Xi and Putin Drive Japan and NATO Closer Together

NATO’s European nations are ratcheting up efforts to mobilise friendly non-allies around the world to come to Ukraine’s aid, as the US commitment under the Trump administration is in question.

During his first Indo-Pacific visit as NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte secured Japan’s pledge to join the alliance’s main platform for aiding and training the Ukrainian military.

“I appreciate your willingness to participate in the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine, which helps Ukraine fight today, but also for Ukraine to build up its armed forces for tomorrow,” Rutte, who became the alliance’s boss in October, said in a joint press conference with Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

The platform, NSATU, was formed last summer as NATO, in anticipation of a Trump victory, sought to institutionalise a format led personally by then-US defence secretary Lloyd Austin.

Ishiba was upbeat about Tokyo’s bond with NATO. In a statement after a working dinner with Rutte, the Japanese leader said he aspired to “elevate Japan-NATO cooperation to new heights”.

Germany, the host country for NSATU (which is based in Wiesbaden), has already shown interest in stepping up collaboration with Japan militarily. When I spoke to Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, chief of the German air force, last July, he said he would welcome Japanese military aircraft conducting joint exercises in Europe.

Japan Maritime Self Defence Force ships during a 2018 exercise in the Baltic Sea (NATO/Flickr)

“We believe it is important that the Ministry of Defence can learn useful lessons through cooperation with this organization,” Nakatani told journalists on Friday. “A new way of fighting has become evident in the aggression against Ukraine, and we hope to obtain a wide range of knowledge and lessons in various fields, including cyber, disinformation, and drones.”

Japan’s interest in more battlefield intelligence on Ukraine comes as North Korean and Chinese soldiers have been found fighting alongside the Russians over the last few months.

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, more than 150 Chinese citizens are fighting in Ukraine alongside the Russian army. The Ukrainian military last week captured two Chinese citizens in the Russian army.

China has rejected claims that it was a party to the war. It also reacted strongly to Rutte’s visit to Japan, fearing that NATO was seeking a bigger role in the Indo-Pacific. Beijing “expressed strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition against Japan colluding with NATO to unjustifiably interfere in China's internal affairs, hype up regional tensions, and stoke confrontation and division,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Lin added, “should not overstep the geographical scope defined in its own treaty or seek to expand its authority beyond its mandate.”

The reality for Tokyo, though, is that it’s exactly China that drives it closer to NATO. With an aggressive posture in the Indo-Pacific, its role as what NATO calls a “decisive enabler” in the Russian war against Ukraine further increases the urgency for Tokyo to seek closer links with especially key European countries within NATO. Any US-China tension over Taiwan in the coming years will almost certainly involve Japan, an American ally.

Even though France single-handedly blocked NATO setting up a new liaison office in Tokyo in 2023, Japan recently appointed for the first time an ambassador to the Brussels-based alliance.

From NATO’s perspective, a key agenda on the table is to deepen cooperation on defence industry and innovation. Europe’s dire need of better, faster, newer military gear is growing due to the fear of Russia’s intention to test NATO countries, especially those members in the Baltic region once occupied by the Soviet Union.

Replenishing Europe’s military stocks donated for Ukraine has proven a timely and costly exercise, and the ongoing trade war started by Trump will make it an even tougher sell for European governments to spend billions on American products.

That makes Asian suppliers all the more attractive. South Korea, for instance, has emerged as a core partner for some European countries such as Poland and Romania, which require rapid deliveries of weapons to replace kit sent to Ukraine.

Japan, for its part, relaxed its decades-old policy against exports of lethal weapons last year, enabling Patriot missiles it manufactured to be transferred to the United States, which is facing a shortage of supplies given the needs of Ukraine and Israel. Tokyo also allowed lethal weapons to be exported providing it falls under one of five designated categories: rescue, transport, warning, surveillance, and minesweeping.

And Japan also authorised last year that in future it can export its next-generation stealth supersonic fighting jets that will be jointly developed with two NATO allies: the United Kingdom and Italy, ready by 2035 at the earliest.

Both Japan and NATO make it clear that there’s no plan to extend the alliance’s collective defence doctrine to cover Tokyo. Short of that, much exchange, cooperation and deal-making can be expected, thanks to Beijing and Moscow.

Stuart Lau is a Brussels-based journalist specialising in geopolitics, NATO and Indo-Pacific issues. He has worked for Politico, BBC News, the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, and the South China Morning Post.