Editor’s Note: Since 2013, Stimson’s Japan Program has been collaborating with the Embassy of Japan in Washington DC for a publication series entitled “Views from the Next Generation,” which is a collection of essays by up-and-coming Japanese policy experts on the issues that Japan sees as its national security policy priorities. Given the dramatic developments in Japan’s security policymaking, including the modernization of its key strategic documents in December 2022, the last few years of this series have shifted its focus to introducing the analyses of leading Japanese policy experts on these issues.
Between January-March 2024, Stimson recruited four prominent policy experts and asked them to shed light on the evolution of approaches to the four key issues, all of which have been identified in the 2022 National Security Strategy as Tokyo’s priorities—visition for Japan’s role in the international order, alliances and partnership, nuclear disarmament vs deterrence, and economic security. Some experts have experience as practitioners, and others have served in the Government of Japan’s advisory commission. We hope these essays shed light on the most up-to-date trends on key foreign policy issues in Japan.
By Yuki Tatsumi, Senior Fellow and Director of the Japan Program.
The international community is currently facing unprecedented challenges against the norms and values that have contributed to maintaining relative peace and prosperity since the end of World War II. The challenges it faces are many, all of which are challenging to address.
The World Faces Multiple Challenges
In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the international community dreamed of globalization which is anchored in democratic and liberal ideals shared across the globe. There was also a greater hope that international cooperation could spread and continue to deepen among the countries in support of multinational institutions.Â
However, the world today faces a very different situation, facing two major challenges. First and foremost, it has seen growing division more than solidarity. The strategic competition between the United States and China—which is based on a fundamentally different vision of international order and the governance of its own people—shapes the core of the international community, which handicaps the international community to respond to the crisis with solidarity. In addition, we are witnessing two wars—one in Ukraine and one in the Middle East–unfolding simultaneously, neither of which offers no end in sight.  These developments suggest that strong solidarity based on the agreed sets of rules, norms, and values—which we had hoped we could realize soon after the end of the Cold War—cannot be achieved.
Secondly, the value of democracy seems to be questioned across the globe. In many countries in Europe, populist political leaders who often ride on incendiary rhetoric appear to be gaining traction. Internal politics are also increasingly polarized, as has been in demonstrated in the United States. Declining confidence in democracy presents a potentially fundamental challenge against the existing international order because it can create space for the resurgence of authoritarianism. Indeed, both China and Russia are taking advantage of this trend, making their case, especially among the developing countries that their system of governance and vision of world order is a better alternative. With many elections anticipated around the world this year, voters across the globe will likely have a profound impact on the future direction of the international community.
Japan’s Position As A “Bridge” Between East and West: Abe’s Initiative and Legacy
Japan had been at the periphery of the Western international order since it entered a group of modern nations following the Meiji Restoration. This brought many problems to Japanese foreign policy for decades before World War II as it tried to navigate the foreign policy arena dominated by the Western powers. But after the end of the Second World War, Japan began to try to reconstruct Japan’s role as a bridge between Western civilization and Eastern civilization. Japan continued this bridging role even after the end of the Cold War.Â
Late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s vision–including Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific—and the efforts he has put in to achieve his vision allowed Japan to play a role as a bridge between the East and West. In this context, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been effective in positioning Japan as a major player in a group of countries that have been trying to defend the liberal international order after he returned to office in December 2012. In this effort, he placed utmost priority in encouraging the United States to maintain its role as a responsible major power in the international community. Abe tried and succeeded for the most part in maintaining a very close relationship with the United States, even during the Trump administration. Unlike many European leaders, he believed that even under President Donald Trump, the US-Japan alliance could remain strong if he invested in developing a personal relationship with Trump. He was extremely successful in doing this.
After Shinzo Abe stepped down, both of his successors–Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and the incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida— have steadily implemented the vision Abe laid out for Japan as a “rules-promoter, a commons’ guarding, and an effective ally and partner of the U.S. and other democracies”, adding their own touches along the way. Suga, for example, played a critical role in implementing Abe’s initiative to form the Quad among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, leading an effort to turn it into a framework in which the four countries cooperate to address their shared concerns in climate change, emerging technologies, cybersecurity, health security, infrastructure, and space. Similarly, the incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been active in fostering cooperation among like-minded countries since he took over the office. Indeed, it was he who, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 consistently appealed to the countries in the Indo-Pacific to stand firm in support of Ukraine because, in his words, “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow”. He also intensified his outreach to Japan’s European partners, demonstrated by his attendance at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit, emphasizing that “security of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific are inseparable” and “cooperating among like-minded countries across the region becomes increasingly important.” Through these consistent efforts by Abe and his successors, Japan has been able to maintain its role as one of the prominent defenders of the liberal international order.
