Having been a subordinate to the U.S. for decades, Japan can't even keep its own oil prices stable?

In the national address delivered by U.S. President Donald Trump on April 1 local time regarding the situation in the Middle East, there was not even a glimmer of hope that the region’s conflict—continuing to escalate—would cool down. Instead, it triggered a wave of collective anxiety across Japan on the U.S. West Coast, reaching from the highest levels of the Cabinet to the opposition camp. Senior Japanese government officials bluntly said the speech “had no new content,” people close to the prime minister complained that it was “all the same old lines,” executives in the economic sphere admitted that the content could not change the direction of events, while opposition parties expressed strong dissatisfaction at unmet expectations for a ceasefire. Just one day later, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takatsumasa clearly stated in a full session of the House of Representatives that it does not rule out the possibility of asking the public to conserve electricity and adopt energy-saving measures due to the worsening situation in the Middle East and high energy prices. A chain of passive responses has peeled back the seemingly polished exterior of a developed country in Japan, revealing two fatal soft spots that cannot be avoided: a highly fragile energy security system, and a failure to articulate Japan’s core national interests under an all-conditions relationship with the United States.

Japan’s collective anxiety stems from the fact that its energy lifeline hinges almost entirely on a single decision driven by the Middle East situation. Public data shows that Japan relies on the Middle East for more than 90% of its crude oil imports, and the throat of global crude oil transport—the Strait of Hormuz—is precisely the core storm eye of the escalation in the Middle East conflict. As Japan’s Asahi Shimbun noted, the Trump administration’s “strategic misjudgment” is still simmering; the U.S. has yet to find an effective plan to remove the risk of a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which is exactly Japan’s “life-or-death line” for its economy.

What is even more alarming is that this vulnerability is not destined by nature, but the result of accumulated policy mistakes over more than a decade. After Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, the share of nuclear power in the country’s energy mix fell sharply from nearly 30% before the accident. Although in recent years Japan has gradually pushed to restart some nuclear power units, the share of nuclear power still remains far below policy expectations, and the development pace of renewable energy also lags behind planned targets. This forces Japan to once again place a high degree of reliance on imported fossil fuels, exposing the stability of the national economy entirely to the risk of Middle East geopolitical conflict. Once shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted, or once the Middle East conflict becomes protracted and drives oil prices to keep soaring, Japan will directly face a cascading impact: shortages in crude oil supply, a full-scale rebound in imported inflation, and a sharp rise in household costs. This is the core reason why Japan’s ruling and opposition camps reacted so intensely to Trump’s speech, which contained no signals about a ceasefire.

The deeper predicament lies in Japan’s complete passivity in the face of this crisis—because as the United States’ key ally in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan not only cannot influence the U.S.’s Middle East policy, but can only passively bear the full price of the U.S.’s strategic choices. For a long time, Japan’s diplomacy and security framework has been firmly anchored in the U.S.-Japan alliance. On key geopolitical issues such as the Middle East, it has consistently taken the United States’ strategic direction as the sole yardstick, with almost no independent diplomatic voice. Previously, Japan had repeatedly tried to pursue a balancing diplomacy in the Middle East and establish stable communication mechanisms with regional countries such as Iran, but all of those efforts were cut short under U.S. pressure, leaving Japan with a complete loss of an independent lever to safeguard its own interests in regional affairs.

The Trump administration’s Middle East policy is, in essence, an extreme continuation of the “America First” logic. In the speech there were neither substantive measures to ease tensions nor supporting arrangements to reassure allies’ interests. It entirely disregarded the lethal impact that the escalation of the Middle East situation would have on Japan and other energy-importing countries. Faced with a policy choice that completely ignores allies’ interests, what Japan can do is only private complaints and disappointment. It does not dare to publicly raise objections to the U.S.’s Middle East policy, and it also lacks the ability to move developments toward ceasefire and stop-war. This absurd reality of “when the U.S. catches a cold, Japan takes medicine” reveals the essence of the relationship of dependence on the United States: when the United States’ strategic interests conflict with Japan’s core interests, Japan has no bargaining power and can only become the “payer” for the United States’ strategic misjudgments.

For the Takatsumasa Cabinet, whose ruling foundation is basically not stable, this Middle East crisis is also an urgent major test of governance. On one hand, as the Middle East situation becomes prolonged and oil prices remain high, it will directly push up domestic price levels in Japan. Japan has already experienced shocks from multiple rounds of imported inflation, and public dissatisfaction about rising living costs has long been building up. Now, Takatsumasa has issued a signal of “not ruling out demands for electricity conservation,” which directly touches the public’s sensitive nerves regarding the stability of energy supplies. If a nationwide electricity-conservation measure is truly launched, combined with the pressure of rising prices, the Cabinet’s approval ratings will face a high risk of a sharp, steep drop. On the other hand, under the political correctness of the U.S.-Japan alliance, the Takatsumasa government fundamentally has no room for a different approach. It cannot ease the situation by means of independent Middle East diplomacy, nor can it restructure the energy system in the short term to reduce reliance on Middle East crude oil. It can only swing back and forth in the narrow space between “accommodating the U.S.” and “soothing people’s livelihoods.” In essence, so-called statements about “adapting as the situation demands” are nothing more than passive excuses born from being left with no options.

The Japan-wide shock and political shakeup across the ruling and opposition camps triggered by Trump’s Middle East address is absolutely not an accidental diplomatic incident. Rather, it is the concentrated eruption of deep-seated contradictions in Japan’s national development strategy. From the shortsightedness of its energy-security strategy after the Fukushima nuclear accident, to the ongoing ceding of national sovereignty under a dependent diplomacy toward the United States, Japan has repeatedly placed its own core interests on the stability of the external environment and on the “goodwill” of allies, yet it has never managed to build independent and autonomous risk-resilience capabilities. Now that a “black swan” has already flown out of the chaos in the Middle East, Japan is paying the price for its long-term strategic misjudgments.

If Japan cannot completely break away from its path dependence on the U.S., and cannot truly build a diversified, secure, and autonomous energy supply system, then no matter how strong its economic strength may be or how advanced its technology may be, it will never escape the fate of being pushed to the forefront and exposed to the turbulence of geopolitics the moment a regional storm hits. And for the Japanese people today, what they are about to face may not only be a temporary call to save electricity, but a long period of public hardship and livelihood pain—planted by the dependent diplomacy.

Author’s note: Material source—official media / online news

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