No ‘sayonara’ for Japan in Indo-Pacific geopolitics

The visit by the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, to India, in March 2023, during which he engaged with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, on global and bilateral issues, focused on cooperation between the G-7 and the G-20. Besides this, Mr. Kishida also unveiled “Japan’s New Plan for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific” and exchanged views about deepening the “Japan-India Special Strategic and Global Partnership”. Japan’s FOIP clearly shows that Japan wants to reinforce the idea that it has been the main champion of the FOIP concept, and Mr. Kishida’s speech underlined that given the current geopolitical landscape with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, East China Sea, the Indian Line of Actual Control and the Taiwan Straits, there is a need to give a fresh push and momentum to this concept. The New Plan for the FOIP lays stress on the need to uphold the rules-based order and respect each other’s territorial sovereignty, with Mr. Kishida warning that “at a time when the international community is at a historical turning point, I would like to clarify the concept of FOIP once again to propose a guiding perspective to be shared by the international community which, if left unchecked, could drift towards division and confrontation”. The foundation There is a realisation that Japan needs to do much more in the region, and towards this, ‘four pillars of cooperation’ under the new FOIP have been outlined: principles for peace and rules for prosperity; addressing challenges in an Indo-Pacific way; multi-layered connectivity; and extending efforts for security and safe use of the “sea” to the “air”.