Asia’s Future at a Crossroads: A Japanese Strategy for Peace and Sustainable Prosperity

U.S.-Japan Relations Associate Professor Mike Mochizuki and Professorial Lecturer Kuniko Ashizawa published a report entitled Asia’s Future at a Crossroads: A Japanese Strategy for Peace and Sustainable Prosperity. It is now available in English and Japanese.

Executive Summary

As the strategic competition and confrontation between the United States and China intensifies and the future of the international order in Asia has become uncertain, Japan confronts the task of refashioning its diplomatic and security strategy. In December 2022, the Japanese government adopted a new “National Security Strategy” for the first time in a decade. Although it does not ignore the need for diplomatic dialogue and cooperation, what stands out is the strong emphasis on power politics (including military capabilities) and geopolitics as well as economic security. In response, the new strategy stresses the centrality of Japan’s self-defense capabilities and the U.S.-Japan alliance. However, there exists a significant disparity between the paradigm presented in the new “National Security Strategy” and Japan’s own capabilities. Consequently, the U.S.-Japan alliance is deemed essential to fill this gap; and in that sense, there is an element of logical consistency in the new strategy. Accordingly, strengthening the U.S.-Japan alliance ends up being the strategy’s a priori premise and its absolutely indispensable prescription. What underlies the discussion and recommendations in this report is our serious concern that the new paradigm will leave Asia entangled and divided in the future.

Japan’s long-held emphasis on a multifaceted and multilayered approach to Asia policy continues to be a constructive way to address the new regional and international challenges that have emerged. The transnational challenges that have become particularly prominent in recent years have acutely demonstrated the need for an unprecedented level of international cooperation. Nevertheless, recent foreign policy discourse around the world has tended to focus more on great power competition than on interstate cooperation. In this context, Japan should maintain and promote security cooperation with the United States; but at the same time, it should also exercise leadership to help mitigate the competition between the U.S. and China in Asia through constructive diplomacy, thereby reducing the danger of great power war in the region. Without this, there can be no solution to transnational problems and no progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Such efforts and practices are consistent with the concept of “middle power diplomacy,” which aims toward a more autonomous foreign policy that is close to but not solely dependent on the United States.