Joshua Walker, president and CEO of the Japan Society, speaks to reporters at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo, Feb. 13, 2026. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
TOKYO — The U.S.-Japan alliance is at a significant crossroads as it enters a more transactional era under President Donald Trump, an expert on the two countries’ relationship said Friday.
The United States’ “soft power” — the influence a nation exerts through diplomacy, culture and other non-military means — is declining while Japan’s is increasing, according to Joshua Walker, president of the nonprofit Japan Society, based in New York City.
Political polarization, visible domestic instability and Trump’s transactional “America First” mentality account for the decline, Walker told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
Tokyo, meanwhile, is building its soft power through “quiet confidence,” stability and popular media such as anime and video games, he said.
That change, and Japan’s “awkward position” between its ally the U.S. and China, its competitor, means the U.S.-Japan relationship needs to be reevaluated, Walker said.
“It’s not that the alliance is going to be over — it’s that the alliance needs to be reimagined for the future, and that the alliance is not simply the president and prime minister, or Washington and [Tokyo],” he said.
Joshua W. Walker,president and CEO of the Japan Society, speaks to the reporters at the Foreign Correspondent's Club Japan in Tokyo, February 13, 2026. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)
Walker believes the two countries should focus not on leader-to-leader ties but on ties that bind their private-sector industries and their people, while Tokyo establishes stronger self-defense capabilities.
“You have to strengthen your deterrence,” he said. “As Ukraine has demonstrated, even if you’re one-tenth the size of your adversary, with the right heart, with the right passion, with the right equipment, you can resist.”
The shift is already surfacing in political debates in Japan, as Washington pressures Tokyo to increase its defense spending from 2% of GDP to 5%, Walker said.
He questioned whether the Japanese economy could sustain that level of defense spending.
“I think there’s going to have to be a creative way to solve this, but I don’t think that we’re going to end up at just 2%,” he said. “I think it is going to have to be higher, but I think 5% might be a bridge too far.”
Walker also warned that Japan faces the risk of being sidelined if the U.S. and China somehow establish a stronger relationship, an outcome Tokyo has feared since President Richard Nixon abruptly opened U.S. relations with Beijing in the 1970s.
“But I think given the soft power of Japan, given the global standing of Japan, I’m optimistic about the future, even though I’m worried about the geopolitical stability,” he said.
