The New Geography of Danger – Japan’s Shifting Global Security Role and Relations with NATO

NATO states and Japan share much in common, including core values of democracy, rule of law, human rights, and free markets. They also share a mutual security provider in the United States. Yet despite many common interests across economic, political, and security domains, relations remained strikingly undeveloped for most of the post-WWII era. This gradually changed in the early 2000s following 9/11, and again in the 2010s with the emergence of a more expansionist China. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO-Japan relations have been dramatically upgraded. In this talk, I will discuss how the evolution of NATO-Japan cooperation has been principally driven by their respective security scopes and the idea of a shifting ‘geography of danger’. As NATO and Japan expand their scopes globally to incorporate such issues cyber and supply chains, security interests align and cooperation is spirited. In systematically tracing this transformation over the post-Cold-War period, I illustrate the past and present interlinkages between the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic and offer insight into the future course of NATO-Japan relations amidst what former NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg has termed the geography of danger.

Dr. Wrenn Yennie Lindgren is a Senior Research Fellow and Head of Center for Asian Research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), as well as an Associate Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI). Her research focuses on international relations in East Asia and the Indo-Pacific, foreign policy legitimation, the politics and foreign policy of Japan, traditional and non-traditional security issues and Asia-Arctic diplomacy. Wrenn’s peer-reviewed work has appeared in, inter alia, The Pacific Review, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Japanese Journal of Political Science, International Quarterly for Asia Studies, Asian Perspective, Asian Politics & Policy, Polar Geography, and Journal of Eurasian Studies. She co-edited the volume ‘China and Nordic Diplomacy’ (Routledge, 2018) and contributed chapters on Japan to the volume Kinship in International Relations (Routledge, 2018) and The Routledge Handbook of Arctic Security (Routledge, 2020).