Description
NATO states and Japan share much in common, including core values of democracy, rule of law, human rights, and free markets. They also share a mutual security provider in the United States. Yet despite many common interests across economic, political, and security domains, relations remained strikingly undeveloped for most of the post-WWII era. This gradually changed in the early 2000s following 9/11, and again in the 2010s with the emergence of a more expansionist China. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO-Japan relations have been dramatically upgraded. This paper addresses how the evolution of NATO-Japan cooperation has been principally driven by their respective security scopes and the idea of a shifting ‘geography of danger’. When NATO and Japan are focused on regional issues, such as border disputes, security interests are incompatible and cooperation is sluggish. Yet as NATO and Japan expand their scopes globally to incorporate such issues cyber and supply chains, security interests align and cooperation is spirited. In systematically tracing this transformation and the practices it entails over the post-Cold-War period, we illustrate the past and present interlinkages between the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic and offer insight into the future course of NATO-Japan relations amidst what former NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg has termed the shifting geography of danger.
