President Joe Biden’s very first official meeting with a foreign leader appears to have sent shockwaves through East Asia.
On the 16th of April, Biden met with the Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, in Washington. There the two leaders exchanged the usual sort of diplomatic discussions, and released a joint statement. Crucially, however, the statement mentioned a number of territorial disputes in Asia, including the Senkaku Islands, the South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait – all of which involve China.
Indeed, the tacit mention of Taiwan in this statement was hugely significant. It was the first time that Taiwan had been mentioned in a joint statement by the United States and Japan since 1969, when President Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Eisaku Sato stated that ‘the maintenance of peace and security in the Taiwan area was also a most important factor for the security of Japan.’
Decades later, the fact remains that this statement is as true today as it was in the 1960s, the difference now being that China has grown enormously in military and economic strength and is getting increasingly anxious to take back Taiwan as soon as possible. Chinese fighter jets have been flying over the Taiwan Strait with increasing frequency as a tactic to scare the Taiwanese into a peaceful annexation, though this only seems to be having the opposite effect, as support for Taiwan’s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has only continued to grow over the years. That leaves the single option of a future annexation by force, and this is where Suga’s recent statement with Biden becomes significant.
Japan’s place in Asia
Japan’s place in Asia today has many parallels with Germany’s place in Europe. The Empire of Japan was an aggressive force in the early 20th century, and committed many atrocities and war crimes prior to its surrender at the end of World War II in 1945. As a result of its crimes in that conflict, Japan’s new constitution precluded it from the right of belligerency in wars as a means to solve international disputes. Japan’s military, therefore, is officially termed the Japan Self-Defence Force and its capabilities are thus limited to self-defence.
Over and above this, Japan has generally maintained a very humble foreign policy. Even in the 21st Century, World War Two issues often become diplomatic sticking points between Japan and its neighbours in Asia – many of which Japan occupied in the first half of the 20th Century. Opinions within internal Japanese politics have been changing in this regard, however, with many believing that Japan’s self-imposed military limitations are anachronistic in this day and age, and thus calls have been made to amend the Japanese constitution.
Mention of Taiwan
That the Biden-Suga joint statement would make such a mention of Taiwan is therefore hugely significant. The US’s support for Taiwan has always been a known fact, but Japan’s decidedly non-interventionist foreign policy had strategists thinking that the Japanese government would serve, at most, as an ally to the US. Now, it seems that Japan still considers Taiwan to be relevant to its own national security, opening the possibility of the Japanese military retaliating in the case of a potential military annexation of Taiwan by China.
Needless to say, there was a great reaction to this among the press. Japanese headlines show the characters for “Taiwan” (台湾) and “Japan-America” (日米) scattered all over.
Threats to China
As the United States and China continue into the 21st Century as the two great world powers, the issue of Taiwan will naturally increase in importance. From the perspective of China, Taiwan’s de facto independence and ability to ally with enemies like the United States is a profound national security threat. China’s entire coast is already surrounded by an island-chain of US allies, but Taiwan is the single link in that island chain where China claims to have the right of sovereignty. Leaving Taiwan to its own devices as it becomes ever closer to the US is dangerous considering its proximity to the Chinese mainland, but taking Taiwan would represent a major win for China on a military and geostrategic level, as it would finally have unfettered access to the wider Pacific Ocean without the threat of being blockaded.
The US has had bases in Japan and Korea for decades. However, this joint statement by Biden and Suga represents the first time that Japan itself has indicated its own strategic interests in Taiwan. Should the political orthodoxy in Japan change in the coming decades, we may see the rise of another military power capable of intervening in potential conflicts involving Taiwan and willing to do so. The US has always had allies in the region, but it has not been clear that those allies would be willing to get involved in a conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Now, Japan has indicated that it also has a dog in the fight over Taiwan. Should Japan’s foreign policy become more confrontational, it is possible that we could see the balance of forces in the Indo-Pacific shift out of China’s hand, or at the very least, cause China to think twice before initiating a military conflict.
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Image by David Mark from Pixabay