Key messages
- Japan-Europe cooperation against foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) is strategically justified by shared interests in preserving an open, rules-based international order. As liberal democracies facing systemic challenges from authoritarian actors, both recognise that information manipulation is embedded in broader geopolitical competition and cannot be addressed in isolation.
- Effective cooperation requires bridging conceptual and institutional differences. The EU’s FIMI framework –behaviour-focused and institutionally embedded– differs from Japan’s terminology and policy culture, which centre on long-term strategic communications through the FOIP construct, and, more recently, on ‘information warfare in the cognitive domain’ as the key label for disinformation-related threats.
- The most feasible avenue for collaboration lies in shared analysis and situational awareness. Developing common analytical standards, OSINT methodologies and mechanisms for information-sharing would allow both sides to better distinguish between the presence and the impact of FIMI campaigns.
- Operational cooperation, including public attribution or coordinated countermeasures, is likely to remain selective and case-specific. Divergent threat perceptions (Russia for Europe; China as a long-term systemic challenge for Japan), legal frameworks and intelligence cultures constrain fully harmonised responses.
- Embedding counter-FIMI cooperation within the broader, fast-developing EU-Japan security partnership would enhance resilience on both sides. An explicit political commitment to structured collaboration on analysis, strategic communications and third-country capacity-building would strengthen collective agency in the information domain.
Analysis
Introduction
Can Europe –the EU and like-minded European states– and Japan cooperate in countering foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI)? Given the centrality of information manipulation to the strategies of great-power adversaries, cooperation between Europe and Japan –both committed to liberal values and principles– appears increasingly relevant in an era of intensified geopolitical competition and rapid technological change. At the same time, such collaboration may be shaped by differences between Europe and Japan in strategic priorities, terminological and conceptual framing, and institutional and technical capacity and culture.
These dynamics, as well as the broader question of whether FIMI could serve as a useful framework for Europe-Japan cooperation, warrant closer scrutiny. FIMI, a concept developed and promoted in recent years by the European External Action Service (EEAS), reflects particular European geopolitical and strategic assumptions of the current period. Understanding how Japan and the broader Indo-Pacific approach the challenge of information manipulation and information resilience may therefore be important for identifying potential areas of dialogue and cooperation.
This paper examines the historical and geopolitical context shaping Europe-Japan engagement on information manipulation. It considers how Japan’s longstanding emphasis on strategic communications –developed over more than a quarter of a century– relates to its broader approach to the Indo-Pacific, including the concept of a ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP). Against this backdrop, the paper explores how European and Japanese approaches intersect and where potential avenues for cooperation in addressing information manipulation might emerge within the evolving landscape of Europe-Japan security relations.
The Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) as strategic communications and geopolitics in action[1]
First, a brief note on terminology. Strategic communications refers to the long-term shifting and shaping of dominant discourses in societies. It is ‘a holistic approach to communication based on values and interests that encompasses everything an actor does to achieve objectives in a contested environment’. It operates at the level of policy, rather than as short term ‘messaging’ or communication tactics to signal intent. Nor is it a communication to alert the public of ongoing or incoming FIMI attacks or to improvise a ‘response’ to it. Strategic communications is not reactive; it is intended to proactively engage audiences and pre-emptively frame issues in ways that open space for action aligned with certain interests and values. The latter is increasingly recognised as aligning with fundamental freedoms and liberal values.
By contrast, FIMI, and separately, disinformation, are specific forms of subversion undermining an opponent’s policy, perceptions and institutions, and therefore distinct from strategic communications. Such subversions can take countless forms and are primarily expressed through tactics. The EU defines FIMI as a mostly non‑illegal, intentional and coordinated pattern of manipulative behaviour by state or non‑state actors that threatens or negatively impacts values and political processes. Disinformation, the creation/sharing of false/inaccurate information with the intention to deceive or mislead, could be part of FIMI but it focuses on narrative content rather than behaviour, the latter being the focus of FIMI. Rather than FIMI, Japan uses the term ‘disinformation’ officially.
In light of this conceptual distinction, it is important to recognise that Japan has a longer history of engaging in strategic communications than it has with counter-disinformation or FIMI. The ‘Indo‑Pacific’ vision Japan has developed over the past quarter century is in itself long‑term strategic communications. The Indo-Pacific is not just a geographical/cartographical link between the Indian and Pacific Oceans but a political construct expressing Japan’s vision for the emerging region that embeds its interests and values. Japan’s vision draws on former and late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s 2007 conception of ‘the Indo‑Pacific’ as a shared democratic and prosperous space linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, especially through future Japan-India cooperation. The vision was formalised at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD VI) in 2016 as the ‘Free and Open Indo‑Pacific’ (FOIP) with three core principles: promoting the rule of law, freedom of navigation and free trade; advancing economic prosperity through connectivity and partnership; and commitment to peace and stability via capacity building and assistance. Against the backdrop of heightened tensions in the East and South China Seas and an increasingly assertive China, the FOIP became Japan’s guiding precept for regional and global engagement in this century and its framework for articulating an inclusive, open, rules‑based order. Hence, the FOIP is not a concept calling for containment of China.
