Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida declared China the “greatest strategic challenge” to world peace Thursday and urged Congress to continue its support for Ukraine amid its war with Russia in an address to a joint meeting of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Kishida, 66, celebrated Japan’s “firm alliance and enduring friendship” with America in his roughly half-hour speech, calling on Washington to “deter aggression and ensure peace” against mounting military and nuclear threats from China, Russia and North Korea.
“The post-Cold War era is already behind us, and we are now at an inflection point that will define the next stage of human history,” he told House and Senate lawmakers as well as members of President Biden’s Cabinet.
“Turning to Japan’s own neighborhood, China’s current external stance and military actions present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge, not only to the peace and security of Japan but to the peace and stability of the international community at large,” he said.
The Japanese head of government also warned of the danger posed by North Korea’s growing nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, with dictator Kim Jong Un having recently approved ballistic missile shipments to Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in waging an “unprovoked, unjust, and brutal war of aggression against Ukraine” has also sparked “worldwide concern that yet another catastrophe by nuclear weapon use is a real possibility,” Kishida noted.
In a stark warning about the stakes of the European war, the prime minister told US lawmakers, “Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow.”
“Peace requires more than understanding. It requires resolve,” he affirmed, emphasizing the strength that alliances with the US and other nations have brought through his speech. “Japan will continue to stand with Ukraine.”
For nearly two months, the House has stalled on passing a $95 billion Senate-approved national security package with funding for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific region to counter the rising threats.
That delay has been heightened by a further threat to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership by far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has warned the Louisiana Republican that a vote on Ukraine aid could trigger his ouster.
Japan announced in February that it would provide $12 billion for Ukraine’s defense, and the prime minister further promised to continue coordinating with NATO nations and increase his own nation’s defense budget to 2% of GDP by 2027.
A native of Hiroshima, Kishida pointed to the great strides his country and the US have made since the “the devastation of World War II,” but pointed out the “undercurrent of self-doubt” afflicting the US about what its “role in the world should be.”
“The US shaped the international order in the postwar world through economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power. It championed freedom and democracy. It encouraged the stability and prosperity of nations, including Japan,” he reminded the members.
“The United States policy was based on the premise that humanity does not want to live oppressed by an authoritarian state, where you are tracked and surveilled and denied from expressing what is in your heart and on your mind,” he went on, without explicitly referencing China’s spying on Americans through the Beijing-based parent company of the social media app TikTok.
In a reverse of the national security bill, the House last month overwhelmingly passed a measure to force the sale of TikTok within six months by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has not put it up for a floor vote.
“Social media is censored, monitored and controlled,” Kishida said, referring to it as one of many “new forms of oppression” along with “rapid advances” in artificial intelligence technology.
“I do not want to leave our children a society where human rights are suppressed, where political self-determination is denied, where our lives are monitored by digital technology,” he said. “I know you don’t either.”
Kishida also touted his nation’s investments in the US economy and joint partnerships on military and technological projects, including $800 billion from Japan to help create American jobs and coordination with the US to put a Japanese astronaut on the moon in the near future.
Kishida’s address was only the second speech to Congress by a Japanese prime minister after the late Shinzo Abe delivered an address to a joint meeting in 2015.
Abe was assassinated in 2022 over his political links to the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies, in a shocking mid-day shooting that later forced Kishida to drop one of his Cabinet officials over similar ties.
While stirring lawmakers to meet the moment of international crisis, Kishida also spoke fondly of his childhood experiences in a Queens public elementary school and his family trips to Niagara Falls as a boy.
“Thank you for making my family and me feel so welcome,” Kishida said, before joking of his own country’s legislature: “I never get such nice applause from the Japanese Diet.”