After four previous failed attempts, Shigero Ishiba has reached the pinnacle of Japan’s political system as he becomes the new prime minister. At age 67 he is certainly not a young man, but in this day and age, he is by no means too old for the job. He is an experienced if not steady hand, having a history of clashing with party colleagues and pushing the political envelope on contentious issues.
Within the spectrum of Japanese conservative politics, the new prime minister could reasonably be described as a defense hawk. He may also shake up Japanese economic policy. In the defense arena he is likely to seek to exploit the relative weakness of America’s status in Asia and continue to expand Japanese militarism, while addressing issues such as the changing dynamics on the Korean Peninsula and evolving tensions across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea.
The United States has in recent years confronted the reality of a diminished presence in Asia, with its historical preponderance in serious question. In the face of what the U.S. sees as the rising strategic threat of the People’s Republic of China, the U.S. has had little choice but to enlist regional client states, sub-imperial allies and former colonies in the name of containing a rising giant.
Japan is party to this new strategy, premised on the creation of a web or network of minilateral organizations. It is a member of the Quad, an organization that was actually the brainchild of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Quad involves the United States, India, Australia and Japan. Additionally, Japan recently joined a three-party minilateral group involving the United States and the Philippines. Further, Japan is sounding out the prospects of becoming a member of the AUKUS arrangement, which at present comprises the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
These minilateral alliances speak to a United States that has had to reach out to its alliance partners to fill the gap in military capability that the Americans are finding difficult to reach by themselves. While its national security doctrine continues to define American interests across the entire globe — historically enabled through an expanded network of military bases and globally leading defense budget appropriations — the United States is now confronting a reality in which its capacity is stretched thin. Despite spending a little more than $16 trillion on defense between 2001 and 2023, the Americans are no longer in a position to fight what they describe as a two-war scenario, let alone prevail in a three-war environment. Rather, the recent experiences of the war in Ukraine and the unfolding conflict in West Asia all point to a chronic limit in American military capability.
If warfare is a system-vs.-system question, then it is becoming increasingly clear that the United States, and the collective West more broadly, is confronting a reality in which it is found wanting across all key system dimensions.
First, in terms of military doctrine, the conflict in Ukraine has shown that the Russians are more than a match for NATO systems, methodologies and tactical approaches.
Second, the conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated that the Western military industrial system does not have the capacity to match the productive output of Russia, let alone anyone else in the world. The system is struggling to produce sufficient equipment and armaments to successfully prosecute a war of attrition or a conflict with a genuine peer.
Third, as much as modern warfare is significantly mechanized, in certain circumstances such as a war of attrition on the steps of Ukraine, the availability of suitably skilled and experienced personnel is a necessity not only for successful defense but successful offense. In terms of personnel, it is clear that the collective West is suffering from a shortage of suitably skilled personnel — a problem compounded by the challenges Western nations have faced in recruiting for their defense forces.
Last, successful warfare presupposes a capacity to replenish, repair and replace that which has been committed and lost on the front line. These supply chain systems work only to the extent to which logistics capabilities can be rolled out to ensure that the front line is sufficiently equipped.
The American blue water Navy has also been progressively degraded in relative terms, beset by production and maintenance problems, not to mention a shortage of skilled personnel. Against this backdrop, Japan has in the past decade sought to exploit gaps in which it could incrementally expand its military prowess and pursue a strategy that would deliver greater autonomy within the region. In doing so, it is treading carefully. It can ill-afford to get the Americans totally off-side, and while the U.S. presence in Japan and in Asia is seen by Japan’s defense establishment as a necessity, there’s little doubt that there remains a wellspring of Japanese nationalism that seeks to reassert a more potent role for Japan within the security architecture of Asia.
The weaker America becomes, in Japan’s estimate, the more assertive Japan can become. The postwar settlement of American protection, coupled with the realities of post-nuclear devastation and a reluctance-cum-constitutional constraint to pursue regional military expansion, is slowly giving way. Nationalist sentiment remains active in the Japanese body politic. Subordination to the U.S. forever is an unpalatable scenario.
Ishiba, the new prime minister, can be expected to test the tolerance of the U.S. even further. He has long seen the Japan-U.S. relationship as asymmetric and wants to push toward what he would see as greater parity and enhancing Japanese independence. His support for an Asian NATO may find some welcoming ears inside the Washington beltway, but there will be those who will treat this proposal with a certain degree of cautionary concern. The issue isn’t America’s desire to contain China but whether the creation of additional institutions, such as an Asian NATO, would actually contribute to the revitalization of American primacy in Asia or undermine it. After all, Ishiba’s proposal is framed to support his view that the U.S.-Japan relationship should be one between “ordinary nations.”
Other countries in Asia will be wary of an Asian NATO proposal, concerned that it would not only undermine ASEAN centrality but also exacerbate regional tensions. Ishiba’s support for an Asian NATO is unlikely to extend to the majority of Japan’s regional neighbors in North and Southeast Asia.
Ishida’s elevation to the pinnacle of Japan’s political system comes at a time of extensive regional flux. His long-held political ambitions to reassert Japan’s standing as a regional power will challenge not only the expectations of Washington but also further rattle a region that is seeking to navigate beyond the dynamics of great power competition. Asia and Washington will both be wary, but for different reasons.
