Last week’s meeting of Group of Seven leaders in Canada had high hopes from six of the exclusive multilateral club. But they failed to realize that the US – not just US President Donald Trump – no longer sees value in large and exclusive multilateral groupings like the G7, the Group of 20, East Asian Summit, the UN and its related organizations such as the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the Human Rights Council. Instead, Washington views the US’ comparative advantages being best achieved through an American leader who understands that the currency of international relations in the 21st century is not multilateralism but comprehensive national power. This does not exclude “minilateral” groupings such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between the US, Australia, India, and Japan; or the AUKUS security partnership between Australia, Britain, and the US or the “Squad” (Australia, the Philippines, the U.S, and Japan), all of which are smaller groups of like-minded countries that can make decisions quickly, divert resources efficiently, and not be hobbled by the ungainliness of larger multilateral organizations.
These macro-trends in international affairs have transformative consequences for Japan and the rest of America’s allies. Whether you are Tokyo or Ottawa, Canberra or Seoul, you must calculate your relationship with the US based on the equation that you can no longer rely on the US prioritizing the collective good as its calculus for its national interests; i.e., that the peace, security and prosperity of US allies brings security to the US. In the new post-liberal hegemonic order, the US cannot be guaranteed to act in the best interest of its allies and partners if it does not tangentially align with Washington’s natural interests. To navigate this new reality, Tokyo and other US allies must first demonstrate that they are doing everything in their power to help themselves and that by helping themselves they are also helping the US.
In this new context, critics of Trump will argue that his transactional diplomacy and MAGA (Make America Great Again) foreign policy is a form of gangsterism or a “protection racket” forcing allies to pay for their security. This criticism, while not without merit, fails to acknowledge that Obama, Trump 1.0 and Biden all made similar requests of allies to enhance their defense spending and shoulder a greater share of the security burden. In fact, every post-Cold War US president has made the same demand.
The dirty secret among many US allies is that they know they have been delinquent in terms of defense spending. Even Japan – despite former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s commitment to raise defense spending to 2% of gross domestic product by 2027 in the 2022 National Security Strategy – remains ambiguous about its security commitments toward Taiwan and to friends in the South China Sea such as the Philippines and Vietnam as they face gray-zone operations from China.
Even more disconcerting, upon learning of US efforts to eliminate Iran’s nuclear-weapon producing capabilities, instead of supporting the US outright, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba underscored the importance of de-escalating the situation while stressing that Iran’s nuclear development must be “blocked.” His comments embodied the Japanese axiom of kusai mono ni futa wo suru, hoping the problem will go away by sweeping it under the rug instead of supporting the US’ efforts to rid the world of another nuclear-armed state.
The recent G7 meeting in Canada demonstrated to members that President Trump’s attendance was not about the opportunity to have dialogue with G7 members together, rather it was about the opportunity to meet key counterparts bilaterally including Japan, India, and Australia. Washington is seeking serious partners to shape an international order integrum, that place between the dead post-World War II order created by the US and a new multipolar international order in which the US no longer has absolute dominance.
According to a recent Goldman Sachs report, the new international order that is emerging will have China and India as the largest economies by 2075, followed by the US, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt and Brazil. Japan will fall from the fourth to the 12th largest economy. In this new era, the US and its allies can ill afford to have uncommitted partners to comprehensively deal with the “rise of the rest” – a term coined by Fareed Zakaria in his book “The Post-American World and the Rise of the Rest.” As Tsinghua University’s Yan Xue Tong has written, China, along with other authoritarian states, “will work hard to shape an ideological environment conducive to its rise and counter Western values.”
Multilateral groups like the G7 continue to demonstrate that they are not able to act decidedly and with concentrated resources to deal with global challenges including the Israel-Iran crisis, armed conflicts between India and Pakistan, the Ukraine-Russia war, or even pandemics like COVID-19. Given their poor track record, how would they deal with a Taiwan contingency, a further escalation of gray-zone tactics in the South China Sea or in the Himalayan Plateau?
As the disorder of the postwar international order manifests, Japan and other US allies need to understand that the US sees the currency of international relations in the 21st century not as multilateralism but as comprehensive national power. This means working with the US in committed minilateral relationships. This includes demonstrating sustained commitment to their own defense and US security priorities through concrete actions and financial commitments, attending NATO summits, and investing heavily in minilateral partnerships.
Clearly, Trump’s most recent “big win” on this front was the NATO leaders’ joint statement on Wednesday committing to raising defense spending to 5% of GDP. Similarly, at every opportunity, Japan and other US allies need to be at the table – not on the menu – as Washington attempts to deal with the new geopolitical realities that the “rise of the rest” and a multipolar world will bring. Fortunately, strategic thinkers in Japan and former leaders such as the late Prime Minister Abe Shinzo already understood this reality by investing in the Free and Open Indo-Pacific framework in an effort to create a multipolar Indo-Pacific region that pulls the center of the region’s economic influence away from China towards a series of poles that maximize strategic autonomy, attenuate the power of Beijing, and anchor the US into the region with benefits to the US.