Two competing visions have emerged for how US allies and partners should deal with a changing world order. At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos in January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared a rupture in global politics and called for middle powers to work together to find alternatives to relying on the United States. Fresh off a visit to China, he cast Beijing as a viable counterweight to US power. Meanwhile in Japan, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi insists that China, not the United States, is the most disruptive threat that countries face. Takaichi’s landslide victory in a snap election in February gave her a mandate to chart a strategy for Japan — and potentially other US allies — based on increasing security cooperation with the United States despite Washington’s unpredictability.
Carney’s speech earned a standing ovation and plaudits from commentators and leaders across Europe and as far away as Australia, and it scored major points in domestic Canadian politics. The prime minister’s vision may be appealing to US allies tired of Trump’s bullying, but it does not constitute a grand strategy that other middle powers will find usable or enduring. Indo-Pacific countries sitting in Beijing’s shadow are already well aware that there is no real alternative to US power, and even European countries are likely to come to a similar conclusion despite talk of strategic autonomy from Washington. If countries want, as Carney said, to be “at the table” and not “on the menu,” then Takaichi’s approach is much more likely to succeed in a world in which Beijing’s disorder is still far more destabilising than Trump’s.
Takaichi’s strategy does not force a false choice between the United States and middle powers. Rather, it recognises that Japan must forge a broader coalition of economic and security partnerships across Asia and Europe with American power at the centre. That is the only viable way to counter China’s coercion. Just a few months ago, it seemed unlikely that the heavy-metal-drumming, motorcycle-riding Takaichi would last long as prime minister. Now, her foreign policy vision is setting the most realistic path forward for responsible states confronting a shaken world order.
LONG IN THE MAKING
Takaichi’s vision for Japanese foreign policy is an extension of what her mentor, Shinzo Abe, pursued when he was prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and 2012 to 2020. Takaichi, like Abe, wants to focus on increasing Japan’s security and restoring its leadership.
Abe’s vision developed in the years between his two terms as prime minister, when Chinese encroachment on Japanese-controlled islands and waters in the East China Sea humiliated Japan. In 2013, after he returned to office, Abe’s government conducted a series of war games to prepare for the country’s first published national security strategy. These simulations revealed that Japan on its own would soon be unable to handle China’s military in a major clash in the East China Sea. Worse, Abe’s team concluded that the United States would also find it increasingly difficult to counter China’s regional ambitions without more help from Japan and other allies.
Up to that point, Japan’s strategy had been to leave geopolitics to the United States so that Tokyo could focus on economic growth and improving diplomatic ties with partners around the world. Every Japanese government since World War II had interpreted the peace clause of Japan’s constitution, which renounces the right to wage war to resolve international disputes, to mean that Japanese forces could not participate in coalition military activities with the United States or other regional allies except for the purpose of defending Japan (the so-called ban on collective self-defence). This clause was the perfect excuse to keep Japan out of wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. But for Abe, facing a rising China, it was a liability. Japanese leaders could no longer step aside while the United States led the way; the Japanese archipelago, after all, would now be on the frontlines of any future conflict. Instead of avoiding entanglement in American wars, Japan now needed to help shore up US-led deterrence in Asia.
Abe’s strategy was rooted in hardheaded realism, not just an ideological commitment to the alliance with the United States. Abe persisted even after he received a mixed reaction from the Obama administration, which at the time was trying to reassure Beijing that the United States did not aim to contain Chinese growth. Abe championed what he called the “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy, which sought to limit China’s regional influence by investing in Southeast Asia and strengthening diplomatic, economic, and security partnerships with democracies such as Australia and India. He pushed through legislation reinterpreting Japan’s constitution to allow forces to join collective defence coalitions (on the condition that there was a threat to Japan’s survival), and he reversed Japan’s declining real defence spending. He also expanded infrastructure financing in Asia to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative; championed the Quad security partnership among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States; and worked to link NATO with Asian allies and hold together G-7 countries despite European friction with the first Trump administration. Abe’s goal was to reinforce connections among democratic powers and increase their collective resolve.
This framework gained traction in Washington as well as Canberra, London, and even Seoul. The first Trump administration adopted the term “free and open Indo-Pacific” to describe its own approach to Asia, and the Biden administration kept the label, too. Abe had imagined and then spearheaded the collective action Japan needed to manage an increasingly powerful and ambitious China.
A NEW GAME IN TOWN
Few observers imagined that Takaichi would be the torchbearer of this geopolitical vision. She began her political life not in Japan but in the United States, where she interned in the late 1980s for the progressive Colorado congresswoman Patricia Schroeder. She then rose through the ranks of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as a devout protégé of Abe, but she was not one of the politicians he initially spotlighted for future leadership.
When she became prime minister in October after the resignation of the more centrist Shigeru Ishiba, the LDP was struggling to stay in power without a majority in the Diet. Takaichi was prepared to borrow and spend for defence and economic security, moves that were likely to provoke pushback from China, the Japanese left wing, and possibly bond markets. She calls Margaret Thatcher her hero, but critics predicted she would be more like Liz Truss — whose term as British prime minister lasted only 49 days — because Takaichi’s agenda seemed out of sync with where politics and markets were headed.
