NATO’s approach to develop cooperation with Japan: Difficulties and prospects

Abstract

Since NATO’s establishment and Japan’s incorporation into the community of “liberal democracies” these actors hardly cooperated in the sphere of security and defense. In European part of the collective West, cooperation in the security field, with US participation, was multilateral, while, in the Far East, it was bilateral. But the present-day formation of the new world order and the non-West as its part gives a strong impetus to the rapprochement between NATO and Japan. In the new situation, the USA has begun to promote the idea of integrating the systems of deterring Russia and containing China. This inevitably requires substantial NATO-Japan cooperation.The article explores the difficulties, progress, and perspectives of the process by the early 2020s. For this, the author uses the theory of alliances and the method of comparative analysis.The paper presents the practical military difficulties for European NATO member states’ joining the containment of China at the same time as these countries are fully involved in the process of deterrence of Russia. In this situation, the USA encouraged their partners. Firstly, the military potential of NATO as an organization has been growing more rapidly than the strength of the member states’ national armed forces. This means that the Alliance can take part in two confrontations simultaneously. Secondly, this is the arising strategic interest towards the Far East as the new direction of NATO’s global activity. One of the reasons for this was the hasty evacuation of the NATO mission from Afghanistan (2021), which meant the loss of the Alliance’s strategic influence in the Middle East and the necessity to compensate for this loss.But the growing interest of European actors towards the Indo-Pacific region (IPR) was combined with their activity in their national capacities, without involving the auspices of NATO. Trying to change this tendency, the USA have expanded the system of formats in the sphere of security and defense (the activization of QUAD, the creation of AUKUS and the Partners in the Blue Pacific) with the membership of Anglo-Saxon states and Japan. These actors have not only increased their own involvement in the containment of China, but also stimulated European players’ interest towards this.In 2022–2023, the process of political cooperation between NATO and Japan has adjusted and intensified. The parties have prepared the spill-over effect of the cooperation into the military sphere. The paper shows the variants of this cooperation, primarily in the naval field.