Sayuri Romei
In April 2024, Japan joined the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) as a new strategic partner alongside the United States and the European Union. The 3SI was established in 2015 with the objective of strengthening connectivity and reducing the disparities in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Baltic states. The initiative promotes the development of infrastructure in the energy, transport, and digital sectors in the region surrounded by the Baltic Sea,
the Black Sea, and the Adriatic Sea. The war in Ukraine has highlighted the relevance of this initiative and has underscored the frail infrastructure in the region and CEE’s economic dependence on Russia. As it becomes increasingly clear that the security and stability of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific regions are inseparable, Japan is compelled to serve as an active partner in the 3SI as its role is also closely connected to the quality of assistance and support to Ukraine.
As Japan embarks on this new partnership with CEE and Baltic countries, however, moving beyond the rhetoric about the importance of this initiative and taking concrete action is a challenge that all the countries involved will have to grapple with. Japan’s dialogue with CEE, and in particular with the Visegrad-4 (V4) group, i.e., Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, officially started in the early 2000s. For the past twenty years, the relationship has mostly been smooth and without major problems.
However, Japan’s engagement with those countries has lacked dynamism, as Japanese foreign policy has mainly been focused on the United States and China. Japan’s investments in CEE have been limited and cautious, and visits from high-ranking Japanese officials have been sporadic.
In fact, the visits to Japan by the heads of the states of the V4 and CEE countries have always outnumbered those by their Japanese counterparts. Twenty years later, as CEE countries are realizing that the economic benefit from China is not as great as they had expected, Japan is in a good position to rekindle this relationship. In a January 2022 interview with Nikkei, Akio Miyajima, Ambassador of Japan to Poland, argued that it is crucial for Japan to strengthen relations with these countries. At the time of the interview, Russia had not yet invaded Ukraine,
and the Ambassador lamented that Japan remained disinterested in the Ukraine issue. Since the invasion a month later, however, Japan has not only taken a clear stance in condemning Russia’s aggression, it has also taken a leadership role in investing in the reconstruction of Ukraine.
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