Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, in a recent phone call to U.S. President Joe Biden, called for the need to strengthen the decades-old alliance between their countries but omitted any mention of a further extension to the presence of U.S. military bases in the country.
The Japanese and U.S. leaders shared their “serious concerns” about the possibility of an all-out war in the Middle East following Iran’s missile strikes on Israel and strongly condemned the escalation, according to the Japanese government.
“I told President Biden that I intend to follow the path that he and (former) Prime Minister Kishida set in significantly expanding the bilateral alliance and further strengthening it,” Ishiba said just a day after he took over from Fumio Kishida.
I told President Biden that I intend to follow the path that he and (former) Prime Minister Kishida set in significantly expanding the bilateral alliance and further strengthening it.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba
Ishiba, who has described the security situation facing the country as “the most severe since World War II,” said he explained the need to boost Japan’s defenses, “both in the size (of spending) and substance.”
Ishiba believes that the status of the current agreement that allows U.S. bases to operate in Japan should be revised but the presence of American troops in the country remains a very thorny issue in the country.
The prime minister also floated the idea of stationing Self-Defense Forces troops in the United States for training, while jointly managing U.S. bases in Japan. The bulk of such facilities are concentrated in Okinawa, seen as strategically important because of its proximity to Taiwan and to the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are administered by Japan but claimed by China.
Ishiba and Biden agreed on the need for summit-level talks with South Korea and other strategic allies, the prime minister told reporters.
“We want to strengthen the network of like-minded nations,” Ishiba said, touching on the Quad framework involving Australia, India, Japan and the United States, as well as three-way cooperation with the Philippines.
Ishiba and Biden agreed to coordinate closely in resolving the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the prime minister.
Japan and the United States share a vision of making the Indo-Pacific “free and open,” a region that includes the East and South China seas, where China’s assertiveness has raised security concerns.
Ishiba has raised the possibility for the region to establish a collective security framework akin to NATO, wherein an attack on a member is considered an attack on other members.
