Japan has long been viewed as a passive member of the Global North. Its only apparent contribution was to lend an “Asian colour” to the predominantly Caucasian G7 forum. The colour of the G7, of course, has been changing thanks to the likes of Barack Obama and Rishi Sunak who have risen to the top of the political heap in the democratic societies of the North.
But this column is not about the changing racial character of the G7 chancelleries. Its focus is on Japan’s impressive recent leadership in the world of strategic ideas. It is Tokyo, for example, that has constructed and popularised the Indo-Pacific construct over the last decade and more. Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe first articulated the idea of the Indo-Pacific in an address to the Indian Parliament in August 2007. That speech had called for a coalition of Asian democracies that eventually took the form of the Quadrilateral forum. While most countries, including India and the US, hummed and hawed about the Indo-Pacific, it was Tokyo’s persistence that helped the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as integral to the geopolitics of Asia.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has now taken the initiative to raise the Global South — an omnibus term for the developing or the so-called Third World — to the top of the G7 agenda. When Delhi resurrected the idea of “Global South” last year in the run-up to its presidency of the G20, there was widespread scepticism as well as concern. The sceptics said there is no such thing as the Global South any more. After all, there is enormous economic differentiation within the Third World today and many developing nations have become developed.
Others wondered if Delhi was going back to its Cold War trade unionism — mobilising the Global South against the North. But Japan’s adoption of the case for urgent engagement of the Global South lends much-needed nuance to the debate. It also boosts Delhi’s diplomacy on the Global South, which is not about returning to the past but reconnecting to long-neglected global constituencies in a new framework and context.
In a major policy speech at the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington last month, Japan’s PM Kishida cautioned other G7 countries on the dangers of neglecting the Global South. Kishida’s emphasis on engaging the Global South will hopefully rub off on other developed nations. Japan is hosting this year’s G7 summit at Hiroshima, Kishida’s hometown, in mid-May. With India wanting to make the voice of the Global South heard at this year’s G20 summit, there is much new room for global political collaboration between Delhi and Tokyo.
Japan’s new emphasis on the Global South comes amidst a major transformation of its foreign and security policies under Kishida’s leadership. Kishida is among the few leaders in Asia who has clearly articulated the implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago this month. “If we let this unilateral change of the status quo by force go unchallenged”, Kishida said, “it will happen elsewhere in the world, including Asia.” Having been at the receiving end of Chinese bullying on its maritime frontier, Japan has few problems in seeing the implications of the Russian action in Ukraine for Asia.
The Ukraine war, coming on top of the long-standing threats from North Korea and mounting security challenges from China, has pushed Kishida towards sweeping reform of Japan’s defence policy. This involved doubling the defence spending to 2 per cent of the GDP over the next 5 years, building a large missile force or “counter strike capability”, boosting cybersecurity capabilities, and taking larger responsibilities for regional security including arms transfers and capacity building in the Indo-Pacific.
The war in Ukraine has helped a pacifist Japan recognise the essential relationship between diplomacy and defence. As Kishida put it, “diplomacy needs to be backed by defence capabilities and reinforcing defence capabilities will also lead to persuasiveness in carrying out our diplomatic efforts”. This new pragmatism is rooted in what Kishida calls Japan’s new “realist diplomacy”.
Realism is also at the heart of Kishida’s approach to the Global South. He confronts head-on the idea so deeply held in the West that it must strive to promote democracy around the world. Speaking in the heart of Washington’s beltway, Kishida pointed out that contrary to the belief in the era of globalisation, the world is not heading towards a converging set of values.
Kishida is firm in his conviction the G7 can’t “impose its values” on the Global South. Instead, Kishida tells his G7 partners: “We need to be more committed to our values. At the same time, when engaging with the Global South, we need to remain humble while putting aside preconceptions and have a firm understanding of their respective historical and cultural backgrounds.”
He alerted them: “Even if we walk on a path which we believe to be right, if the Global South — holding integral places in the international arena — turn their back, we will find ourselves in the minority and unable to resolve mounting policy issues.”
Kishida is reflecting on the fact that many developing nations were not willing to join the Western condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite the fact that the Global South deeply values the ideas of territorial sovereignty and non-intervention in the internal affairs of states. He is acutely conscious of the fact that the West has neglected political engagement with the Global South in recent decades. In the Cold War, the West competed fiercely with Moscow for strategic influence across the Global South.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the G7 simply took the Global South for granted and was more interested in lecturing rather than talking to the leaders of the Global South. This, in turn, left much room for China and Russia to play in the developing world.
Japan now wants the G7 to reconnect with the Global South in more fundamental ways. Kishida believes greater cooperation between the G7 and the developing countries is also critical for addressing the current global challenges. Well before the Global South became an important area of Indian and Japanese diplomacy, the two sides had agreed to deepen regional cooperation across the Indo-Pacific. Kishida’s new approach provides the basis for more substantive and wider collaboration between Delhi and Tokyo in the developing regions of the world.
India, which has long backed Japan’s leadership role in Asia, has every reason to welcome Kishida’s new interest in the Global South. Japan’s initiatives on the Indo-Pacific and the Quad have broken the misperception of Asia as being merely Sino-centric. The India-Japan partnership on the Global South might hopefully help overcome the traditional divides between East and West as well as North and South.
The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Delhi and a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express
