Japan encouraged the United States to pursue multilateral talks to help avert a nuclear arms race and address concerns about nuclear testing.
The United States has reaffirmed its commitment to defending Japan using the full range of U.S. military capabilities “including nuclear,” citing China’s “dramatic and opaque nuclear weapons buildup” and other threats in the region.
The pledge was made in a June 9 joint statement issued by the U.S. and Japanese governments, following Tokyo’s hosting of American officials during the Extended Deterrence Dialogue, in which Japan also reiterated its support for U.S. forces and operations to maintain peace.
Held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo between June 8 and 9, the meeting delegates included members of the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of War, and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and from the Japanese side, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, and the Japan Joint Staff.
They committed to continue discussion on strengthening interoperability and coordination, with Japan encouraging the United States to pursue multilateral talks to “help avert a nuclear arms race, address concerns about nuclear testing, reduce nuclear risks, and bolster transparency, including through arms control dialogues with China and Russia,” the governments said in the joint statement.
“Both delegations discussed China’s dramatic and opaque nuclear weapons buildup and rejected Russia’s notion that the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s] pursuit of nuclear weapons was a closed issue. They reaffirmed their commitment to the complete denuclearization of the DPRK.”
The DPRK is North Korea’s official name.
US–Japan Alliance
Last month, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth met with his Japanese counterpart Shinjiro Koizumi on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where the two “reaffirmed the critical role of the U.S.–Japan alliance in preserving peace in the Indo-Pacific,” according to a May 30 readout of the meeting released by the U.S. Department of War.
Hegseth and Koizumi also endorsed the upcoming temporary deployment of U.S. ground-based missile capabilities to a Japan Self-Defense Forces base, the readout states, and committed to advancing their joint presence in the Southwest Islands.
Hegseth also “welcomed Japan’s recent defense export policy changes that will strengthen its defense industrial base, and both leaders committed to continuing cooperation on defense industrial base matters, including on critical global munitions requirements,” according to the readout.
