How the US and Japan Can Secure an Indo-Pacific “Golden Era”

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Sanae Takaichi’s recent talks with President Donald Trump underscore the need for an Indo-Pacific collective defense treaty and economic corridor.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s summit with President Donald Trump in Washington last week made demonstrable progress to “enhance economic security and bolster deterrence to advance a free and open Indo-Pacific.” It is a good start to the “golden age” of the US-Japan alliance proclaimed by the two leaders last October.

Prime Minister Takaichi has brought back the late, great Shinzo Abe’s charisma and energy to Tokyo. She arrived at the White House with a historic mandate—a landslide electoral victory that secured a two-thirds supermajority for the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the lower house of Japan’s Diet. This unmatched mandate will allow Japan to uphold the Indo-Pacific order. In President Trump, she has found a bold and willing partner. 

The Trump-Takaichi era should seize the historic opportunity to enshrine a defensive collective security arrangement and launch a complementary regional economic security initiative. The time is now to consolidate regional defense partnerships into an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization (IPTO) and establish a Japan-ASEAN-Australia-India Economic Corridor (JAAI) to “expand trusted supply chains for key infrastructure and industries” among trusted partners. Trump and Takaichi have the opportunity to lead the region out of the morass of half-measures and hesitations and install the necessary collective deterrence and economic security structures for posterity.

The Case for an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization

The Indo-Pacific is the primary theater of concern for the United States and Japan. The national security stakes necessitate a bold deterrence architecture to prevent war in the region and secure its freedom. Collective security guarantees between regional nations, rather than an assemblage of American unilateral security guarantees to individual countries, is the best means of achieving this. A collective security architecture and burden-sharing would substantially augment American military effectiveness and allies’ resilience in the region. NATO affords that in the North Atlantic and European theaters.

Trump’s National Security and Defense Strategies call for robust conventional capabilities among its allies in every major theater to deter adversarial forces, relieving the United States of the need to provide the necessary nuclear, intelligence, and logistical backstops in all corners of the world. 

Japan is America’s closest, strongest, and indispensable ally in the Indo-Pacific. Under Takaichi, it can grow ever more robust and resilient, with both the capabilities and wherewithal to play a role in any future Pacific conflict analogous to Israel’s in the Middle East. Takaichi’s premiership should simultaneously modernize the Japanese military arsenal and security alliances, making Japan the anchor of collective military deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.

IPTO would constitute a commensurate and timely response to the growing “no-limits” civil-military partnership between China and Russia, with Iran and North Korea included. Trump and Takaichi, under the aegis of IPTO, should lead efforts to........

© The National Interest