Japan likely to defend Taiwan if Beijing makes moves, former US national security official Matt Pottinger says
- Pottinger defends the Trump administration against assertions that it strained ties with Japan and other allies in the region
- ‘Some of the key pillars of our strategy in the Indo-Pacific region were ideas that we borrowed and adapted and shared and collaborated on with Japan,’ he says
Tokyo would step up militarily to defend Taiwan if Beijing moved to reunify the island with mainland China by force, former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger said in a panel discussion on Tuesday with other top Trump administration officials.
“Some of the key pillars of our strategy in the Indo-Pacific region were ideas that we borrowed and adapted and shared and collaborated on with Japan,” Pottinger said in a panel discussion featuring former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, called a “Seminar on Conservative Realism and National Security on US-Japan Relations”.
“So the whole idea of a quadrilateral format is an idea that [former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe] came up with during his first stint as prime minister” in 2006 and 2007, Pottinger said. “The idea of a free and open Indo-Pacific, that concept that, that catchphrase, we consciously adopted it and adapted it from the minds of our closest allies in Japan.”
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Japan likely to defend Taiwan if Beijing makes moves, says ex-US national security official
“There’s a saying in the Japanese military: ‘Taiwan’s defence is Japan’s defence.’ And, and I think that Japan will act accordingly,” Pottinger added.