As a core pillar of Japan’s foreign and security policy, the FOIP also fuses geopolitics and strategic communications. Japan’s Indo‑Pacific and FOIP frameworks are intended to guide the proactive shaping of a rules‑based order, rallying like‑minded partners around the core principles of existing international law. Through the exercise of Indo-Pacific discourse, Japan expanded and updated relations with the Quad (the minilateral associations between Japan, India, Australia and the US), with South-East Asia/ASEAN, and with Europe, where the concept of the Indo-Pacific became common knowledge, with slightly different meanings attached by each of these ‘expanded’ Indo-Pacific actors.
Japan’s 2019 National Defense Program Guidelines further cements such a vision. The Guidelines introduced the Multi‑Domain Defense Force and three defence objectives: shaping an international environment favourable to Japan’s interests and values, deterrence and responding when deterrence fails. Strategic communications was explicitly placed under the first objective, implying a constructive take on strategic communications tied to promoting the FOIP and pursued through defence engagement in tandem with diplomacy.
The ensuing 2022 National Security Strategy and associated defence documents propelled a fundamental upgrading of Japan’s defence posture and, for the first time, highlighted ‘information warfare’ in the ‘cognitive domain, including the spread of disinformation’ as a growing challenge. The Strategy, however, does not yet adopt the EU’s FIMI terminology. It lists plans to strengthen analytical capabilities including the introduction of AI‑enabled systems by around 2027.
In response, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is enhancing its information‑gathering and analytical functions to monitor ‘information warfare’ and to inform public communications that contest hostile narratives. Its dedicated webpage, ‘The Responses to Information Manipulation, including Spread of Disinformation’, also references ‘foreign information manipulation’ and highlights Japan’s engagement in G7 and other frameworks, such as the 2023 US-Japan memorandum on countering foreign information manipulation. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) treats disinformation as part of the threat environment, building analytical and AI‑supported warning systems and feeding verified information into government‑wide communications as part of a broader ‘cognitive‑domain’ defence posture. Other governmental actors, such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Digital Agency and the Information-Technology Promotion Agency, approach information threats primarily from the perspectives of technology, platform‑governance and cybersecurity, with disinformation recognised but not fully mainstreamed.
Japan’s information space and FIMI threats
Due to the centrality for Japan of the FOIP vision in its foreign and security policy, it has become a prime target for actors seeking to undermine the liberal international order anchored on US-led security architectures. Japan’s position as a key US ally in East Asia and the Indo‑Pacific, and its role as a G7 member whose diplomatic and strategic influence remains significant adds to its value as a target.
Existing authoritative studies tended to portray Japan’s information space as highly insular and resilient, despite the history of intensive Chinese overt and covert efforts to secure pro‑Chinese outcomes through engagement in Japan’s politics, business, media and society. Yet Japan may be quickly losing the perceived insularity that long shielded it from information manipulation, when combined with the on-going trend towards the segmentation of Japanese society along lines relating to socio-economic or migration issues, for instance. Consistent with trends in the broader Indo-Pacific, an increasing number of studies indeed point to existing Chinese online activities in Japanese information space.
A recently-published innovative study employing event-based open-source intelligence (OSINT) data analysis details the designs of both Russian and Chinese information operations in Japanese information space, and further, how they interact with one another. It shows that Russian or Chinese state-sponsored content can circulate in the Japanese language and spread quickly in the country’s media eco-system. Although their campaigns seemed uncoordinated at the time of the research, considering the fact that the timing of their campaign intensity consistently differed across the diplomatic events monitored, the content could create a ‘net-information effect’, as they share the similar strategic objective of undermining the Western security architecture in which Japan is a central anchor. Russian state media and affiliated accounts repeatedly portray Japan as a ‘pawn of the West/US’, question the value of the US-Japan alliance and attack Japan’s reputation as a democratic, rules‑based actor, while attempting to reframe perceptions of the Ukraine war and nuclear risk, and by attacking the legitimacy of critiques of Russian aggression. Chinese narratives employ a different framing, often portraying the FOIP as US‑led containment of China, and emphasising China’s constructive role via the Belt and Road Initiative and ‘economic cooperation’ with the Global South and ASEAN, while opportunistically leveraging controversies (most prominently, the Fukushima ALPS incident). Although uncoordinated, Chinese and Russian campaigns converge in portraying Japan as subordinate to the Western powers, discrediting the FOIP and Japan’s alliance relations.
