Strategic flattery and defense burden-sharing will help her secure the Indo-Pacific’s future

When Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi arrives in Washington this month to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump, she will face the most complex diplomatic puzzle of her tenure.

As the leader of the Indo-Pacific’s most capable middle power, she must protect Japan’s national interests by locking in American engagement, not just for the duration of the Trump administration but also for the post-Trump era.

To succeed, Takaichi must deploy a disciplined mix of flattery and hard deliverables, demonstrating to the transactional 47th U.S. president that Tokyo is taking its own security seriously and that Making America Great Again is directly contributing to making Japan great again, a synergistic interaction that benefits both countries domestically and internationally.

The strategic reality confronting Tokyo is stark. As Zack Cooper recently noted in his Foreign Affairs essay “Asia After America,” the failure of a comprehensive U.S. economic and governance strategy in the region has left military deterrence as the sole remaining pillar of American engagement.

Moreover, as we’ve seen in Venezuela and Iran, Washington is increasingly exercising unilateral power shorn of traditional global responsibilities. For a frontline state like Japan, navigating this U.S. volatility requires what I term “hardened engagement,” a strategy that builds resilience and deepens security cooperation without triggering a catastrophic regional war.

Takaichi’s primary task is to help the Trump administration understand the immense complexity of the Indo-Pacific. A core component of this reality is that Japan’s national interest does not include engineering a Soviet-style collapse of China. The economic interdependence between Tokyo and Beijing is a structural reality. China remains one of Japan’s largest trading partners, with bilateral trade consistently hovering around the $300 billion mark. A sudden, chaotic implosion of the Chinese economy or a complete, zero-sum decoupling would devastate global supply chains, spike inflation and severely damage Japan’s own prosperity.

As David M. Lampton and Wang Jisi rightly cautioned in their recent Foreign Affairs article, “America and China at the Edge of Ruin,” pushing the region into an unmanaged, devastating cold war serves no one’s interests. Instead, I’ve argued in the past, Japan seeks an “awkward coexistence” with Beijing: maintaining lucrative economic ties in nonstrategic sectors while firmly preventing Chinese hegemony from emerging in the Indo-Pacific.

The threat of that hegemony is real, despite Beijing’s persistent rhetorical obfuscations. Chinese academics frequently attempt to frame China’s rise as benign and cooperative. Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, argued in his 2011 book “Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power” that China pursues “humane authority” (wangdao) rather than American-style “hegemonic authority” (badao).

Similarly, Peking University’s Wang Jisi, in his 2017 book “Creative Involvement: The Evolution of China’s Global Role,” advocated for Beijing to actively and constructively shape international norms. Furthermore, scholars like Sun Jisheng have taken to the Beijing-based Foreign Affairs Review to argue that China must overcome its “discourse deficit” and build “discourse power” to reshape global governance in its image.

Yet, the empirical record of China’s coercive diplomacy and rapid military buildup belies this academic framing. And as Thomas J. Christensen warned in Foreign Affairs recently, the fragile economic truce reached between Washington and Beijing in Busan late last year has only bolstered Beijing’s overconfidence, raising the risk of adventurism in the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea. While some Chinese scholars, such as Shi Yinhong of Renmin University, have bravely cautioned against strategic overextension, the prevailing winds in Beijing blow heavily toward aggressive regional dominance.

Japan is acutely aware of this danger. Nobukatsu Kanehara, executive director at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, has eloquently articulated the need for a pragmatic, realistic national strategy that positions Japan to effectively respond to these geopolitical crises while navigating its own demographic and economic constraints. Former State Minister of Defense Yasuhide Nakayama put the stakes even more bluntly, warning that democratic nations must “wake up” to protect Taiwan, noting that a crisis across the Strait is an existential threat to Japan’s own survival.

This is where Takaichi’s strategy in Washington must pivot from shared threat assessments to hard deliverables. Tokyo has shown its seriousness in this regard by doubling its defense spending toward 2% of gross domestic product, acquiring counterstrike capabilities and launching a Joint Operations Command. But, as I’ve long argued, Japan’s success in fortification risks a paradox: It might inadvertently encourage U.S. retrenchment if Washington feels Tokyo can handle the regional security burden alone.

Takaichi must preempt this by speaking Trump’s language. She must present Japan not as a security dependent asking for charity, but as a robust, paying partner that is actively purchasing American hardware and creating American jobs. By highlighting Japan’s procurement of Tomahawk cruise missiles, SM-6 interceptors and F-35 fighters, Takaichi can appeal directly to Trump’s transactionalism.

But she must go further. Takaichi should propose deeper defense-industrial cooperation, such as utilizing Japanese shipyards to repair and maintain U.S. Navy vessels. This would directly alleviate the strain on America’s depleted defense industrial base, keeping U.S. ships in the theater rather than forcing them into years-long maintenance backlogs in the United States.

Furthermore, Takaichi should emphasize Japan’s role in securing critical supply chains. By investing billions into next-generation semiconductor manufacturing such as the Rapidus project in Hokkaido, which partners with American tech giant IBM, and coordinating with the U.S. on export controls, Japan is actively helping the United States outcompete China in the technologies of the future.

The message Takaichi must deliver in the Oval Office is simple, resonant and highly strategic: Japan is shedding its postwar pacifist constraints and taking on the heavy lifting of regional security, exactly as the Trump administration has demanded of its allies. By serving as the forward anchor of the First Island Chain, Japan is protecting American economic and security interests at a fraction of the cost of the U.S. doing it alone.

By flattering Trump’s demand for burden-sharing and delivering tangible economic and military commitments, Takaichi can effectively institutionalize the alliance against the whims of domestic American politics. In doing so, she will prove that middle-power diplomacy in 2026 requires discipline, leverage and a clear-eyed understanding of Washington’s current political realities. Ultimately, Takaichi must convince Washington that a strong, rearmed Japan is the ultimate validation of Trump’s foreign policy.

There is a well-known Japanese proverb: Kan ni taete baika uruwashi (The plum blossom is beautiful because it endures the winter’s cold). For Japan, navigating the friction of transactional diplomacy and the financial burden of rapid remilitarization represents the bitter cold of winter. But by enduring this short-term pain to permanently anchor the United States in the Indo-Pacific, Tokyo will secure the long-term gain of a stable, prosperous and free region for decades to come.
First published with the Japan Times on March 13, 2026: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2026/03/13/japan/takaichis-us-alliance-blueprint/