Hal Brands, Columnist

Japan Isn’t Panicking About a Possible Trump Return

Tokyo is gaining security independence by increasing military spending and building defense ties across the Indo-Pacific.

February 28, 2024 at 10:30 PM UTC

By Hal Brands

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

Shinzo Abe is no longer around to tame Trump.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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As former President Donald Trump rolls toward the Republican nomination, countries everywhere are preparing for what a Trump restoration might mean. Few have more at stake in the matter than Japan, which is on the front lines of a febrile region and has long sought security through its alliance with the US.

As I learned from a recent trip to Japan, where I took the temperature of its foreign policy community, Trump 2.0 would pose real challenges — from the difficulties in finding a leader who can relate to Trump as well as former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did, to the ways a more erratic, unilateralist America might complicate vital matters of regional diplomacy.