Tanner Greer, of The Scholar’s Stage, highlights Japan’s latest National Security Strategy, which was released in December. Gone are the days, Greer writes, when policy-makers dreamed “that globalization might save the world.” Instead, Japanese officials see a time of growing international instability and a need to reorient Japanese policy priorities.
Japan’s new strategy document reveals, if not an end to globalization, at least a shift in the paradigm of global cooperation. Mirroring many debates seen in the United States in recent years, Japanese policy-makers argue for a pivot to reinforcing a national economic and security base. But this document also does not turn its back on international cooperation; it illustrates how a policy paradigm of national resilience could partner with maintaining various global alliances.
The authors of this document note major challenges to the “free, open, and stable international order.” One of these is a shift in the balance of power, especially with the growth of the People’s Republic of China. Compounding these instabilities is Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which has “easily breached the very foundation of the rules that shape the international order.”
In response to these challenges, the National Security Strategy calls for expanded defense spending. But it also stresses renewed international engagement. This strategy argues that Japan should reinforce its alliance with the United States and other important “like-minded countries.” International cooperation could help Japan protect its position in the Indo–Pacific security theater.
However, that project of security also involves investing in a domestic economic and security infrastructure. The NSS document argues that Japan needs to pursue a project of “autonomous economic prosperity.” Japan should strengthen its “defense production and technology base.” Government efforts would promote investment in research and development for key technologies and help support “private-sector innovation.” In order to improve “supply chain resilience,” Japan would aim to lessen “dependence on specific countries” and support “next-generation semiconductor development and manufacturing bases.” In order to make its energy grid more self-sufficient, Japan would invest in renewables and nuclear power, and it would also aim to produce more food domestically.
Globalization — for all its disruptive potential — relied on a greater infrastructure of global stability, as revealed in the NSS. It’s telling that the consolidation of globalization in the 1990s happened only after the Soviet Union collapsed and it seemed that the risk of great-power competition had dissipated. In time of growing instability, nations will be less likely to trust in global exchange for meeting their needs. Hence the supply-chain shocks of the pandemic have prompted nations across the world to gain a renewed interest in economic resilience.
But this document also reminds us that a project of resilience is not the same as isolationism. It’s possible to support a domestic economic base and to cooperate with other countries. The vast productive infrastructure of the United States was an essential component of its ability to be a ballast for international arrangements both during and after the Cold War. Conversely, supply-chain challenges (especially for key defense and strategic goods) could undermine the United States’ ability to project power abroad and uphold international arrangements. These discussions of resilience in Japan and the United States reflect a bigger debate within market-oriented democracies about how to shore up domestic economic infrastructures while remaining open to some level of international exchange.