Opportunities and Challenges in the Indo-Pacific: A Next-Generation Perspective
Introduction
by Tobias Harris
For more than a decade, the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), in partnership with the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, has selected a group of rising experts on national security, foreign policy, andgeoeconomics to participate in the Young Strategists Forum in Tokyo. This program not only enables a diverse group—drawn from governments, militaries, think tanks, universities, and businesses in the United States, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia—to participate in a tabletop strategy exercise and meet senior officials and experts in Tokyo. It also builds relationships across borders among future leaders that will help strengthen cooperation among like-minded countries and, through an alumni network that now numbers in the hundreds, gives participants a chance to meet more experienced colleagues in their fields.
During the January 2024 convening of the Young Strategists Forum in Tokyo, participants engaged in an Indo-Pacific strategy simulation led by Dr. Zack Cooper (American Enterprise Institute) before joining meetings with officials and experts from Japan’s prime minister’s office; the Japanese ministries of defense, foreign affairs, and economy, trade, and industry; the US embassy in Tokyo and US Forces Japan; and think tanks including the Institute of Geoeconomics and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
This publication, a collection of essays written by the 2024 Young Strategists Forum participants, provides an opportunity for them to share insights gleaned from their professional backgrounds and their time in Tokyo. Authors could write on topics that interested them most. What emerges from this collection is a comprehensive look at the evolving regional and global orders, the threats that the United States, Japan, and other like-minded countries face, and the ways in which the United States and Japan can work together to defend what they refer to as the “free and open international order”.
This volume opens with a contribution from Justin K. Chock, a student at Yale Law School, who discusses the opportunities of AI research and development for defense purposes in the context of US-Japan relations.
This volume continues with a section on the changing global order and its consequences. Rie Hayashi Matsumoto, a Japanese civil servant on leave to pursue a PhD in technology security at University College London, discusses how the rise of China and other emerging powers in the “Global South” are changing the world order, creating new challenges for successful diplomacy. The impact of this can be felt across numerous domains, and, in her contribution, Mercedes Page, a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, notes that geopolitical fragmentation and weak global rulemaking bodies present a risk to a global resource that is essential for commerce in the 21st century: the undersea cable network. Finally, Titli Basu, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, examines the unique perspective that one emerging power—India—brings to cooperation with the United States, Japan, and Australia in the Quad framework, thereby introducing “the United States and its allies to different views from outside their comfort zone”.
The next section looks more closely at geopolitical competition in the Indo-Pacific. Aya Adachi, a German scholar, examines how countries in the region have tried to balance a desire for economic engagement with China with concerns about overdependence on it for critical materials and vulnerabilities to Beijing’s economic coercion. She concludes: “Despite the backdrop of rivalry and competition with China, and ongoing signaling and deterrence efforts, pragmatism and ambiguity are inherent features of the international economic order.” Howard Wang, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, identifies another threat that Indo-Pacific countries face from China. He examines the use of “cognitive domain operations”—propaganda, negative messaging, and other information operations—aimed at undermining popular support for allied cooperation and cohesion among the United States, Japan, and other like-minded countries. Finally, Richard Javad Heydarian, a journalist and scholar from the Philippines, looks at Japan’s responses to the changing strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific and the ways in which decisions made in Tokyo impact regional security.
The third section shifts its focus to the United States and its alliance with Japan. It explores Washington’s responses to challenges to the free and open international order. The section opens with a contribution from Shu Fukuya, deputy director of the strategic research department at the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), that looks at changes to American policy toward China under the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations. Fukuya notes that there are some surprising continuities between the two and suggests that the “old-style internationalism” of the post-Cold War era may not return. However, Alexandra Chinchilla, a professor at Texas A&M University, and Brian Slusser, an officer of the US Marine Corps, argue that the United States still has a global security role to play. They stress the importance of US support for Ukraine= and note that US actions in Europe and other parts of the world have direct implications for Washington’s policy in the Indo-Pacific. “Supporting Ukraine”, they write, “demonstrates the reliability of the United States as an ally and partner, as well as affirms its global leadership”. Meanwhile, Rie Horiuchi, a Japanese defense ministry official, shows how the war in Ukraine has changed the landscape for global defense production and highlights ways in which Japan and the United States work together to bolster defense-industry capacity in like-minded countries. Finally, Courtney Winterhill, a US Department of State official, looks at cooperation between Washington and Tokyo in another area of increasingly critical importance: promoting decarbonization and combating climate change. She provides insights from a trip that John Podesta, the US special presidential envoy for climate, took to Japan in March to promote the coordination of American and Japanese policies relevant to these two goals.
Finally, the volume closes with an essay by Daisuke Minami, a geopolitical risk adviser at PwC Japan. It looks to the future and considers the implications that the second Trump administration could have on trade and security in the Indo-Pacific, and gauging the potential impact on businesses in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere in the region.
Minami’s essay is a fitting contribution to close the volume. It highlights a key goal of the Young Strategists Forum. In both the tabletop exercise, which simulates regional security dynamics decades into the future, and in meetings in Tokyo, participants are encouraged to think not just about the region as it exists today but to imagine the impact of today’s trends on Indo-Pacific security and prosperity for years to come.
All the essays in this volume show the depth and sophistication of the program’s participants, and highlight the value of the Young Strategists Forum as a means of supporting the professional development of young leaders who will play critical roles guiding the United States, Japan, and other like-minded countries through a challenging century.