ANI | Updated: Mar 02, 2021 23:03 IST
Tokyo [Japan], March 2 (ANI): Amid intense provocations by China and North Korea, Japan has emerged as a quiet leader in the Indo-Pacific, establishing itself as a stalwart of the liberal, rules-based international order.
According to Foreign Affairs, Japan s inconspicuous ascent to regional leadership has gone mostly unnoticed in an era of Chinese bellicosity, North Korea s provocations and a raging COVID-19 pandemic. Yet Tokyo has deepened ties with neighbours, expanded multilateral initiative and set the regional agenda on trade and digital governance, among other issues.
Since the signing of a security agreement in 1951 between Japan and the US, Tokyo has pursued a largely reactive foreign policy that Japanese diplomats described, on various occasions, as sterile or naive . In the 1960s-70s, Japan began a miraculous climb to become the second-largest economy in the world, partly due to which other
Over the last decade, and especially over the last four years, Japan has emerged as a quiet leader in the Indo-Pacific. While the United States abandoned its allies and succumbed to illiberal populism under President Donald Trump, Japan remained a stalwart of the liberal, rules-based international order. It deepened ties with its neighbors, expanded multilateral initiatives, and set the regional agenda on trade and digital governance, among other issues. Through a combination of good timing, clear-eyed leadership, and innovative domestic reform, the island nation has proved not only a reliable partner to the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific but an architect of the region’s emerging liberal order.