The Necessary Deepening of Japan’s Alliances

**Mike Green** (0:01)
Welcome to The Asia Chessboard, the podcast that examines geopolitical dynamics in Asia and takes an inside look at the making of grand strategy. I'm Mike Green of the United States Studies Centre in Sydney and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Welcome back to The Asia Chessboard. I'm joined by Chris Johnstone. Many of you will know Chris. He's a stalwart in US-Japan and US-Asia policy in Washington, careers in think tanks, the intelligence community, the Pentagon, the White House, CSIS, and now he is partner and share of Defense and National Security Practice at the Asia Group Consultancy, winner of the prestigious Ryozo Kato Prize for contributions to the US-Japan alliance. And throughout my career in government and beyond a really trusted source of wisdom on Japan and the alliance. So, Chris, we've had you on, but it's three years later, we need to check in again, a lot happening with Japan.

**Christopher Johnstone** (0:58)
Great to be here, Mike. Thanks for the invitation to join.

**Mike Green** (1:01)
You had a chance to introduce yourself, you know, when we did this three years ago, and I might ask the question a bit differently, which is when you got started in this business, you're a Princeton-Kent Colter protege, right?

**Christopher Johnstone** (1:12)
Yep, that's right.

**Mike Green** (1:13)
And then Japan Economic Institute, which did great research in the 90s, but from that to where you are now, and your time at the White House, that's a very different debate about Japan and Washington. You were there all the way. What's your, now that you're really old like me, what's your take on that transition in the whole view of Japan and the US?

**Christopher Johnstone** (1:33)
It is incredible to look back over this arc, because, you know, in the day to day, sometimes you lose sight of how much things have changed, but when you step back, you really see it. I mean, when I first started working on Japan, two things were dominant. One, you know, it was around the time of the first Gulf War, and that, I think, was really kind of the beginning of Japan's transformation into a real security partner, but it was a shock to the Japanese at the time. This sense that their post-war policies and approach to the international system were inadequate. A ton of pressure applied on the Japanese by the United States to contribute to the Gulf War. Materially, they were unable to, gave only a financial contribution. And that set in motion a whole set of reforms and things that unfolded over the next decade. The other thing that dominated at the time was the trade frictions. This was a time of real friction between us over autos and remember Kodak and Fujifilm and all those kinds of issues that seem pretty quaint and silly right now. So this sense of Japan as an inadequate security partner and as an economic threat, that was the dominant theme at the time. And it's so different now. The strategic basis for the relationship is so much stronger. Despite the challenges that we face that we'll, I'm sure we'll get into. Remarkable to look back over those 30 years and see how the relationship has changed. Maybe one other thing just to say is it wasn't inevitable that we would get here, right? It took hard work by people over the years, people like you and Kurt Campbell and Rich Armitage and Jonai and so many of our own mentors over the years, who built the relationship that we have today. I do think it's important to say it wasn't inevitable that we would end up here, but that's where we are.

**Mike Green** (3:20)
Yeah. No, I do think in some ways, as the Chinese would say, we were on the right side of history that the structure of international relations and US and Japanese interests were on the side of those who wanted to strengthen the alliance. But in the 1990s, especially the early 1990s, when George Friedman's book The Coming War with Japan came out, and even in the 2000s, even in 2010, 11, 12, there were still divisions within the Obama administration about whether strengthening the alliance with Japan made sense because China was so important commercially and important to climate. Those debates now seem in the US at least to be largely over.
I expected pushback when I wrote a book a few years ago that basically argued Japan under Abe had emerged as the strategic thought leader in Asia. I thought I'd get pushback. I didn't. I didn't. People kind of thought. Policy official scholars has said, yeah, you're right. People respect that. Now, the problem, of course, is Japan's politics are not exactly stable, or at least post-Abe, they've not been stable. So Takaichi comes in. In some ways, in my view, an unlikely candidate to be honest. I first met her in 1989 in the big island in Hawaii, at a US-Japan parliamentary exchange. I was the intern bag-carrying backbencher for the Japanese delegation, and she was doing that for the US delegation. She worked as an intern in the US Congress for Pat Schroeder, who was the AOC Progressive of the day. She went back to NARA. Not quite sure what happened, but she came out an ultra-conservative. But she's off to a good start, isn't she? She's got very high support rate. She managed the Trump Summit well. What's your take on the Takaichi government thus far?