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Japan's partnerships with the UK, France, Germany, and NATO share some similarities

• All recognize the importance of protecting the international order.
• All recognize China as a security challenge.
• All recognize the importance of the Indo-Pacific.
• All acknowledge the primacy of the United States.

Each of these partnerships also has some important differences from the others

• Each bilateral dyad between Japan and a European counterpart has its own lines of effort, not coordinated with those of other bilateral dyads.
• Despite sharing views of China as a security challenge, European actors prefer to not directly criticize China as openly as Japan sometimes does.
• The European partners' approach to Russia differs from Japan's. Whereas the UK, France, Germany, and NATO all view Russia as a serious violator of international laws and norms and as their greatest threat that demands attention, Japan does not appear to see the menacing "European Russia" but seeks instead to engage Russia in the hopes of securing a peace treaty and return of disputed islands.

The partnerships have implications for the United States

• The partnerships support U.S. leadership.
• The partnerships support international-order burden-sharing.
• The partnerships support flexible, smaller groupings of partners.
• The partnerships make all U.S. allies more effective.
• The partnerships strengthen Japan without using U.S. resources.
• The partnerships connect the European and Indo-Pacific regions.

Some of the United States' most powerful and trustworthy allies are its European partners and Japan. This report presents the results of a RAND Corporation study examining how Japan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and three European states — the United Kingdom (UK), France, and Germany — are increasingly cooperating in the security domain in this age of growing strategic competition.

Seeking to build on extensive work done by European and Japanese scholars to assess and understand developments in these relationships, the author utilized official documents and publications and an extensive program of field research in Tokyo, London, Paris, Brussels, and Berlin that included 56 interviews with officials, armed forces personnel, and subject-matter experts.

The analysis focused on (1) defense and strategic dialogues, (2) defense exchanges, defense cooperation, and defense-related industrial cooperation, and (3) training and exercises. The results show that Japan–UK security ties are the most robust but lack an overarching strategy that pulls the separate lines of effort together into a coherent whole. Japan–France ties are significant and growing, and they fit well within the two countries' regional strategies, but the track record is less robust than that of Japan–UK ties. Japan's bilateral ties with Germany lack depth, but there is a growing convergence around strategic interests. Finally, Japan's ties with NATO lack regular dialogues and exchanges, but they have a growing record of cooperation in exercises and noncombat operations.

These discrete lines of effort matter, and closing recommendations offer ways they can further be fostered.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  The Strategic Context

• Chapter Three

  The United Kingdom

• Chapter Four

  France

• Chapter Five

  Germany

• Chapter Six

  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization

• Chapter Seven

  Conclusion