Japan’s greatest strategic vulnerability may not be missiles or warships. It may be who builds Asia’s power plants. As China expands its military reach across the Indo-Pacific, it is also quietly extending its influence through civil nuclear exports.
Every reactor Beijing or Moscow builds creates a relationship that can last for generations, binding countries through fuel supplies, financing, maintenance, technical standards and political ties. In an era of intensifying great-power competition, exporting a nuclear power plant is less like selling infrastructure than securing long-term geopolitical influence. That reality helps explain why the United States, Japan and South Korea recently signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to jointly export small modular reactors, or SMRs, across the Indo-Pacific.
On its face, it is an energy agreement. In practice, it is a strategic response to China’s growing regional influence and an acknowledgment that Japan’s security depends not only on military alliances but also on who shapes the region’s critical infrastructure.
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