TOKYO, Sept 27 — Shigeru Ishiba, tapped to be Japan's next prime minister, may cause diplomatic headaches for the United States (US), with proposals to revamp Tokyo's closest alliance by locking Washington into an "Asian North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)" and stationing Japanese troops on US soil.
Ishiba, elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) today, outlined his plan in a paper to the Hudson Institute think tank last week. He argues that the changes would deter China from using military force in Asia.
"The absence of a collective self-defence system like NATO in Asia means that wars are likely to break out because there is no obligation for mutual defence," he wrote.
Ishiba, like many Japanese politicians, has voiced concern over a surge in Chinese military activity around Japanese islands.
However, the NATO idea has already been rejected by Washington, with East Asia and the Pacific assistant secretary of state Daniel Kritenbrink dismissing it as hasty.
"He is very technical about military matters but in terms of national security diplomacy, he really has not shown much chops," said Tokyo-based Rorschach Advisory financial political analyst Joseph Kraft.
But Ishiba doubled down on his idea today, telling a press conference that "the relative decline of (the) US might" made an Asian treaty organisation necessary.
Since its defeat in World War Two, Japan has been in the embrace of Washington, which provides protection with its nuclear arsenal and has an aircraft carrier, fighter jets, and some 50,000 troops in Japan.
Ishiba's potentially disruptive changes would come as the US presses for closer ties, Tokyo seeks defence cooperation with South Korea and Australia, and forges security ties with European nations, including the United Kingdom and France, to counter China's growing influence.
Ishiba's NATO would combine a collection of existing diplomatic and security pacts, including the Quad grouping — Japan, the US, Australia, and India — the AUKUS agreement of Canberra, Washington, and London, and Japan's deepening security cooperation with neighbour and rival Seoul.
He claimed the new security alliance could even share control of Washington's nuclear weapons as a deterrent against Japan's nuclear-armed neighbours.
Campaigning before today's vote, Ishiba said he wanted to rebalance Japan's alliance with the US, including greater oversight of US military bases in Japan — a regular source of friction with locals.
In his Hudson paper, Ishiba, who has a reputation as a troublemaker in the LDP, also said Japan's military alliance with the US could be revised to allow Tokyo to station troops in Guam, a US territory, for the first time since 1944.
"I would venture to guess that it is not going to happen. It looks like he is trying to kind of fundamentally change the relationship, but not in a completely negative way," said The Asia Group Japan associate Rintaro Nishimura.
— Reuters