Looking Ahead: Implications of the Rise of “Global South”
Today, however, Japan faces clear limits in this role as the world sees a much more divisive international community emerging. Since 2023, for example, the rise of the “Global South”, although its definition is yet to be clearly defined, is becoming more apparent. India has been playing a leading role in galvanizing the Global South countries’ voices on the international stage. The rise of the “Global South” is also obvious from the size of the economy: at the end of the Cold War, G7 countries occupied approximately 67 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP); today’s G7, in contrast, occupies only 40 percent of the global GDP. These figures point to the geopolitical reality that G7 countries can no longer monopolize the role of setting values and norms in the international community.
Japan, leveraging its role as the chair of the G7 in 2023, tries to bridge G7 with the G20. For example, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has argued that industrial liberal democracies, symbolized by the G7, cannot run the world alone. Kishida has also actively engaged Global South countries, including visiting many of them in Africa and in Latin America to deepen Japan’s bilateral and regional ties with them. Building upon Japan’s decades-long history of engaging Africa through efforts such as the convener of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), Japan finds these efforts critical. This is because, without the support of Global South, the international community cannot maintain its support for Ukraine’s effort to defend its own country and democratic form of government. Japan tries to play an important role in connecting the Western-style liberal democracies with the countries in the Global South by sustaining its efforts to invite the Global South to the liberal democratic camp. Moving forward, the biggest challenge to Japan as a leading defender of the existing rules-based international order would be to make the world better understand the transformation of the liberal international order that is underway. Simply put, the liberal international order needs to evolve to adapt to the changing reality of the international community.
As discussed above, for example, the world is seeing the rapid rise of the Global South and its increasing presence in the international community while the traditional rule-setters such as G7 are becoming less influential. This suggests that the norms and values of the international community are also evolving, which makes it imperative that the voices of the Global South, or the broader non-Western world, are heeded and understood. This will require the industrialized liberal democratic countries to engage more vigorously with the Global South.
However, this is happening at a time when many of the liberal democratic countries are becoming much more inward-looking, losing their interest in external events, including the Russia-Ukraine War. As a result, the gap between the liberal democratic countries and the Global South seems to continue to widen. If democratic principles are to prevail as the foundation of international order, the West need to appreciate the growing importance of the Global South, be aware of the fact that the western countries can no longer monopolize justice and power in the international community. Most importantly, the concept of a liberal international order needs to evolve to be inclusive of the Global South. When Abe launched the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) 1.0 by discussing the geostrategic importance of “the confluence of the two Seas” during his first tenure as prime minister between 2006-2007, he focused on the importance of collaboration among leading democracies in the Indo-Pacific region. This eventually led to the formation of “the Quad” among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States.  When Abe returned to the office in December 2012, his strategic focus intensified Japan’s engagement with Southeast Asia which is located between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as support of the ASEAN to continue was essential in Japan’s role as the defender of Free and Open Indo-Pacific. As such, it has become important for Japan to present a much more inclusive vision for FOIP, due to ASEAN’s hesitation to alienate China from its own regional vision as is indicated in its own Indo-Pacific vision, namely the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP). In this process, Japan initially attempted to present a much more inclusive regional vision, FOIP 2.0. However, Tokyo came to realize it was increasingly more difficult to continue such an effort in the face of intensifying strategic competition between the United States and China.
What Japan has been attempting to do so far is to promote the understanding of the evolution of the liberal international order which can be transformative. To this end, Japan should consider launching an initiative like “FOIP 3.0” as an initiative to attract countries in the Global South which can share values and norms with liberal democracies. If Japan is successful, it will be able to maintain its position as a shaper of the international order.
Japan as a Member of the Defenders of the Liberal International Order
By Yuichi Hosoya • Yuki Tatsumi Co-Editor • Chelsea Wells Co-Editor
Japan
Late former prime minister Shinzo Abe revitalized Japan’s effort to play the role of a “bridge” between the East and West. Given the increasing importance of Global South in international community, Japan should consider launching an initiative like “FOIP 3.0” as an initiative to attract countries in the Global South which can share values and norms with liberal democracies.
