demands
greater discipline. This includes a much needed strategic outreach to the
global south, where Kishida has called on
other G-7 countries to
do more to address developing countries’ own concerns and priorities
instead of projecting Western policies and preaching to them about how to
run their affairs.
As it rises to become
a major geopolitical actor in Asia and the world, Japan has become the unlikely
actor persuading the West to rethink its strategic assumptions. As France’s
Macron and other European leaders struggle to come to terms with the challenges
presented by Russia and China, Japan has injected a much-needed sense of
clarity to the strategic discourse in Europe and Asia.
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