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Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s mandate shows Tokyo is betting on economic security, defence “normalisation” and alliance diversification. Europe should draw the lesson: strategic autonomy is less about distancing ourselves from allies than about building options, and the EU–Japan toolbox is one of the few places where those options already exist, writes Thierry Bechet.

Takaichi’s victory signals political consolidation in Japan around a harder‑edged foreign‑policy calculus: stop waiting for stability and plan for uncertainty. Europe should read it carefully, that low‑trust world is already the reality.

Europeans have spent years debating “strategic autonomy.” We have argued about defence spending, industrial policy, and how far Europe should distance itself from – or remain anchored to – the United States. Yet recent events suggest that the real question is less philosophical and more practical: how does Europe retain room for manoeuvre in a world that is becoming more transactional and less predictable? Autonomy is ultimately judged in crises: whether Europe can absorb pressure without scrambling.

In 2025, the European Union and the United States concluded a framework agreement on trade that some in Europe regarded as structurally unbalanced, including 15% US tariffs on most EU exports alongside zero EU tariffs on most US industrial goods. Whatever one’s view of the deal, it served as a reminder that even between close allies, economic relations can become explicitly transactional. Leverage is used more readily. Trust, once assumed, must now be managed.

None of this calls the transatlantic alliance into question. But it does confirm what many in Europe have been slow to accept: that geopolitics now colours every significant decision on trade, technology, and security. Strategic autonomy, in that light, is not a slogan for self-sufficiency. It is shorthand for having enough weight of your own, and enough reliable partners, to avoid being cornered.

Japan stands out as one of Europe’s most structurally aligned, yet still under‑operationalised, partners in that effort. Europe’s own Indo-Pacific strategy acknowledges the region’s centrality to trade, technology, and security. The Indo-Pacificis are also where the rules that underpin global stability are increasingly tested.

Japan and the EU share a foundational interest: both are open societies that built their postwar prosperity on a rules-based international order. But Japan has been forced to adapt earlier and more visibly to the pressures of multipolarity: caught between US-China rivalry, a rearming neighbourhood, and the constant background noise of economic coercion. Tokyo’s answer has quietly combined trade diplomacy, multilateral coalition-building, and a more capable defence posture into something that might be called principled pragmatism.

Europe should recognise that Japan has already confronted dilemmas we are only now fully acknowledging: how to stay open without becoming exposed; and how to deepen security ties without trading away a rules-based identity.

What makes this different from most strategic partnerships is that the groundwork is already laid. The EPA has been in force since 2019. The Digital Partnership was launched in 2022. The Security and Defence Partnership followed in 2024. And the Strategic Partnership Agreement entered into force in 2025.

This “policy stack” is rare. It means Europe does not need to invent a new strategic framework. The deficit is not frameworks – it is the will to use them.

Consider economic security. Europe is right to invest in resilience. But regulation written in Brussels does not, by itself, reduce a chokepoint in East Asia. That requires partners with the industrial weight and the shared interest to make resilience a collective project rather than a competitive one.

Technology has become the sharpest edge of this debate. Semiconductors, AI standards, and data flows are, beyond commercial questions, instruments of strategic leverage. The EU–Japan Digital Partnership is one of the few existing channels through which Europe and a like-minded partner can work toward common standards before others set them.

Japan anchors some of Asia’s most significant trade architecture, covering close to a third of global GDP. That integration is advancing regardless of whether Europe chooses to engage with it seriously. The EPA is a potential platform for coordinating supply-chain resilience and shaping the standards that will govern trade in critical technologies. The July 2025 summit signalled political appetite on both sides to move in that direction. The question is whether it translates into practice.

If Europe wants to reduce vulnerability to chokepoints, it should move from declarations to working arrangements; starting with structured supply-chain mapping alongside coordinated export control approaches and ensuring that resilience efforts reinforce – rather than fragment – open markets among trusted partners.

The same logic applies in the security domain. Japan is expanding its capabilities, deepening partnerships beyond the United States, and increasing defence spending under Prime Minister Takaichi. Tokyo has concluded reciprocal access agreements with the United Kingdom and the Philippines and has embedded itself in a web of multilateral arrangements that reflect a more assertive regional posture.

Europe has no business aspiring to be a Pacific military power, nor should it. The more important recognition is that European security and Indo-Pacific stability are increasingly interconnected. The EU–Japan Security and Defence Partnership offers a structured way to cooperate in precisely these areas.

Strategic autonomy is not achieved by pulling away from partners, and it is not conjured by political speeches about sovereignty. It is earned, quietly, by accumulating choices so that no single actor can dictate terms.

Japan can serve as a practical Indo-Pacific anchor; economically weighty, technologically capable, and increasingly explicit about navigating multipolar pressures without abandoning rules. Treating that partnership as peripheral would be a mistake.

Europe does not need a dramatic pivot. It needs steady, operational habits of cooperation that turn alignment into leverage. In a world where trust is lower and power more openly transactional, that is what strategic maturity looks like.

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