NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, visited Japan on April 8-9. This is the former Dutch prime minister’s first visit to Japan as NATO secretary general.
On the first day, he met with Japan’s Defense Minister Nakatani Gen and visited the Yokosuka Naval Base and Mitsubishi Electric Kamakura Works. At the Maritime Self-Defense Forces (MSDF) base, he boarded a state-of-the-art frigate and inspected minesweeping equipment.
On April 9, Rutte met with Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Muto Yoji, members of the Diet, and representatives of the Japanese industry. During the trade ministry visit, Rutte was scheduled to meet representatives from eight Japanese start-up companies demonstrating their dual-use tech and products. Rutte also gave a speech at Keio University on “NATO and Japan – Strong Partnerships in an Interconnected World.”
Although a meeting with Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi was not on the schedule, Rutte and Iwaya had just met last week on the sidelines of a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, where Iwaya expressed Tokyo’s intention to elevate Japan-NATO ties.
Two major themes emerge from Rutte’s visit. First, following Japan’s lead, the interconnectedness of threats facing Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Second, respecting Japan’s constraints, the importance of defense industrial cooperation.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio helped shape the global nature of the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Instead of treating the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a regionally limited crisis that Japan could or should stay out of, Kishida treated it as a crisis with potentially extra-regional consequences, an attack against the norms that underpinned the entire international system and that must be thwarted. When he became the first Japanese prime minister to attend a NATO Summit in June 2022, Kishida used this venue to share his “strong sense of crisis that Ukraine may be East Asia tomorrow,” a warning that he would repeat countless times over the next two years. Ishiba, Kishida’s successor, has also adopted that formula, starting with his very first policy speech in October 2024.
In this week’s visit, Rutte reiterated Kishida’s articulation of the interconnected nature of threats – and how China’s rise amplifies those dangers – at every opportunity. In his remarks after meeting with Nakatani, Rutte said, “China, North Korea, and Russia are stepping up their military exercises and their cooperation, undermining global stability, and that means what happens in the Euro-Atlantic matters for the Indo-Pacific and vice versa. So our security, I believe, is inseparable.”
While engaging with the press at the Yokosuka base, he said, “China is supporting Russia’s efforts. China is building up its armed forces, including its navy, at a rapid pace. We cannot be naïve, and we really have to work together, assess what is happening.”
In his speech to Keio students, Rutte noted, “Our security is clearly interlinked. What happens in the Indo-Pacific matters to Europe. What happens in Europe matters to Japan and to this region.” He even repeated Kishida’s favored phrase: “It’s Ukraine today. It could be East Asia tomorrow.”
How the war in Ukraine is concluded will also be of great interest to Japan, as Rutte articulated in an interview with The Japan Times a couple days before his visit. Chinese leader Xi Jinping “will assess … who is going to come out on top, whether it will be the West or Russia,” and if it is Russia, then Xi might be “[inspired] to pursue some of his own territorial ambitions.”
Amid this growing recognition of the interconnected nature of threats to European and Japanese security, Nakatani expressed Japan’s desire to participate in the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) command. Rutte welcomed the Japanese interest. The NSATU, headquartered at a U.S. base in Germany, was agreed to last July and launched last September to coordinate training as well as the supply and repair of military equipment for Ukraine. It operates only on allied territory and does not make NATO a party to the conflict.
Australia and New Zealand – which, along with Japan and South Korea, make up the so-called Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) NATO partners – are already operationally involved with the NSATU. Japan is still considering how it will participate in the NSATU, given the strict constraints on its participation in any form of conflict. Even if Japan does send Self-Defense Force members to Germany, they will not engage in combat.
In addition, Japan is seeking to continue strengthening personnel exchanges, including through SDF officers being dispatched to NATO headquarters.
While NATO and Japan share the perception that threats are interlinked, NATO’s outreach to Japan is shaped by the opportunities and constraints presented by Japanese domestic politics. Due to Japan’s pacifist constitution and the lack of NATO interest in extending the geographic reach of its security guarantee, mutual defense agreements are not yet in the realm of the feasible. At Yokosuka, Rutte clarified that NATO was not trying to become more involved with IP4 countries “in the sense of Article V” – referring to NATO’s mutual defense agreement – “but in terms of joint defense, industrial capacity-building, and innovations.”
In an exclusive interview with The Japan Times, Rutte said that “the United States wants NATO to be more involved [in the region] … in a sense of projecting power.” What “projecting collective power” means is not yet entirely clear. However, as Japan loosens arms exports restrictions, an opportunity clearly exists in defense industrial cooperation. As Japan and NATO increase security ties to the extent possible, Japan can bolster its own domestic defense industry through foreign sales.
Rutte’s meeting with defense industry representatives is unprecedented for a NATO secretary general. He was seeking their assessment on “what they do to ramp up production and how we can better work together” to take the NATO-Japan partnership to the “next level.” According to The Japan Times, an anonymous NATO official said the aim is to explore how to ramp up defense production. The official said that discussions with the IP4 on defense industrial cooperation will focus on “the kinds of standards we set and how our industries develop products that can be used both by partners and allies…”
The official added, “We need to do more … and I think the point here is to make sure that the defense industries can work together better, and identify the areas where we can do more together.”
Technological innovation and increasing supply chain resiliency will be critical in this shared effort. On both fronts, China is a concern. Rutte noted that Beijing is “rapidly developing technologies, integrating them into military capabilities, and connecting new technologies together, [thus] multiplying their potential disruptive impact on our societies, our economies, and on our security.” The answer to this is greater – faster and more cooperative – innovation. Rutte noted that the Japanese startups he was meeting focused on drones, AI, space, and quantum.
Rutte also emphasized that for companies in NATO and the IP4, like Mitsubishi, “developing and delivering capabilities faster” is challenging because “we still rely on supply chains and raw materials from third countries that do not always share our values. We must eliminate harmful dependencies.”
Other “practical” security and defense cooperation that Tokyo and NATO will explore include improving interoperability and progressing “flagship projects” in areas such as cyber defense and countering disinformation.
The various new developments under consideration – including joining the NSATU, strengthening personnel exchanges, increasing defense industrial cooperation and information-sharing – build on existing Japanese efforts to strengthen ties with NATO and support Ukraine. Japan already participates in some NATO exercises, and in January, Tokyo appointed a new, full-time ambassador to NATO and revealed plans to establish a system to share classified information with NATO.
In 2023, Japan and NATO upgraded their ties to an Individually Tailored Partnership Program (ITPP), which expanded cooperation beyond traditional security issues to areas such as cyber, emerging and disruptive technologies, and countering disinformation. Through the ITPP, NATO and Japan aim to strengthen dialogue and consultations, enhance resilience, and boost interoperability. With regards to Ukraine, Japan has joined international sanctions against Russia, provided nonlethal defense gear to Ukraine, and signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement with Kyiv.
The most critical step in establishing new defense relationships is coming to a shared understanding of the threat environment. Based on the groundwork laid by Japan’s interpretation of the international significance of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Japan-NATO security ties continue to make incremental progress where they are likely to have the largest payoff with the smallest pushback: in defense industrial cooperation.