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China’s aggressive foreign policy pushes Europe and Japan towards defence cooperation

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Addressing the European Parliament’s subcommittee on security and defence for the first time last week, Japanese defence minister Nobuo Kishi put forward a clear message from Tokyo as the European Union mulls over its Indo-Pacific strategy ahead of publication later this year: in order to counter China’s ambitions for dominance in the hotly disputed South China Sea, the European Union and its member states must “visibly increase their military presence.”

In some ways, it is a request Europe has already accepted. Since January of this year, Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (SDF) have undertaken a significantly expanded schedule of joint drills with units from partner countries in the ‘Quad’ – a regional grouping that includes Japan, the United States, India, and Australia – but also from Europe, with Japan’s Maritime and Ground SDFs training with French counterparts on multiple occasions. After the EU released an initial version of its Indo-Pacific strategy on 19 April, putting forward its intention to “reinforce its strategic focus” on the region “based on the promotion of democracy, rule of law, human rights and international law” with “like-minded partners,” Brussels castigated Beijing for stoking tensions in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

As European officials themselves will admit, however, symbolic gestures towards military re-engagement in and around the South China Sea – be in the form of joint drills or British and German warships sailing through the region – do not reflect any sort of willingness on the part of EU or UK leaders to challenge China’s bid for regional hegemony directly. Instead, both Asian and European governments concerned by the implications of China’s rise are coming to recognise the urgent need for multilateral engagement to preserve the rules-based international order Beijing is brazenly challenging.

China’s failed attempt to divide and conquer

Prior to the election of President Joe Biden in the United States last November, it could hardly be taken for granted that the Indo-Pacific and international players impacted by Chinese provocations across Asia would be able to align themselves into a meaningful coalition in opposition to Beijing. With the Trump administration touching off a rapid deterioration in trans-Atlantic relations, Xi Jinping took advantage of the uncertainty surrounding American commitments to its Asian allies to cement China’s position as the economic heart of the Asia-Pacific.

With a new president in office in Washington, however, the direction of the EU’s Indo-Pacific strategy makes clear Europe is ready to align its approach to China with that of the US. Thanks in large part to its own “wolf warrior” diplomacy, Beijing has watched its largely successful effort to sow discord between European and American policies towards China during the Trump administration blow up in its face, to be replaced by an unprecedented slate of coordinated sanctions around the ethnic cleansing of China’s Uyghur minority and the collapse of plans for an EU-China free trade deal.

As Europe’s relations with China have deteriorated, its willingness to offer concrete support to allies in the Indo-Pacific has expanded. That support is not limited to security and defence issues, where the EU’s capabilities are obviously limited, but also to the economic and diplomatic interests of key EU partners such as Taiwan and the Philippines. The recent G7 summit in Cornwall, which the US delegation sought to turn into a forum on the shared threat posed to US, UK, EU, and Japanese interests, produced a commitment to develop an alternative to China’s New Silk Road and challenge China’s abuses of human rights and its repression of the Hong Kong democracy movement.

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Personnel is policy

Nonetheless, as the experience of the past four years taught policymakers in both Europe and Asia, crafting a multilateral alliance that can survive sudden changes among a set of actors as diverse as the US, EU, and Quad requires the leadership of officials who can successfully navigate political headwinds in any of these countries. Of all the longstanding US allies, Japan’s leadership has done the best job of maintaining healthy working relationships with both the Trump and Biden administrations, thanks to officials such as Shigeru Kitamura, the Japanese National Security Secretariat’s Secretary General.

Kitamura, who played a critical role in establishing productive ties between Japanese premier Yoshihide Suga and the Trump administration after Shinzo Abe left office last year, played a similar role in navigating the transition between Trump and Biden and took part in a key trilateral meeting with his American and Korean counterparts in Annapolis, Maryland this past April. That summit, hosted by Biden national security advisor (NSA) Jake Sullivan, covered many of the thorniest issues facing the three allies, including US policies towards North Korea under the Biden administration but also the security of technologically sensitive supply chains in the region.

While that level of experience in navigating the political whiplash between two radically different American presidents might have been invaluable in navigating the vagaries of the 27-member European Union, recent reports in Japanese media indicate Shigeru Kitamura would be replaced by Takeo Akiba, a veteran diplomat that toes a much softer line on China. The reports have not been confirmed by the government, but the spectre of Tokyo replacing one of the officials with the strongest ties to Washington does not bode well for the bilateral relationship. Suga himself is likely facing new elections in the fall – at around the same time Japan will find out whether the EU has listened to its pleas for expanded engagement in the finalised Indo-Pacific strategy.

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EU Reporter publishes articles from a variety of outside sources which express a wide range of viewpoints. The positions taken in these articles are not necessarily those of EU Reporter.
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