Diana Farah

DUBAI: In a month that saw the US Military firing several waves of ship- and submarine-launch missile strikes against Houthi-controlled sites in Yemen, KONO Taro said the US is no longer the “policeman of the world.”

Kono, Japan’s Minister for Digital Transformation, told the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Thursday that while the US is still leading the West, it needs to play a bigger part in the international community.

“In this fragmented multipolar world, the US needs to play according to the rules, it needs to be part of the international system,” Kono said. “The US is not a part of the International Criminal Court; it’s not signing a lot of weapons conventions.”

“It left the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), it left the Paris Treaty and now it’s back. We need to encourage the US administration to seriously talk to the Senate, that they need to be influential in the international system,” he added.

Kono was a speaker during the ‘Japan’s Bet on Cooperation’ panel at WEF along with Masayuki Hyodo, CEO of Sumitomo Corporation, Michael Froman, Former US Trade Representative, and Isabelle Deschamps Chief Legal Officer of Rio Tinto.

The panel aimed to answer the question of whether Japan would be able to cooperate with the rest of the world while overcoming underlying challenges.

Kono explained that Japan is already playing a big role as a bridge between different parts of the world.

“The world is increasingly fragmented. There are large uncertainties over what’s going to happen over the Taiwan Strait. What’s going to happen to Ukraine, what’s happening in Middle East and the role of Japan is to bridge these different groups,” he said.

In the private sector perspective, Japan’s Sumitomo CEO Hyodo said that companies need to think outside of the box to work with the rest of the world.

“I think we have to be creative enough to redesign the whole value chain from the industries individually, so as to make each value chain competitive enough,” he said.

Considering Japan is the only non-Western country that is a part of the G7, Kono said that the country’s role is essential.

“Japan’s role in the G7 is to represent the non-Western civilization, the non-Western economy in the forum, and that’s how we come in,” he said.

The panel agreed that Japan’s leadership on the global scale is essential and effective in being a bridge between East and West and between North and South.