Geopolitical stresses in the Indo-Pacific are increasing and intensifying. These stresses derive from Chinas more assertive regional behaviour; growing alignments between China and Russia on the one hand and Russia and North Korea on the other; and most recently from the apparent recalibration of United States foreign policy under the second Trump administration. They have magnified Japans significance as a strategic actor both in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
As such, it is of global importance whether Japan can meet the grand-strategic goals that it established in its 2022 National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy and Defense Buildup Program. This Adelphi book evaluates Japans new grand strategy, considering whether it and associated reforms are sufficiently robust to fulfil Japans goal of ensuring its security even in the scenario of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
This Adelphi book evaluates Japans new grand strategy, considering whether it and associated reforms are sufficiently robust to fulfil Japans goal of ensuring its security even in the scenario of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
Introduction
· A grand-strategic watershed
· The catalysts for change
· Testing Japanese resilience
Hardware and software
Chapter One: Japans shifting strategic compass
· Maritime Japan
· Four strategic phases
· A triangle and triangulation
Chapter Two: Building Japanese deterrence and response capabilities defence
and diplomacy
· Changing defence assumptions
· Japans strategic shift to the Southwest Islands
· Building defence and defence-industrial resilience
· Cyber, intelligence and space
· Defence diplomacy networking deterrence
Chapter Three: New tools of Japanese security
· Japans comprehensive national power
· Japans evolving geo-economic power
· Economic security increasing Japanese geo-economic agency
· Economic security and industrial policy
Chapter Four: Structural impediments
· Japan acquires its strategic rheostat
· Demographic and fiscal headwinds
· Societal change
Conclusion
· Structural change in Japan
· Japans capacity to deliver
Robert Ward is the IISS Japan Chair, carrying out independent research and writing extensively on strategic issues related to Japan, including its contemporary security and foreign policies. He is also Director of Geo-economics and Strategy and leads the Institutes work on a range of issues including global economic governance, rules and standards setting, and how economic coercion impacts policy at a national and corporate level. He is co-author of Japans Effectiveness as a Geo-Economic Actor: Navigating Great-Power Competition (Routledge, 2022) and co-editor of Japan and the IISS: Connecting Western and Japanese Strategic Thought from the Cold War to the War on Ukraine (Routledge, 2023). Prior to joining the IISS, Ward spent 23 years at the Economist Group, latterly leading the country and industry research teams at the Economist Intelligence Unit. He lived and worked in Japan from 1989 to 1996 and is a fluent speaker of Japanese. He holds bachelors and masters degrees from Cambridge University.
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