Japan Is Stepping Up as Asia’s New Powerbroker

The USA will have you believe that it is showing leadership in Asia. However, the country that shows real determination is Japan.

What the Indo-Pacific wants to hear from Washington is to confront China over its rapidly expanding military might. Instead, it was left to Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi to do so when he took the stage at Asia’s leading security forum on Sunday. He presented a more sincere and ambitious vision for the Indo-Pacific than his American counterpart the day before.

“This region must remain open to all countries that respect our common rules and principles,” Koizumi said. His message to others at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore was clear: Tokyo is ready to do more to boost growth and improve security in the region. Japan is already working to provide greater military cooperation, information sharing and training to countries such as the Philippines and Australia; It is offering $10 billion in financial support to countries in Southeast Asia to help with rising crude oil prices due to the US-Israeli war with Iran.

Beijing is regularly chafed by Tokyo’s rising regional status and frequently invokes Japan’s wartime past and its own experience of violent occupation to warn of a resurgence of its historic rival’s military power. In a not-so-subtle reference, Koizumi touched on China during his speech and said: “There is a country with a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and strategic bombers. Japan has none of these weapons, and yet Japan is labeled as ‘new militarism’.” Isn’t it strange?

In contrast to this courage, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took a softer stance towards China. He repeated the phrase “constructive strategic stability” to describe Washington’s ties with Beijing; this was a slogan coined by President Xi Jinping at the recent summit with President Donald Trump. Hegseth also conspicuously avoided explicitly mentioning Taiwan in his speech, prompting praise from the Chinese Communist Party’s tabloid mouthpiece, the Global Times. This is a feat no American official should aim for.

Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me on the sidelines of the forum that the messaging discipline in Taiwan is remarkable. “Hegseth came up with the idea of not doing anything to upset the new friendship between Xi and Trump. He stuck to the script.”

I have attended many of these meetings over the years, and while previous American administrations also had missteps regarding Asia, there was at least an attempt to articulate a shared future. Not so for Hegseth, who instead calls for a return to realism and signals that Washington expects the region to shoulder more of its own security burden.

What Hegseth did not explain, and what no one in the Trump administration could adequately answer, was what American leadership actually looks like in a region that is being asked to do more for itself. If Asian countries are spending more on defense, are they doing so under the US umbrella, or are they quietly preparing for a world without the US?

A former diplomat who watched the speech told me it was “good enough” and that Asia should be happy the United States is still in the room. But in a time of so much geopolitical uncertainty, good enough is not good enough. Many countries will be quietly alarmed by what the relative silence on Taiwan indicates: Beijing moving beyond pragmatism to a compromise closer to surrender.

It is noteworthy that for the second year in a row, China did not send its defense minister to the forum, choosing instead to appoint a lower-level delegation. Koizumi’s willingness to call attention to China’s military behavior, frame the region’s security as a collective project, and lead the momentum for coalition-building among smaller Indo-Pacific states will be viewed by Beijing as a real threat.

Japan’s rise to the position of the region’s preferred stabilizer, which has been in the works for several years, gained new momentum during the term of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. His government plans to increase defense spending from 1% to 2% of gross domestic product by fiscal year 2027-28; This is a historic change in a country whose post-war constitution limits military activity.

However, what really disturbed the Chinese was his stance on Taiwan. He told parliament last year that the island’s future was a “survival threat” for Tokyo, an assessment echoed by regional counterparts such as the Philippines. Committed to a common goal of deterring China’s “nefarious plans,” Manila is seeking closer ties with Taiwan, Vietnam and Japan, the archipelago’s Defense Minister Gilberto Teodoro told Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the meeting, citing conflicts with Beijing in the South China Sea.

Both the United States and other countries concerned about China may be encouraged to join what Teodoro calls a new defense alliance. They should also begin quietly assessing their exposure to a potential Taiwan crisis. In addition to the Philippines, many citizens who can be seen as potential refugees in case of conflict work in Thailand and Indonesia.

None of this means that the United States is withdrawing from Asia. Its military presence remains significant and its alliances are strong. But sometimes leadership is about being willing to say uncomfortable things out loud. Arrived from Japan this weekend.