At a summit in Washington earlier this month, foreign ministers from “the Quad” nations of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. agreed to work together to ensure a stable supply of critical minerals and released the following joint statement: “We are committed to a region where all countries are free from coercion and strongly oppose any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion.”
The Quad diplomats were, of course, referring to China’s growing economic and military ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region and its gray-zone threats in the South China and East China seas. But “coercion” is also an accurate description of U.S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policies in the region and insistence, as with NATO in Europe, that the nations of the Indo-Pacific increase their military spending and take more responsibility for their own defense.
In this environment, bilateral India-Japan relations are more important than ever. Located on two ends of the Indo-Pacific region, India and Japan are pivotal to shaping a stable and viable counterweight to Chinese ambitions and the volatility of Trump’s second term. Both countries possess a strategic heft that makes them invaluable to any Indo-Pacific strategy and have a record of success in regional coalition building and strategic autonomy to advance their own shared interests, whether in the Indo-Pacific or Southeast Asia.
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