Japan's Contribution to Regional and Global Security

With the support of the Japan Foundation, the IES offers a course on "Japan’s contribution to regional and global security". The course follows an intensive, executive-style format, and combines traditional academic lectures with interactive discussions with experts and policy-makers, thus appealing to practitioners and graduate students alike. The course aims to provide students with the necessary background to understand the basics of Japan’s contemporary history, institutions, foreign policy structures and priorities. It seeks to promote understanding of Japan’s contribution to regional and global security amongst the next generation of European experts and leaders. In line with the vision set out in the EU-Japan SPA, the course puts emphasis on fostering intellectual connectivity between European and Japanese scholars, experts, practitioners and students. To this end, it draws on a roster of high-level visiting lecturers from Japan and East Asia, the United States and Europe.

The course offers three modules of two days each which take place in November, March and May of each year. The first module is devoted to understanding the main institutions and is fixed in character. The second module focuses on Japan’s contribution to regional security and its evolving vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific, exploring the evolution of Japan’s relations with key partners in the region. This module features greater variation, with a view to taking stock of a dynamic geostrategic environment and an evolving policy agenda in Japan and other relevant countries.  It also accommodates special sessions (e.g. expert roundtables) devoted to addressing relevant and timely challenges. The third module is devoted to Japan’s global contributions to security and its relations with Europe and NATO. This module is more dynamic, with a view to reflecting the evolving agenda in EU-Japan and NATO-Japan relations, and pays particular attention to interaction with policy-makers.

The course will provide the backbone of a newly launched Japan Chair at the IES. The Chair serves as an independent platform to advance academically rigorous discussions on the major foreign and security policy questions Japan and Europe are currently facing, and seeks to inform and shape the policy agenda confronting the Japanese and European leadership.