Takaichi hit turbulence early, after a November debate in the Diet in which she suggested that a Chinese attack on or blockade of Taiwan would represent a threat to Japan’s survival. This incurred the wrath of Beijing, which imposed severe economic and diplomatic boycotts of Japan. Almost on cue, the LDP’s pacifist coalition partner Komeito defected to the opposition in the hope of knocking Takaichi from power and forming a new governing coalition with other internationalist parties on the political left. Takaichi held her ground; the public loved her resolve. When she called a snap election in February, Japanese voters rewarded the LDP with a supermajority in the Diet.
Takaichi has the most serious strategy on offer right now.
Newly empowered, Takaichi will issue her own national security strategy later this year. Defence spending will likely hit the 2027 target of 2% of GDP, or $58 billion, ahead of schedule, and the next five-year plan is expected to raise the target further. Japan will use export controls and invest more resources in critical minerals supply chains and R&D to reinforce its technology advantages over China. Takaichi will also push for the resumption of Quad summits, which were interrupted in 2025 when the relationship between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi soured. And she will continue to promote defence cooperation and sign production agreements with key partners: Japan is already developing new fighter jets with the United Kingdom and Italy and exporting Japanese warships to Australia.
Takaichi’s goal is to restore a favourable balance of power in the region centred on an even stronger security relationship with the United States. She is working with Washington to set up a new side-by-side command headquarters in Japan, accelerate bilateral planning for a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and increase Japanese investment in critical minerals and energy development in the United States. Japan is also expanding joint missile production, maintenance of US naval vessels and aircraft in Japan, and cooperation on supply chain resilience with the United States. At international forums such as the G-7, Takaichi will likely follow Abe’s example and push for solidarity among the leading democracies rather than, as Carney suggested in his Davos speech, “de-risk” by seeking more distance from the United States.
None of this will be easy. In a national poll conducted last year by the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, only 22% of Japanese respondents said they trusted the United States. There is anxiety in Tokyo that Trump might undermine Takaichi in his desperation for a trade deal when he meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing at the end of the month, possibly adopting China’s language on relations with Taiwan or its dispute with Japan. But despite that unease, polls conducted by the Japanese government show that public support for the alliance with the United States has risen since the middle of President Joe Biden’s term, from 90% in 2022 to 92% in 2025. This is not because Trump is more popular than Biden, but because China continues to remind the Japanese public that even a wobbly United States is indispensable.
GRAPPLING WITH UNCERTAINTY
Takaichi is expected to visit the United States for a summit with Trump on March 19, shortly before the US president heads to Beijing to meet with Xi. What will come out of the Takaichi-Trump meeting is uncertain: despite overwhelming support for Japan among the American public and members of Congress, the Japanese prime minister knows from history that US presidents can surprise and disappoint. Journalists still write about how US President Richard Nixon unilaterally announced troop withdrawals from Southeast Asia and ended the dollar’s convertibility to gold in the 1970s, for instance, which ushered in severe inflation and raised fears that the United States was abandoning the region.
But uncertainty can help generate serious strategy. And Takaichi has the most serious strategy on offer right now, one built on reinforcing the US alliance rather than speculating about a post-American world. Partnering with Washington is not about acquiescing to Washington’s needs, but about using leverage effectively to ensure that the alliance works to Japan’s advantage. When Takaichi was minister of economic security from 2022 to 2024, Japan’s strategy was to become indispensable because of its technology, investment, and military capabilities. As prime minister today, she knows that Japan is essential to US efforts to deter Chinese military encroachment and to obtain critical minerals. Key advisers around Trump also know this. A strategy centred on working with the United States will allow Japan more opportunities to harness US power to address the challenging circumstances it faces in the western Pacific, even with all the uncertainty emanating from Washington.
For the United States’ Asian allies, Japan’s example has clear advantages. Xi has barely concealed his ambitions to make China the dominant force in the Indo-Pacific, often pressuring and threatening neighbouring countries if they do anything to upset Beijing. This is why in Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea, support for a stronger alliance with the United States remains high even as trust in the Trump administration has sunk.
Takaichi has a better hand to play with Trump than her European counterparts do, especially because the “America first” wing of the Republican Party has historically supported a focus on Asia over Europe. Yet Takaichi’s vision is likely a better fit than Carney’s for Europe, too. The United States is responsible for more than 70% of NATO spending; no European (or Canadian) leader has the political capital or power to shift that ratio significantly. Moreover, although countries are championing self-sufficiency in defence production, they are mainly pursuing rent-seeking national projects rather than pan-European weapons systems that are strong enough to replace US capabilities. And NATO still needs the US alliance network in Asia to counter the growing alignment of China and Russia.
Perhaps the most memorable description of the situation was that of a seasoned British diplomat who is said to have responded to his European counterparts’ complaints about the Reagan administration in the 1980s by acknowledging, “Everything you say about the Americans is true … but they’re the only Americans we have.” For middle powers from Ottawa to Rome to Seoul, maintaining or even expanding economic and security cooperation with the United States — supplemented by other partnerships — is still by far the most realistic strategy to maintain a favourable balance of power against Beijing, which represents the greatest disruption to the international system. Carney read the Zeitgeist at Davos. But when it comes to dealing with the rupture in the international system, it is Takaichi who really understands the geopolitics.