New Japanese Prime Minister wants an “Asian NATO”

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba during a press conference at the Prime Minister’s Office in Tokyo on Tuesday, October 1, 2024. YUICHI YAMAZAKI / AP The new Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba, aged 67, does not embody a renewal of political leaders. But he is a strong man with forty years of experience in the mysteries of power, whose objective, which he has always fiercely defended, is the strengthening of Japan’s defense. While insisting on the importance of the alliance with the United States, on which the security of the Archipelago depends, he intends to develop it in order to give Japan more responsibilities and greater independence. Himself a former defense minister, Mr. Ishiba appointed a former minister of this ministry, Takeshi Iwaya, as head of the defense ministry, General Gen Nakatani, who already held his position in the past ( 2014-2016), confirming that the question of rebalancing the alliance with the United States – which he considers asymmetrical – will be a priority for his government. “I consider that my mission is to evolve the alliance between the United States and Japan in order to bring it to the level of that between the United States and Great Britain,” writes Mr. Ishiba in a document published at the end September by the Hudson Institute think tank in New York. “To achieve this goal, Japan must have its own military strategy and become more independent in security matters,” continued Mr. Ishiba. Strengthen ties with neighboring countries The Prime Minister wishes to go further in terms of defense than his predecessor Fumio Kishida had done: cooperation at command level with the United States and increase (+ 7%) in expenditure for fiscal year 2025. He also intends to review the legal status of American forces in Japan which often removes them from Japanese jurisdiction. A message received coldly in Washington. During the campaign for the post of prime minister, Mr. Ishiba declared in Naha, capital of the island of Okinawa – where the largest contingent of the 53,000 American soldiers deployed in the archipelago is based: “Japan is a nation sovereign, let us not forget. » A claim to sovereignty often “forgotten” by Japanese politicians when it comes to the United States. For Mr. Ishiba, Japan must also strengthen its ties with neighboring countries (especially South Korea). “If we replace Russia with China and Ukraine with Taiwan, in the absence of a system comparable to NATO in Asia, in the event of war, there is no mutual defense obligation,” believes Mr. . Ishiba in his contribution to the Hudson Institute. He therefore calls for the creation of a regional alliance, the Asian version of NATO, by initially combining the American-Japanese and American-South Korean alliances. You have 48% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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