Japan steps up as US stays quiet on Taiwan at Asia's top security forum

By Seo Ji-yeon, The Herald Business

As the United States treads carefully on Taiwan to manage its relationship with China, Japan is positioning itself as a more assertive security actor in the Indo-Pacific. At Asia's premier security forum last week, analysts said Tokyo sent a stronger message on Beijing than Washington did.

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Karishma Vaswani said Sunday that Japan had delivered the message Indo-Pacific nations had been waiting to hear about China's rapid military buildup.

The standout figure was Japanese Defense Minister Koizumi Shinjiro.

Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Koizumi said the region "must be open to all nations that respect our shared rules and principles" and that Japan was ready to take on a greater role in promoting regional growth and security.

He said Japan was expanding military cooperation and intelligence sharing with the Philippines, Australia and others, and was actively working to build a regional security cooperation network. The Japanese government has also proposed $10 billion in fiscal support for Southeast Asian nations struggling with soaring energy prices in the wake of the Middle East war.

Koizumi also appeared to take direct aim at China. He said there is a country that possesses large numbers of nuclear weapons and strategic bombers, yet Japan — which has none of those weapons — is branded as a new militarist state. "Isn't that strange?" he asked.

The remarks were widely interpreted as a rebuke of China's criticism of Japan's military expansion.

Japan's transformation has grown more pronounced over the past several years. In 2022, Tokyo revised its national security strategy to formally adopt a counterstrike capability — the ability to strike enemy bases — and is pursuing a plan to raise defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product. Analysts describe the shift as a significant departure from the exclusively defense-oriented posture Japan has maintained since World War II.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China's military buildup and rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait have all deepened security anxieties in Japan, analysts say, accelerating the pace of change in its defense policy.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, by contrast, struck a notably cautious tone.

In his address, he repeatedly used the phrase "constructive strategic stability" to describe the US-China relationship — language seen as reflecting Washington's posture of managing ties with Beijing following recent summit talks between the two countries.

His decision not to mention Taiwan directly drew particular attention. China's state-run Global Times offered a positive assessment of his remarks.

Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Bloomberg that Hegseth "was determined not to disrupt the new rapport between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump and stuck closely to the script."

Some analysts say Washington's recent posture reflects a deliberate effort to preserve the atmosphere of dialogue that has emerged since the US-China summit.

The Trump administration has in fact been engaged in ongoing negotiations with China over tariffs, supply chains and security issues. That context, analysts say, may explain why Washington has been reluctant to publicly press sensitive issues — such as Taiwan — that Beijing views as red lines.

The concern for Asian allies is that Washington's strategy is generating uncertainty rather than reassurance.

Bloomberg noted that when Asian nations increase their defense spending, it is unclear whether they are doing so under the umbrella of US support or quietly preparing for a world in which that support may not be there.

Washington's relative silence on Taiwan has also raised considerable unease among allies in the region.

Japan has of late been staking out increasingly clear positions on Taiwan as well. Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae said in parliament last year that a Taiwan contingency could become a situation that "threatens Japan's survival." The Philippines, too, has been expanding security cooperation with Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam to counter China.

Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro told Bloomberg that regional nations must work more closely together to thwart China's "malicious plans."

However, some analysts caution against reading Japan's growing role as a sign of weakening US leadership or a changing of the guard in Asia.

The United States remains the center of military power, intelligence assets and alliance networks across the Indo-Pacific. Japan, too, faces significant constraints — constitutional limits and domestic political pressures that many analysts say would prevent it from assuming an independent security leadership role.