Japan

Japan and China are utilising parallel strategies to influence each other and the world over the latest fault-line in their contentious relationship.

Japan’s new supplementary defence budget focuses on hardware, personnel and bases.

Humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons use, dreadfully experienced in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has had little policy impact on concluding a genuine nuclear disarmament convention.

With increasing North Korean nuclear and missile threats, and Chinese nuclear force modernisation, the prospects of indigenous nuclear weapons acquisition by Japan and South Korea cannot be ruled out.

Japan’s proposal to host a NATO liaison office in Tokyo is facing objections from NATO members like France, who view it as a distraction from the alliance’s core task of ensuring security in Europe.

India and Japan as Chairs of the G20 and G7 respectively can play a key role in ensuring that global nuclear instability is effectively managed.

The Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) Initiative aims to enhance regional maritime security via technology and training support.

The Quad has cautiously carved out a practical and cooperative agenda on issues of cybersecurity.

Japan is likely to play a decisive role in positioning Northeast India as a powerhouse through improved connectivity, opening up trade corridors and driving better economic integration.

While the US, Japan and Australia have taken an overtly critical stand towards Russia at the UN, India has abstained from all the UN resolutions condemning Russia. Will divergent views over the Ukrainian crisis weaken the Quad, is a pertinent question being examined in this issue brief.