The Current Security Environment Facing Japan and Canada, and Future Prospects

As geopolitical tensions reshape global trade and the scramble for secure supplies of energy and critical minerals intensifies, Canada and Japan find themselves as natural partners. Canada possesses vast reserves of energy and many of the critical minerals essential to batteries and advanced technologies. Japan, meanwhile, remains heavily dependent on imports, making the diversification and resilience of its supply chains an economic security priority. 

 

Against this shifting geopolitical backdrop, Professor Kazuto Suzuki, a leading expert on geoeconomics and economic security, will explore the growing strategic importance of Japan–Canada cooperation. His remarks will examine how the two countries can strengthen supply chains while placing this partnership within the wider economic and security challenges confronting both countries. He will also consider what an increasingly uncertain international order may mean for the future of Japan–Canada relations.

 

Kazuto Suzuki is Professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and Director of the Institute of Geoeconomics at International House of Japan.  He graduated from the Department of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, and received Ph.D. from Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, England.  He has worked in the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique in Paris, France as assistant researcher and the Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba from 2000 to 2008 and served as Professor of International Politics at Hokkaido University until 2020.  He served as an expert in the Panel of Experts for Iranian Sanction Committee under the United Nations Security Council from 2013 to July 2015.  He currently serves many advisory committees of the government of Japan, inter alia, the National Space Policy Committee of the Cabinet Office, the Government of Japan, and the President of Japan Association of International Security and Trade. He is also a full member of the International Academy of Astronautics, an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and a Visiting Fellow at The Japan Institute of International Affairs. His research focuses on the conjunction of science/technology and international relations; subjects including the conjunction of science/technology and international relations; subjects including economic Security, space policy, sanctions, non-proliferation, and export control.  His recent work includes Space and International Politics (2011), in Japanese, awarded Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities), Policy Logics and Institutions of European Space Collaboration (2003), A Global Map of Resources and the Economy, in Japanese, (2024); as editing work includes The Regulatory Power of the EU in Japanese (2012), Economic security and technological advantage (2023) in Japanese, and many others.