Editor’s Note: Since 2013, Stimson’s Japan Program has been collaborating with the Embassy of Japan in Washington DC for a publication series entitled “Views from the Next Generation,” which is a collection of essays by up-and-coming Japanese policy experts on the issues that Japan sees as its national security policy priorities. Given the dramatic developments in Japan’s security policymaking, including the modernization of its key strategic documents in December 2022, the last few years of this series have shifted its focus to introducing the analyses of leading Japanese policy experts on these issues.
Between January-March 2024, Stimson recruited four prominent policy experts and asked them to shed light on the evolution of approaches to the four key issues, all of which have been identified in the 2022 National Security Strategy as Tokyo’s priorities—visition for Japan’s role in the international order, alliances and partnership, nuclear disarmament vs deterrence, and economic security. Some experts have experience as practitioners, and others have served in the Government of Japan’s advisory commission. We hope these essays shed light on the most up-to-date trends on key foreign policy issues in Japan.
By Yuki Tatsumi, Senior Fellow and Director of the Japan Program.
The international community is currently facing unprecedented challenges against the norms and values that have contributed to maintaining relative peace and prosperity since the end of World War II. The challenges it faces are many, all of which are challenging to address.
The World Faces Multiple Challenges
In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the international community dreamed of globalization which is anchored in democratic and liberal ideals shared across the globe. There was also a greater hope that international cooperation could spread and continue to deepen among the countries in support of multinational institutions.Â
However, the world today faces a very different situation, facing two major challenges. First and foremost, it has seen growing division more than solidarity. The strategic competition between the United States and China—which is based on a fundamentally different vision of international order and the governance of its own people—shapes the core of the international community, which handicaps the international community to respond to the crisis with solidarity. In addition, we are witnessing two wars—one in Ukraine and one in the Middle East–unfolding simultaneously, neither of which offers no end in sight.  These developments suggest that strong solidarity based on the agreed sets of rules, norms, and values—which we had hoped we could realize soon after the end of the Cold War—cannot be achieved.
Secondly, the value of democracy seems to be questioned across the globe. In many countries in Europe, populist political leaders who often ride on incendiary rhetoric appear to be gaining traction. Internal politics are also increasingly polarized, as has been in demonstrated in the United States. Declining confidence in democracy presents a potentially fundamental challenge against the existing international order because it can create space for the resurgence of authoritarianism. Indeed, both China and Russia are taking advantage of this trend, making their case, especially among the developing countries that their system of governance and vision of world order is a better alternative. With many elections anticipated around the world this year, voters across the globe will likely have a profound impact on the future direction of the international community.
Japan’s Position As A “Bridge” Between East and West: Abe’s Initiative and Legacy
Japan had been at the periphery of the Western international order since it entered a group of modern nations following the Meiji Restoration. This brought many problems to Japanese foreign policy for decades before World War II as it tried to navigate the foreign policy arena dominated by the Western powers. But after the end of the Second World War, Japan began to try to reconstruct Japan’s role as a bridge between Western civilization and Eastern civilization. Japan continued this bridging role even after the end of the Cold War.Â
Late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s vision–including Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific—and the efforts he has put in to achieve his vision allowed Japan to play a role as a bridge between the East and West.1 Hosoya, Yuichi. “Chapter One: Japan’s Bridging Role between Asia and the West” in Ward, Robert, Yuka Koshino, and Matthieu Lebroton ed. Japan And The IISS: Connecting Western and Japanese Strategic Thought from the Cold War to the War on Ukraine. (International Institute for Strategic Studies Adelphi Series). Routledge, 2023. In this context, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been effective in positioning Japan as a major player in a group of countries that have been trying to defend the liberal international order after he returned to office in December 2012. In this effort, he placed utmost priority in encouraging the United States to maintain its role as a responsible major power in the international community. Abe tried and succeeded for the most part in maintaining a very close relationship with the United States, even during the Trump administration. Unlike many European leaders, he believed that even under President Donald Trump, the US-Japan alliance could remain strong if he invested in developing a personal relationship with Trump. He was extremely successful in doing this.
After Shinzo Abe stepped down, both of his successors–Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and the incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida— have steadily implemented the vision Abe laid out for Japan as a “rules-promoter, a commons’ guarding, and an effective ally and partner of the U.S. and other democracies”, adding their own touches along the way. Suga, for example, played a critical role in implementing Abe’s initiative to form the Quad among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, leading an effort to turn it into a framework in which the four countries cooperate to address their shared concerns in climate change, emerging technologies, cybersecurity, health security, infrastructure, and space. Similarly, the incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been active in fostering cooperation among like-minded countries since he took over the office. Indeed, it was he who, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 consistently appealed to the countries in the Indo-Pacific to stand firm in support of Ukraine because, in his words, “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow”. He also intensified his outreach to Japan’s European partners, demonstrated by his attendance at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit, emphasizing that “security of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific are inseparable” and “cooperating among like-minded countries across the region becomes increasingly important.” Through these consistent efforts by Abe and his successors, Japan has been able to maintain its role as one of the prominent defenders of the liberal international order.
