Biden for the first time in Japan agrees on expanding security alliance

Just weeks after the reshaping of the Japanese defence strategy, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida meets in Washington on Friday (13.01) with US President Joe Biden. The two countries are strengthening their military, economic and technological co-operation by thus reacting to changes in geopolitical security circumstances.

Kishida named his first visit to the White House as a very important „”.

“We will show the rest of the world a stronger security alliance, creating the axis for security and diplomacy of Japan”, Kishida said. “We will also present our further co-operation for achieving a free and open Indolence. ”

Security on Taiwan's road is also at the focus of the newly reinforced American-yponese alliance. A statement published last Friday (6.01) by the White House says that Biden and Kishida will discuss expanding co-operation in the context of a series of regional and global themes since climate change, important technologies for the future, North Korean nuclear programmes, as well as the war in Ukraine, and to the „the preservation of peace and stability on the road of Taiwan”.

“China

The summit's approach concerns the new orientation of Japan's defence and security policy. Reformed directives in December provide answers to the most serious and more complex <x0 circumstances of security” since World War II, the relevant document says. China's military demonstration in East Asia is described as the greatest strategic „sfides” of all time. So Japan will spend more on defence and alliances with the United States will assume a more important military role.

Kishida will increase the defence budget by 2027 to two per cent of the gross product in the country, while so far as the official maximum quota was one per cent. At the same time Japan aims for the first time at „military counterattack capability”, for neutralising missile positions in hostile territory. To that end, Japan will purchase 500 rockets from the US and construct its missiles.

The change of strategy is Japan's last major step after a multi-year road towards a larger military power. The prime minister for many years Shinzo Abe in this strategy looked at the road to Japan as normal „ ”. For years Kishida has been foreign minister in the government of Abea and has supported his policy.

Dating from traditional postwar pacifism in Japan was also wanted by the United States. Measured by forces with China for Taiwan and the course of borders east of the southern Chinese U.S. Sea needs a more capable Japan to act. “While President Beden at the meeting with Kishida will declare his support for Japan's new defence targets, which require a co-operation with the US for its development and realisation”, politicalologist Sebastian Maslow of Chiraiuri University in Sendai thinks.

Under the meeting between Beden and Kishida on the clock (13.01) will also be signed a cyber security agreement by Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yasutove Nisimura, as well as US Minister for Homeland Protection. / DW/