A Test for Japan, a Reversal of Fortunes on Korean Peninsula

In a region where the gravest threat is viewed as coming from China – and the other East Asian giant, South Korea – is temporarily in turmoil, Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba asserts that the lynchpin for East Asia's security is the US-Japan alliance.

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There is little doubt that Japan has shared interests with the US – a free and open Indo-Pacific and the preservation of regional stability. With the Biden administration, Japan forged a latticework of trilateral security partnerships that it would like to see maintained through a Trump presidency. But Trump's transactional, America-first approach to diplomacy and his impatience with multilateral forums might skew US foreign policy towards bilateralism.

Mr. Ishiba has an ambitious vision for a muscular defense posture anchored by a formidable Japanese military capable of countering regional threats and a network of like-minded nations.

He takes office after a long line of predecessors shored up security cooperation and shifted the country away from pacifism, a norm enshrined in Japan's Constitution since the end of World War II.

“The US derives great strategic benefits from its military facilities and areas in Japan,” he said in a landmark speech in November shortly after taking office.

The time is right, he says, to broach an update on their long-standing “asymmetrical bilateral treaty,” in which the US must defend Japan while the latter provides the use of its bases.

Mr. Ishiba is keen to restructure an existing security treaty for greater equality and burden-sharing. He may well pursue this, having suggested previously the idea of stationing Japanese self-defense forces in Guam, a strategically important Pacific island. Less likely is the revision of an agreement regarding the stationing of US forces on Japanese soil.