When Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida addressed the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, he spent much of his time explaining his government’s economic policy and courting U.S. investment in Japan. He also delivered a stark warning about the international outlook.
“There can be no question that the Russian aggression against Ukraine was history’s turning point that ended the post–Cold War period,” he said in the speech, delivered in English, calling the situation “a challenge that extends beyond Europe to the entire world.” That’s why Japan has “exerted every possible diplomatic effort to reinforce our relations with our allies and with like-minded countries,” he added.
As he had done during his U.N. General Assembly speech the previous day, he called for a global recommitment to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. But later, during a Q and A with CNBC’s Becky Quick at the Economic Club of New York session, he expanded on this warning.
“Regarding nuclear weapons, the international community has entered into a crucial stage as we observe the global security situation. It’s intensified and become more severe. And the Russian threat of nuclear weapons is something real,” he said in Japanese through a translator.
In addition to building out its alliances and mending fences with South Korea, Tokyo has taken the step of spending more on defense. The Japanese defense ministry asked for a record funding boost last month, in line with a plan to increase the country’s military spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2027.
Kishida did not address China at length on Thursday, sticking to Russia and disarmament, but it’s clear that Tokyo is also hyper-focused on the possibility of contingencies in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea — maintaining peace there was a topic of conversation when new Japanese foreign minister Yōko Kamikawa and Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a meeting this week in New York.
While Kishida this week spoke about the end of “the post–Cold War period” and, at the U.N., of “a historical inflection point,” his defense ministry recently put it in blunter terms: the “greatest post-war trial yet.”