Takaichi’s anti-China stance won’t bolster Japan’s security

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s landslide electoral victory on Sunday signals a troubling shift: Japan’s unsettling turn to the right. In a post-US-led world order, safeguarding Japan’s security will require reaffirming, not abandoning, its post-war pacifist constitution.

At the recent World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a telling admission about the US-led international rules-based order: it was never truly fair. Canada benefited from it and tolerated it, but now that it no longer serves Canada’s interests, Ottawa is reassessing its place within it.

This long-overdue critique echoes decades of protest from the developing world, which has consistently challenged this system as unfair and Western-centric. Over the past decade, China, alongside partners in the Global South, has worked to construct alternative frameworks for cooperation – exemplified by the Belt and Road Initiative – that aspire to greater fairness and mutual benefit.

Now, the tide is turning. As leaders from France, the United Kingdom and Canada made their way to Beijing, a new reality became clear: parts of the Global North are starting to align with the vision of a fairer order as a hedge against US President Donald Trump’s imperialistic ambitions.