Japan misread the signs in pushing plan for a NATO office
Tokyo needs to find ways to work around the concerns of Europe, Southeast Asia
Masahiro Matsumura is professor of international politics and national security at the faculty of law of St. Andrew's University in Osaka.
Despite months of dynamic diplomatic campaigning by Japan and the NATO Secretariat, leaders of the military alliance meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July failed to affirm plans to open a liaison office in Tokyo as an initial toehold in the Indo-Pacific region.
This blocked the move that had been intended to play up the unity of the U.S.-led West, soft balancing China with the image of NATO's military-strategic weight and pulling Japan closer to the alliance's policy toward Ukraine.
In principle, the stratagem made sense for Japan given the conspicuous relative decline of the U.S., Tokyo's sole security guarantor. The security interests of Japan, the U.S. and other NATO countries would seem to converge with the notion of a Tokyo liaison office, particularly because Washington wants to build a global NATO linked to its hub-and-spoke alliance system in the Pacific.
But wary of Washington's move on the grand geostrategic chessboard of their rivalry, Beijing expressed vehement opposition to the liaison office idea. This overreaction in turn caused ASEAN countries to express serious concerns about whether the opening of the outpost would worsen regional peace and security.
Japan, as a Pacific state, will never be entitled to join NATO or to enjoy the collective self-defense it offers its members. So why should Tokyo risk upsetting its own neighbors?
Tokyo has been continually strengthening its relationship with NATO for several years. In May 2019, it appointed its first ambassador to NATO. In June 2022, Fumio Kishida became the first Japanese prime minister to attend a NATO summit. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg followed up with an official visit to Tokyo to discuss details of the potential liaison office.
Ahead of July's NATO summit, both Koji Tomita, Japan's ambassador to Washington, and Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi spoke publicly about the planned office. This was a questionable move, however, because by the time of their remarks, the proposal was already in trouble.
The ultimate roadblock for the liaison office plan is the reluctance of some European NATO members to be seen as taking a confrontational approach toward China.
On a flight back to Paris from winning Beijing's commitment to buy 160 Airbus jets in April, French President Emmanuel Macron emphasized to reporters the importance of Europe maintaining foreign and security policies independent of the U.S. and of good relations with China. Not long afterward, he was reported to be directly opposed to the Tokyo office plan.
Due to its heavy security dependence on Washington, Europe remains subordinate to the U.S. policy line toward the conflict in Ukraine.
European NATO members have provided Ukraine with lavish military and economic assistance and have wholeheartedly joined the U.S. in imposing extensive economic sanctions against Russia. As a result, many now face fiscal difficulties and serious economic challenges due to the run-up in prices for energy and other commodities. The cost of supporting millions of Ukrainian refugees has compounded their socioeconomic burdens.
Given these circumstances, many European countries are naturally reluctant to take a confrontational security approach toward China in order to preserve robust trade and economic ties. European countries are thus caught between a rock and a hard place amid the U.S.-China faceoff.
Some are emphasizing the rule of law and human rights and are implementing specific policies to respond to Chinese abuses. But their approaches differ, with Germany, France and Italy still publicly keen on doing business with China and Hungary taking a wholeheartedly pro-Beijing position.
Tokyo needs to adjust its expectations about NATO, including the potential liaison office. Tokyo cannot expect that NATO, as a multilateral military alliance for north Atlantic nations, will extend its deterrent posture to include Japan or the Indo-Pacific region more broadly.
Besides, European countries lack any durable capability to project military power into the Indo-Pacific region or meaningful regional logistics bases of their own. In trying to enlist NATO for balancing against China, Tokyo is only striking an empty pose while provoking Beijing and worrying ASEAN countries.
There are practical alternatives for deterrence and warfighting in the Indo-Pacific region outside of the NATO framework.
The U.S., for example, could bring the navies of European nations such as the U.K., France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands or Germany, into a combined regional fleet. In recent years, some of these European nations have dispatched naval vessels through the western Pacific in an echo of the gunboat diplomacy of yore and could offer a minor supplement to U.S. power projection capabilities in the event of a Taiwan crisis or full-fledged war with China.
Outside of the security area, Tokyo could widen and deepen its evolving "strategic partnership" with the European Union, given the bloc's focus on economic and political matters.
Building on the cumulative achievements of this partnership over the past decade, Japan and the EU held a leaders' summit soon after the NATO summit to deepen policy coordination in export controls, semiconductor production, supply chain management, space surveillance and reconnaissance, cybersecurity and the sharing of classified information.
Last but not least, Tokyo can significantly improve its liaison coordination with NATO by enhancing the professional staff stationed with its NATO mission in Brussels. NATO members could also set up a liaison committee comprised of the military attaches posted to their national embassies in Tokyo.
Japan's ill-fated attempt to pull NATO into its effort to balance China failed because Tokyo did not consider the perceptions of other important actors sufficiently. Obviously, Tokyo's value-based diplomacy needs a far stronger sense of pragmatic realism and a Plan B. Loyally following the security policy line of the U.S. can only take Japan so far.