As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney touches down in Tokyo this week, he steps onto a geopolitical chessboard that has been radically reconfigured since the last time a Canadian leader sought to deepen ties in the Indo-Pacific.

The liberal international order that Ottawa once navigated with ease has fractured. In its place is a cold, hard realism defined by the return of great power rivalry and the transactional “America First” doctrine of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term.

Carney, a technocrat with a reputation for intellectual seriousness, arrives seeking to revitalize Canada’s stagnant economy through a trade and economic security agreement with Japan. But if he expects his counterpart, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, to be merely a partner in diversification away from the United States, he is misreading the room. For Tokyo, the value of Canada is not just in its resources, but in its utility to the central pillar of Japanese survival: the U.S.-Japan security alliance.

Japan views Canada as a like-minded nation, certainly. But in the calculus of the Kantei (the prime minister’s office in Tokyo), Ottawa is useful primarily to the extent that it strengthens the U.S.-Japan alliance and helps anchor American power in the Pacific. Any attempt by Canada to use Tokyo as a hedge against Washington or to complicate Japan’s delicate management of Trump will find no purchase with Takaichi.

To understand Japan’s position, one must understand the transformation Tokyo has undergone. As detailed in recent analyses of Japan’s strategic shift, the days of the “Yoshida Doctrine” — relying entirely on the U.S. for security while focusing solely on economics — are over. Faced with a Chinese military buildup that dwarfs anything seen in recent history, Japan has doubled its defense spending, acquired counterstrike capabilities and shed its pacifist constraints.

Takaichi, a conservative realist, has been explicit: A Chinese assault on Taiwan would constitute an........

© The Japan Times