Looking Ahead: Implications of the Rise of “Global South”
Today, however, Japan faces clear limits in this role as the world sees a much more divisive international community emerging. Since 2023, for example, the rise of the “Global South”, although its definition is yet to be clearly defined, is becoming more apparent. India has been playing a leading role in galvanizing the Global South countries’ voices on the international stage. The rise of the “Global South” is also obvious from the size of the economy: at the end of the Cold War, G7 countries occupied approximately 67 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP); today’s G7, in contrast, occupies only 40 percent of the global GDP. These figures point to the geopolitical reality that G7 countries can no longer monopolize the role of setting values and norms in the international community.
Japan, leveraging its role as the chair of the G7 in 2023, tries to bridge G7 with the G20. For example, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has argued that industrial liberal democracies, symbolized by the G7, cannot run the world alone. Kishida has also actively engaged Global South countries, including visiting many of them in Africa and in Latin America to deepen Japan’s bilateral and regional ties with them. Building upon Japan’s decades-long history of engaging Africa through efforts such as the convener of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), Japan finds these efforts critical. This is because, without the support of Global South, the international community cannot maintain its support for Ukraine’s effort to defend its own country and democratic form of government. Japan tries to play an important role in connecting the Western-style liberal democracies with the countries in the Global South by sustaining its efforts to invite the Global South to the liberal democratic camp. Moving forward, the biggest challenge to Japan as a leading defender of the existing rules-based international order would be to make the world better understand the transformation of the liberal international order that is underway. Simply put, the liberal international order needs to evolve to adapt to the changing reality of the international community.2 For further discussion on this topic, see Hosoya, Yuichi and Hans Kundnani ed. The Transformation of the Liberal International Order: the Evolutions and Limitations (Springer Nature, 2024).
As discussed above, for example, the world is seeing the rapid rise of the Global South and its increasing presence in the international community while the traditional rule-setters such as G7 are becoming less influential. This suggests that the norms and values of the international community are also evolving, which makes it imperative that the voices of the Global South, or the broader non-Western world, are heeded and understood. This will require the industrialized liberal democratic countries to engage more vigorously with the Global South.
However, this is happening at a time when many of the liberal democratic countries are becoming much more inward-looking, losing their interest in external events, including the Russia-Ukraine War. As a result, the gap between the liberal democratic countries and the Global South seems to continue to widen. If democratic principles are to prevail as the foundation of international order, the West need to appreciate the growing importance of the Global South, be aware of the fact that the western countries can no longer monopolize justice and power in the international community. Most importantly, the concept of a liberal international order needs to evolve to be inclusive of the Global South. When Abe launched the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) 1.0 by discussing the geostrategic importance of “the confluence of the two Seas” during his first tenure as prime minister between 2006-2007, he focused on the importance of collaboration among leading democracies in the Indo-Pacific region. This eventually led to the formation of “the Quad” among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States.  When Abe returned to the office in December 2012, his strategic focus intensified Japan’s engagement with Southeast Asia which is located between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as support of the ASEAN to continue was essential in Japan’s role as the defender of Free and Open Indo-Pacific. As such, it has become important for Japan to present a much more inclusive vision for FOIP, due to ASEAN’s hesitation to alienate China from its own regional vision as is indicated in its own Indo-Pacific vision, namely the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP). In this process, Japan initially attempted to present a much more inclusive regional vision, FOIP 2.0. However, Tokyo came to realize it was increasingly more difficult to continue such an effort in the face of intensifying strategic competition between the United States and China.3See Yuichi Hosoya, “FOIP 2.0: The Evolution of Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy”, Asia-Pacific Review, Vol.26, No.1, pp.18-28.
What Japan has been attempting to do so far is to promote the understanding of the evolution of the liberal international order which can be transformative. To this end, Japan should consider launching an initiative like “FOIP 3.0” as an initiative to attract countries in the Global South which can share values and norms with liberal democracies. If Japan is successful, it will be able to maintain its position as a shaper of the international order.
Notes
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