What no expert saw coming: The rise of Japan

I needn’t have worried. Two years later, one thing is clear: The experts didn’t know much about the new Japan. No one predicted that this would be an era of Japanese transformation, a time when the Japanese surprised nearly everyone with what they can and will do.

First, national security: In a relatively short period of time, Japan has redefined how it thinks about deterrence and stepped from a nation limited in its exercise and definition of self-defense into the role of regional security partner. Driven by a belligerent China, a bellicose Russia and the threat of ballistic missiles from North Korea, Japan has updated three national security documents that were long thought to be untouchable — and then committed to doubling its defense budget to 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2027, giving it the third-largest defense budget worldwide.

The new defense budget — $56 billion this year and $300 billion over five years — will enable the purchase of F-35 stealth fighter jets and critical munitions, including 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the United States. From doubling the defense budget to enhancing its counterstrike capability, Japan has fundamentally altered and upended decades-old policies that were once sacrosanct.

Japan has also been busy building a broader network of partners to safeguard the region. U.S.-Japan military exercises that once included perhaps one or two other countries now feature other participating nations and their service members. This diversification of these exercises strengthens regional deterrence and reflects a growing demand for expanded Japanese security participation.

Like its evolving defense policies, Japan also has broadened its diplomatic engagement. Gone are the days of Japan focusing first on parochial national interests limited to its shores and following others on global issues. Instead, Japan is setting the pace diplomatically on the world’s most pressing challenges in the region and beyond.

What changed? Japan realized that its future is indivisible from what happens in the region and around the world. It decided to play a larger role to project the alliance and serve as a counterweight to Chinese regional aggression.

Consider August’s historic trilateral summit at Camp David. Seeing our Japanese and Korean allies work together to strengthen regional deterrence through security cooperation has been a long-term dream of Washington’s — and China’s worst nightmare. As an outcome of the Camp David summit, the two nations are also cooperating on ballistic missile defense.

Ukraine is another example. Japan marshaled the support of allies as Group of Seven chair and secured votes from eight out of 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations members to join the March 2022 U.N. resolution against Russia’s illegal invasion. Japan was also the first nation to commit reserves of liquefied natural gas for European partners’ energy security in the early days of Russian economic coercion.

Finally, but vitally, few expected decades of Japanese economic stagnation to end. But ended they have.

Despite the global headwinds of inflation and strained supply chains, Japan has played to its strengths as an alternative to China-bound investment and seen notable advances for workers, investors and businesses.

Japan is growing because its capital inflows are growing; China is suffering from capital outflow. Japanese stocks are at record highs; Chinese stocks shredded $7 trillion of value in just the past few months. Japan is seeing a property boom; China is suffering from a property bust. Japanese workers are enjoying wage gains not seen in 30 years; China struggles with ever-rising youth unemployment and deflation.

This upswing reflects something deeper and more fundamental about the Japanese economy: rising confidence in a system based on the rule of law vs. one based on the rule of one.

The fringe benefits can be seen in the way Japanese cultural exports, from baseball’s Shohei Ohtani to cinema’s “The Boy and the Heron,” are the rage around the globe, a sign that Japan knows the value of soft power and cultural attraction — and how it trumps the hard power of coercion, aggression and repression.

In the coming years, Japan’s success in civilian space exploration and renewable energy development, including investments in hydrogen energy and solid-state battery storage, will position it to lead the next wave of technological innovation. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s state visit in April will underscore what Japan has achieved in the past two years — and the growing role it will play as our strategic partner in the next 20 years.

The experts I consulted two years ago might say now that all this was foreseen. But trust me: No one saw it coming.