Trump wants Japanese warships in Hormuz. Can Takaichi ‘dodge the bullet’?

The rapidly escalating conflict in the Middle East threatens to overshadow this week’s meeting between Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and US President Donald Trump, where the two leaders are expected to deepen economic cooperation and collaboration in shipbuilding.Thursday’s summit at the White House puts Takaichi in a bind, caught between Trump’s call for Tokyo and others to send warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz and her country’s constitutional limits on taking part in overseas military campaigns.Following the US-Israeli attack against Iran last month and subsequent Tehran strikes on multiple vessels in the critical shipping lane, analysts say Trump could use the meeting to press her to step up as an ally.Trump said in a social media post that “hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated”.“Trump is going to want to show that the US is not alone on Iran and that its allies are shoulder to shoulder,” said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at the Tokyo branch of Temple University.“But I am sure that Takaichi would be more than happy if he did not bring up Japan making a military commitment.”