Over the past few years, Japan has deepened its relationship with the United Kingdom and European countries to pursue a free and open rules-based international order to respond both to US–China great-power competition and to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The European Union and individual European countries, including the Czech Republic, France, Germany and the Netherlands, have also launched Indo-Pacific strategies and begun to enhance their economic and security engagements to enhance their ties with Asia. The UK’s Indo-Pacific ‘tilt’, which was first announced in the 2021 Integrated Review, has now become a ‘permanent pillar’ of the UK’s international policy and has been evident in several milestones in the UK’s engagement with Asia, including the dispatch of the 2021 Carrier Strike Group, the announcement of the Global Air Combat Programme alongside Japan and Italy in December 2022, the announcement of the Hiroshima Accord in May 2023, and the accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership in July 2023.

In this event, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Japan Chair Programme is delighted to host Professor Mori Satoru, Professor Guibourg Delamotte and Bill Emmott, Chairman of the IISS Trustees and Chairman of the Japan Society of the UK, to discuss the role of the Japan–UK and Japan–Europe partnership in addressing security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region with a focus on defence and economic security policy areas. This event is generously supported by Japan House London.

Professor Mori Satoru is a professor of contemporary international politics at the Faculty of Law, Keio University. Professor Mori is a former Japanese Foreign Ministry official and holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Tokyo, an LL.M. degree from Columbia University Law School and Kyoto University, and an LL.B. degree from Kyoto University. He was appointed as an associate professor at the Faculty of Law of Hosei University in 2008 and as a professor in 2010. During his sabbatical leave, he was a visiting researcher at Princeton University (2014-2015) and George Washington University (2013-2015). He assumed his current position in April 2022.

Professor Guibourg Delamotte is a Lecturer and Associate Professor of political science as well as a Visiting Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Delamotte teaches international relations and Japanese politics at the Japanese Studies Department of the French Institute of Oriental Studies. She also lectures at Sciences Po, Paris and works as a Research Fellow at Inalco’s Centre d’études japonaises. From May to July 2010, she was a NIDS Fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies (Tokyo).

Bill Emmott is an independent writer and consultant. He spent 26 years at the Economist, which he joined in 1980, and worked as a correspondent and editor in Brussels, London and Tokyo covering politics, finance, economics and business. In 1993 he was appointed as the editor-in-chief, a post he held for 13 years before stepping down in 2006. He is currently the Chairman of the IISS Trustees.

Robert Ward is the IISS Japan Chair and Director of Geo-economics and Strategy, carrying out independent research and writing extensively on strategic issues related to Japan, including its contemporary security and foreign policies. He leads the Institute’s Geo-economics and Strategy research programme, which focuses on a range of issues including global-economic governance, rules and standards setting, and how economic coercion impacts policy at a national and corporate level.