As it prepares to host a high-stakes G-7 summit next week, Japan’s expanding role as a strategic hub — both across East Asia and in the growing links between the Atlantic and Pacific — is coming into ever sharper focus
Japanese media reported this week that the missile defense radar networks of Japan and South Korea are to be interlinked via the United States. The connection signals the emergence of tangible, U.S.-sponsored trilateral defense cooperation bloc off China’s eastern flank.
Separately, Tokyo’s foreign minister revealed this week that NATO is discussing the establishment of a new liaison office in Japan, a tightening of ties between the Western military alliance and Europe and the budding East Asian defensive coalition.
Both moves are likely to generate high-fives in the Pentagon. Not only do they signal that the push to build an effective partnership between the often-squabbling East Asian democracies is bearing fruit, they also mark new milestones in Japan’s incremental but unmistakable evolution from a pacifist nation to an active security partner with Washington.
In 2015, Tokyo amended its post-World War II constitution to expand the role for its military and allow for the defense of allies. Since 2018, Japan has been mobilizing expeditionary assets beyond its borders, notably with marine brigades and F-35 aircraft carriers. In 2022, it announced the acquisition of long-range cruise missiles and plans to double the defense budget by 2027.
Japan has not acted in a vacuum. The arguments of Tokyo hawks have been empowered by the actions of potential adversaries: China’s ongoing arms buildup, North Korea’s ever-expanding arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles, and Russia’s status quo-shattering invasion of Ukraine.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hosts President Biden and the leaders of the other G-7 industrial democracies for three days starting May 19 in his constituency, Hiroshima. That city was obliterated by U.S. atomic strike in 1945, but the anti-nuclear message that G-7 leaders hope to project now is aimed squarely at Moscow
“While Russia implied the use of nuclear weapons in its aggression against Ukraine, the 77 years of history since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during which time no nuclear weapons have been used, must not be ignored,” Mr. Kishida wrote on the Japanese Foreign Ministry website.
Thin red line of radars
In a widely noticed article earlier this month, Tokyo’s Yomiuri newspaper reported that Japan, South Korea and the U.S. are to link their missile-defense radar networks via Hawaii’s Indo-Pacific Command, allowing real-time data sharing on such threats as North Korean ballistic missile tests.
Seoul’s Defense Ministry spokesman Jeon Ha-gyu told reporters only that discussions are “ongoing,” but there are already reports that the plan could be agreed to by June.
South Korea and Japan have a long, fraught political, cultural and diplomatic relationship. No alliance unites Seoul and Tokyo, forcing Washington to step in. The proposed trilateral linkage would eliminate blind spots in radar coverage, as well as the time lag in transferring and sharing data.
The coordinated radar cordon, while ostensibly aimed at North Korea, looks likely to unsettle China, which reacted furiously to the 2017 deployment of a U.S. THAAD anti-missile battery in South Korea as a threat to Beijing’s own nuclear deterrence capability.
That year, then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in floated the “Three Nos” to Chinese President Xi Jinping in an effort to calm the diplomatic waters: no more THAAD; no signing up with a U.S.-led missile defense system; and no joining of a trilateral alliance with Japan.
The formality of the “Three Nos” remains unclear, but last year, Beijing warned Seoul that it expects the Moon pledges to be honored. Conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, who succeeded Mr. Moon in 2022, apparently does not feel bound by his predecessor’s offer.
The development is the fruit of warming ties between Seoul and Tokyo, largely pushed by Mr. Yoon. The South Korean president visited Tokyo last month, and Mr. Kishida came to Seoul earlier this month.
Tokyo and Brussels
On another front, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi confirmed in a May 10 interview with CNN that Tokyo’s plans to invite NATO to open the organization’s first Asian office, saying discussions are underway but the details have not been fully worked out.
Said Mr. Hayashi, “The reason why we are discussing this is that since the aggression by Russia to Ukraine, the world [has] become more unstable.”
According to Japanese media, the liaison office was first discussed between Mr. Kishida and NATO Secretary General Jans Stoltenberg during the latter’s Asia tour in January. Japan also plans to open a mission to NATO, led by an official at the ambassador level.
European and East Asian security ties already extend to joint cyber-security, but Russia’s Ukraine invasion has had diplomatic and military reverberations that are being felt in both theaters.
NATO invited Japan and South Korea, along with Australia and New Zealand, to attend its Madrid conference last year. Japan and Korea, due to their defense treaties with the U.S. and the presence of thousands of American troops based in their territory, already use many U.S.- and NATO-standard systems.
That enables NATO forces to work smoothly with Japanese and South Korean counterparts. Small contingents of British troops, including marine commandos and paratroops, have already drilled with Japanese and South Korean forces this year.
Crucially, the increasing interoperability also allows the two Asian manufacturing powerhouses to sell arms and equipment to the armed forces of NATO members.
South Korea last year announced a major arms sale to Poland, worth as much as $18 billion, that includes combat aircraft, fleets of tanks and self-propelled and rocket artillery. Seoul is also sending a reported 500,000 155mm artillery shells to the Pentagon.
As Tokyo ramps up its defense sector, Japan’s Mitsubishi has entered a commercial alliance with NATO members Italy and Britain to jointly design and build next-generation stealth fighters by 2035. The three have agreed to merge their separate stealth-fighter programs into one.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.