Kishida's Defense and Security Strategy in Response to the China-Taiwan Geopolitical Rift (2021-2024)

The dynamics and fundamental in shifts East Asian geopolitics, coupled with emerging security threats such as the China-Taiwan geopolitical rift, have prompted Japan to reassess its defense and security strategy. Consequently, Japan has altered its strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan, elevating it to a grand strategic priority. In this geopolitical rift, China represents the most significant strategic challenge, capable of upsetting the current security dynamics and regional equilibrium to Japan's detriment through the potential seizure of Taiwan. Therefore, the critical question is: How can Japan's response to Taiwan's heightened defense-security significance be understood? The hypothesis suggests that within the framework of Kishida's defense-security documents, Japan adopts an active balancing strategy against China, involving substantial investment in defense affairs, strengthening the Japan-U.S. alliance, establishing regional power balancing, and deterrence. The research findings indicate that to prevent a Chinese attack on Taiwan, Kishida, by adopting a balancing and containment strategy within Japan's new defense architecture, has extended the depth of cross-domain deterrence to the Taiwan Strait. Through realistic defense diplomacy, in addition to increasing Japan's participation in the U.S. integrated deterrence network to contain China, he is creating a new integrated regional security order and deterrence network based on security-defense cooperation within the framework of alliances and security pacts with like-minded countries against a potential Chinese military action against Taiwan. The research method is descriptive-analytical, utilizing an analysis of the most important national defense documents, analyses by East Asian defense experts, and security studies centers.