By Finn Brooks
As the fallout from the Iran war continues to ripple across global markets and shipping lanes, French President Emmanuel Macron touched down in Tokyo this week for talks with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi — and the meeting was about far more than pleasantries at the Akasaka Palace. The two leaders issued a joint call for a ceasefire in the Middle East, pledged deeper defense cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, signed a rare earths development deal, and agreed to collaborate on nuclear energy and space technology. Against the backdrop of Donald Trump publicly declaring that keeping the Strait of Hormuz open is Europe’s problem, and calling France “very unhelpful,” the Macron-Takaichi summit is less like a routine diplomatic visit and more like a deliberate signal that a new axis of like-minded democracies is quietly taking shape outside the American orbit.
Through a realist lens, the most striking element of this summit is the rare earths agreement. China controls the overwhelming majority of global rare earth production: minerals essential to defense systems, electric vehicles, and advanced manufacturing. A Franco-Japanese joint development deal is a textbook example of balancing behavior: two mid-tier powers pooling resources to reduce dependence on a dominant state’s strategic leverage. Realists would also note the defense cooperation road map signed by the two countries’ defense ministers, which includes expanded joint exercises in the Indo-Pacific. France’s persistent military presence across the region, through its overseas territories and deployments,combined with Japan’s rapid remilitarization under revised defense guidelines makes this partnership a meaningful, if understated, counterweight to Chinese regional influence. Neither country is openly antagonizing Beijing, but the structural logic of their cooperation is unmistakably oriented around hedging against Chinese power.
From a liberal institutionalist and constructivist perspective, the summit’s rhetorical emphasis on international law, democratic values, and free passage through the Strait of Hormuz is equally significant. Both Macron and Takaichi explicitly framed their partnership around a shared normative commitment: the rules-based international order, at precisely the moment the United States, the traditional guarantor of that order, is signaling indifference to it. Trump’s statement that Hormuz security is the responsibility of countries that use the strait represents a dramatic departure from the post-WWII American foreign policy consensus. Into that vacuum, Macron and Takaichi are attempting to perform what constructivists would call normative leadership: demonstrating that the liberal international framework remains viable even as its chief architect steps back. The fact that Macron declined to address Trump’s comments publicly, and that reporters were barred from asking questions, suggests he is carefully managing the optics of what is, in practice, a subtle but real divergence from Washington.
The broader takeaway from this summit is that 2025 is becoming a year of accelerating realignment among second-tier powers. Japan and France are not adversaries of the United States, but they are increasingly hedging building bilateral and multilateral structures that function independently of American leadership. The nuclear energy cooperation, the space technology collaboration, and the rare earths deal all point toward a long-term strategic partnership that is quietly preparing for a world in which Washington’s reliability can no longer be assumed. IR scholars who study polarity shifts will recognize this moment: when the hegemon retreats, capable middle powers don’t simply wait — they organize. The Macron-Takaichi summit may not have made front-page headlines globally, but in the ledger of structural change in international relations, it deserves careful attention.