Whether PM Takaichi was justified to issue her recent threats to intervene in Taiwan and then today to deploy missiles within 70 miles of Taiwan, is completely besides the point. Either viewpoint must concede that this sort of remark would be known by Takaichi to be of the highest level of provocation, both politically and militarily. So the relevant question we should be asking is why did Takaichi choose now to intentionally stir up this crisis?

One potentially revealing observation is how much her behavior, though seeming to appear out of the blue, actually mimics the rhetoric of US ally states like Germany, where Chancellor Merz has similarly vowed to deploy long-range missiles into Ukraine.

When it comes to lobbying the US for security escalation — and with it political and economic attention — Takaichi is actually playing catch up to European NATO. With Trump set to visit China next year, and a public show of ‘confidence’ in President Xi, Japan may now be sharing Europe’s fear of imperial abandonment.

Hysterical European and Japanese leaders warn of an existential security threat, by dictators and despots who threaten Western identity itself. In European capitals Putin represents the pestilence from the East. Yet surprisingly those same governments have begun recently to take a lighter touch with China. Meanwhile, Tokyo has maintained a light touch with Russia throughout the Ukraine conflict. It’s worth looking now at the direction of both EU-China and Japan-Russia relations as an indication of what’s actually happening here with Japan and China.

That is the current moment. What about the longer view over the course of the last decade or more? President Obama famously articulated an Asia-centric view of world power and wealth, and planned for a large and sudden shift of political and military investment in Asia. This coincided with high level cultural exchange, with Japanese artists and aesthetics elevated to a level previously only afforded Europeans (Tadoa Ando, Yayoi Kusama, and Takashi Murakami most prominently). Wes Anderson made a political propaganda film about why the US-Japan military arrangement is a good thing, actually.

Japan would essentially replace the United Kingdom as the Special Relationship above all others, as the Pacific began its eclipse of the Atlantic. Japan’s future was secured: it was the future of the American-led Pacific Century. The first big step into this brave new Asian world was Obama’s Transpacific Partnership, and Trump’s first victory was its first major setback.

Trump has long been less enamored with Japan than the garden variety liberal elite. He inveighed against Japanese trade practices in the 1980s, famously asking why Toyotas were on every other American driveway, but a Chevy could hardly be found in all of Tokyo. Trump is in fact the major problem for Japan’s future as had been drawn up by Obama.

So why now? Trump right now hopes to be in the final innings of a Ukraine peace settlement, and Takaichi may see the opportunity to retake possession of America’s attention. But to truly shift the consciousness of Americans is a very heavy task. The nation as a whole — not just Washington politicians — are consumed with new political divisions, especially now among the right wing. And Asian politics has never been much of an American “kitchen table” priority. If the window of opportunity is in fact open, Takaichi needs to stoke the largest crisis imaginable: the potential, knife’s-edge start of an actual war across the Taiwan Strait.

Again, keep an eye out on EU-China and Japan-Russia relations and whether both begin to thaw, signaling that the EU and Japan are now in competition with each other for US attention. It would be a mistake to think this is just another false alarm of the kind that happens every few years (or, under Biden, every few minutes).