Trump invoked Pearl Harbor with Japan, then celebrated America’s wartime alliance with China days later. The sequence exposes uncomfortable questions about Tokyo’s reliance on Washington, and Australia’s own assumptions about US security guarantees.
In one week of September summitry, Washington did something postwar alliance managers have avoided: it stated, out loud, that Japan was the enemy.
In March, Trump told Sanae Takaichi that nobody was warned before the Iran strikes because “who knows better about surprise than Japan?…Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?” On 22 September, Takaichi used her first UN General Assembly speech to call for deleting the Charter’s ‘enemy‑state’ clauses and ‘rebuilding’ the UN.
Two days later, hosting Xi Jinping, Trump praised the Flying Tigers, American pilots who went to China in 1941 to combat Japanese bombers, and called the United States and China “allies in World War II” against Japanese militarism.
For a leader building a China‑containment network under the US, this is a reminder of who controls the script.
The postwar US–Japan bargain was built on managed forgetting. Pearl Harbor could be commemorated, Hiroshima mourned, the 1947 constitution respected, the alliance presented as forward‑looking. Presidents rarely invoked 1941 to Tokyo. Trump does. Tokyo dismissed the quip as a joke, but the content matters more than the tone. By reaching for Pearl Harbor in a dispute over war consultation, Trump restated the hierarchy: Japan is an ally of convenience, its past usable for US leverage on Hormuz, Taiwan or defence spending.
Takaichi’s UN intervention should be read in that context. The dormant enemy‑state clauses (Articles 53, 77, 107) need a two‑thirds UN vote and five permanent members’ ratification, including China. Tokyo has lobbied for their removal for decades. Now Takaichi is seeking UN certification, while her government’s defence spending in the 2026 financial year is ¥9.04 trillion, a record of around two per cent of GDP. Japan’s defence budget is roughly three times China’s per capita. Counterstrike missiles, hypersonics and drones have moved Tokyo from defence‑oriented to strike‑capable.
To ask the UN to forget ‘enemy’ status while acquiring counterstrike power is not closure – it is erasure as force modernisation.
Tokyo sells that containment network, spanning the region, as deterrence and to Washington as burden‑sharing. But all of it assumes the US umbrella will open automatically in a Taiwan contingency. The September summit sequence undermines that assumption in three ways.
First, history is now a US lever over Japan. Trump used Pearl Harbor to discipline Takaichi on Iran; he can reuse 1941 or 1945 memories to extract basing, funding or conformity. A leader who wants the enemy clauses deleted is most exposed to having them invoked.
Second, Washington can re‑centre the US–China war alliance whenever a deal requires it. The Xi–Trump readout stressed ‘constructive strategic stability’ and managed differences, with Taiwan handled as a problem to stabilise rather than a trigger. When Trump honours the Flying Tigers, he signals to Beijing that Washington still has a 1940s partnership narrative against Japan – and signals to Takaichi her arc won’t auto‑drag the US into war.
Third, the enemy‑clause irony is not merely symbolic. Takaichi says the UN must be ‘reborn’ without stigmatising Japan; Trump and Xi, in effect, re‑baptise the alliance that defeated Japanese militarism. Tokyo’s rearmament makes the old clauses relevant again. Deletion should not be granted as a reward for the region’s most rapid military expansion.
The anxiety in Tokyo is palpable. Takaichi phoned Trump on Saturday to discuss the Xi summit – a weekend damage‑control call after wartime‑ally remarks sent shock waves through her cabinet. Japanese observers invoke the 1972 ‘Nixon shock’ as a template for today. If the US can hail China as a Second World War ally one week, a Taiwan commitment the next is a bargaining chip, not a guarantee. The real signal: Washington will use history, and Japan’s own past, as currency in a deal.
For Australia, the lesson is uncomfortable but useful. Canberra is deepening defence cooperation with Tokyo – missile testing, Mogami frigate sustainment, the Boobook laser – all defended as hedging. But September’s summits show the US umbrella is transactional, not contractual. Washington won’t subordinate its China ties to Japan’s containment arc. The contrast with Tokyo is stark: Japan actively seeks to involve itself in a Taiwan conflict alongside the United States, while Australia is still debating. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told an Atlantic Council audience in New York that the Indo‑Pacific is “not a chessboard” and Australia is “writing its own script” – yet his government is embedding deeper into AUKUS, with US nuclear subs rotating to Western Australia from 2027 and no clarification of whether any of it buys a Taiwan fight.
That debate should end. Australia must not commit to any Taiwan fight, regardless of Washington. To join such a war would be strategic suicide for Australia, Japan and the region. Australia should therefore treat Tokyo’s remilitarisation as a question, not a given: cooperate with constitutional restraint; reject enemy‑clause erasure as cover for counterstrike; and refuse, categorically, to be dragged into a cross‑strait conflict.
The signal from the UN week is bleak for those seeking reassurance. Takaichi went to New York to erase ‘enemy’ and came away with Trump reminding the world of Pearl Harbor and Xi reminding it of the Flying Tigers. Japan’s containment arc may yet tighten; budgets, bases and missiles will multiply. But an alliance that can rewrite 1945 against Tokyo at a summit offers spectacle, not certainty.
The danger for the region is not only a rearmed Japan. It is a rearmed Japan persuaded that US protection is guaranteed, even when the president who met her in March happily reintroduced Japanese militarism into the trans‑Pacific story the moment it served a deal with Beijing.
Wenran Jiang
Wenran Jiang, founding director of the China Institute and Mactaggart Research Chair Emeritus at the University of Alberta, is president of the Canada-China Energy & Environment Forum and an advisor at the Institute of Peace and Diplomacy.