Strengthening maritime co-operation in the Indo-Pacific region and the role of Japan

With an increasingly aggressive China, westernised Japan has an important role to play in the Indo-Pacific. Under its leadership, a collective security alliance could be created in the region.

I retired from the Japanese Self-Defence Forces in 2009 after serving as Chief of Staff of the General Staff. Fifteen years have passed since then, and during that time a tsunami caused a major disaster in eastern Japan. There was also a global pandemic caused by Covid-19. Humanity still does not have the wisdom or the ability to control and prevent such major disasters.

On the other hand, we believed that the wisdom of humanity, which had experienced the unprecedented destruction of the Second World War, was capable of establishing an international system that could prevent an all-out war. But the reality of international conflicts could not be suppressed.