Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is looking beyond his country’s alliance with the U.S. to deter China, bolstering security ties with democracies from Australia to Europe.
On his tour of Group of Seven countries last week, which came after the biggest overhaul of Japan’s security policy since World War II, Kishida told French President Emmanuel Macron that the security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific were indivisible. He signed a deal on mutual troop access with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and agreed with Italian leader Giorgia Meloni to upgrade defense ties.
Japan’s alliance with Washington — complete with its "nuclear umbrella” — remains the cornerstone of its strategy, and U.S. President Joe Biden endorsed the country’s more robust security strategy in a meeting with Kishida at the White House on Friday. Yet Japan’s deepening unease about the dangers in its neighborhood has prompted a fresh push to build a bulwark of other partnerships.