Uncle Sam may be pulling out from the Indo-Pacific—can a post-pacifist Japan could help fill the vacuum?

Abe defined their task as protecting freedom of navigation in what he was perhaps the first to call the Indo-Pacific. That task has gotten only more urgent as America withdraws—or, more recently, imposes blockades on crucial straits—and China pushes harder against the first island chain.

Abe’s vision never really became reality, because Japan’s efforts with India and others in Asia always had self-imposed limits. There’s a chance, however, now that Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae has eliminated some of those constraints.

With the revision last week of rules to remove restrictions on overseas sales of lethal weapons, Japan can export advanced equipment, including warships and missiles, and support its partners’ defence far more directly.

There’s a great deal of pent-up demand that Tokyo is moving to satisfy as quickly as possible. Last weekend, Australia announced the purchase of three Mogami-class frigates, made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. And when Japan’s defence minister Shinjiro Koizumi visits the Philippines and Indonesia in a few days, some more deals are likely to be announced. Indonesia is reportedly interested in those upgraded frigates as well.

This process should have begun a few years ago, when countries’ budgets weren’t under quite as much pressure. They’re now burdened by higher levels of debt and security planners are struggling to figure out whether to spend scarce hard currency on expensive legacy platforms or on the drones and autonomous weapons they suspect might determine how battles of the future are won.

Plus, in the meantime, a new challenger for Asia’s defence spending has emerged. Last week, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung was in New Delhi. The two countries co-produce Hanwha Aerospace’s K9 howitzer and Korean manufacturers don’t want to stop there.

South Korea’s rise up the arms-trading charts has been meteoric. But so far, almost half of its defence exports have gone to Poland, including an order for 360 of Hyundai Rotem’s K2 tanks.

Korean producers’ combination of price flexibility and quality, however, will prove attractive to Asian militaries in the coming years; the Philippines has already ordered FA-50 light combat aircraft and new warships.

In manufacturing sector after sector, Japanese firms have lost ground in Asia to their more agile rivals across the Tsushima Strait. Unless they push themselves to close deals quicker, this might be another.

The saga of the US-2 seaplane is illustrative. It was the first piece of equipment operated by the self-defence forces that Tokyo was willing to export, because it was usable for civilian search and rescue as well, and thus permitted even under the previous arms-control regime.

India has been in talks to buy it since at least 2011. At first the price was set too high, and then the tech transfer and co-production was hard to pin down. However, the underlying problem was Japanese inexperience. As the analyst Satoru Nagao said at the time, “There was no one responsible official on Japan’s side.”

Tokyo will have to learn salesmanship quickly—because more is at stake than a few conglomerates’ profits. The entire region is learning to live with a US that is at best distracted and at worst antagonistic. But America was the keystone of the Indo-Pacific’s security architecture, sitting at the centre of a web of formal alliances and informal groupings.

And the glue holding it all together was shared platforms, long-duration defence deals, co-development and integrated arms supply chains.

If Asian nations are to try and replicate this structure, they will need Japan to step up. Abe’s vision of the Indo-Pacific was built around a group of partners that were able to hold the line for themselves; but the unstated assumption was that the US would fill whatever gaps were left.

That assumption has failed in recent times and threatens to take Abe’s “free and open Indo-Pacific” down with it. A new glue is needed for the region, although its countries don’t have too many options. Korean arms will help, but Japan will have to become a supplier and organizer as well as a strategist.

If Takaichi Sanae can get slow-moving corporations and doubtful officials acting swiftly, she has a chance of salvaging just enough of her mentor’s ambitions to make a difference. ©Bloomberg

The author is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.