Yet to treat the documented presence of Russian or Chinese narratives as evidence of a substantial impact on Japanese FOIP’s viability or credibility would be short-sighted, as data that indicates the presence of manipulation does not necessarily explain how it impacts the target audience. Separate investigations and methods would be required to understand their precise impact on target audiences, as manipulations often occur without necessarily shifting public opinion or elite decision‑making. This conflation matters for policy, indicating a need for a more behaviourally informed FIMI analysis.
Japan’s strategic communications and modalities for counter‑disinformation and FIMI
Japan does not face the same intensity of information manipulation as front‑line European states, but the main point to acknowledge is that the global struggle for influence vectored through the information domain does reach the Indo-Pacific, including Japan. The North Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific are thus inherently linked.
In diplomacy, Japan anchors its narratives in FOIP discourses and thus proactively frames its regional and global roles, emphasising inclusivity and support for international law. By doing so, it seeks to pre‑empt adversarial and anti-status-quo narratives that attempt to undermine/delegitimatise the FOIP. This is a form of anticipatory strategic communications: rather than responding to each hostile narrative individually, Japan articulates a consistent story that can point to a long-term vision that explains what Japan stands for.
Japan’s response to on-going FIMI attempts is primarily focused on advancing its own analytical capabilities, including open-source intelligence, an issue certain to be featured in the forthcoming review of Japan’s intelligence communities under the current Sanae Takaichi cabinet. Japanese policymakers and especially industry‑based researchers have increasingly turned to OSINT methodologies –from social‑media monitoring to content and network analysis– to document specific foreign campaigns. These efforts could help move domestic debates beyond generic claims that ‘social media can spread disinformation’, to identifying concrete cases, behaviours and tactics, which could then inform public policy. The quality of these analyses, however, remains uneven, and most such work, where it exists, remains outside the public view, which might create issues with transparency.
There are obstacles to publicising such analyses of FIMI, caused by diplomatic and political sensitivities surrounding the formal public attribution of specific state‑linked information actors, aside from the fact that attribution is often technically more demanding. Public attributions require political will, and Japan to date has preferred to deal with specific cases of disinformation or FIMI through the existing bilateral/diplomatic/political context, rather than resorting to a categorical policy of exposure directed against specific actors.
Cooperatively, Japan works through alliance and minilateral frameworks –the G7, EU-Japan dialogues and bilateral cooperation with the US (before the Trump Administration)– to share assessments and, in some cases, discuss responses. Domestic legal and normative constraints, including strong protections for freedom of expression and the relatively slow development of regulatory frameworks, limit the scope for the more robust content‑governance and content‑moderation measures seen in Europe under the Digital Services Act. Given the sensitivity regarding public attribution, international collaboration including attribution of FIMI would be carried out on a case-by-case basis.
Prospects and obstacles for Japan-Europe cooperation against FIMI
In light of the on-going information manipulation active in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific, the logic for closer Japan-Europe cooperation against FIMI is strong. Both actors are liberal democracies whose security and prosperity depend on open, rules‑based systems, a need that is reflected in their respective Indo-Pacific strategies. Indeed, in 2024 the EU-Japan Security and Defence Partnership elevated ‘hybrid threats, including foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI)’ to a core area of cooperation, committing both sides to share threat assessments and to explore operational coordination on FIMI, commitments that were subsequently reaffirmed in the first EU-Japan Strategic Dialogue held in Tokyo in November 2024.
Cooperation could take three forms, with various benefits. First, even more coordinated narratives about the rule of-law based order could be crafted and promoted in a strategic manner by both Europe and Japan that would be most significant as a projection of a common vision vis-à-vis authoritarian challengers. Such collaboration would be grounded on Japan’s and Europe’s long-term strategic communications.
Secondly, shared analytical standards and methods would advance technical cooperation. Joint research and academic-policy networks could help Japan and Europe develop more rigorous, comparable ways of assessing FIMI. The difficulty in this case is the cost associated with such endeavours, especially given the high cost of certain data. Such joint research could investigate how to distinguish between FIMI presence and impact, identifying when FIMI campaigns reach thresholds that merit policy response, among others.
Third, technology is now a critical axis of the FIMI debate and should feature more explicitly in future EU-Japan cooperation. Existing frameworks such as the EU-Japan Digital Partnership on digital governance and AI, including work on generative AI, could be used to give practical effect to cooperation in the FIMI domain, with the Hiroshima AI Process providing an additional political anchor. Since these technologies can help efforts to counter FIMI, they offer potential entry points for gradually deepening Europe-Japan collaboration on FIMI, for example by aligning principles and sharing methodologies.
Fourth, given that both Europe and Japan are large and experienced aid donors, support for third‑country information resilience could be enhanced in a coordinated manner, or even jointly managed. Japan and Europe both run capacity‑building programmes in the Indo‑Pacific and beyond. Coordinated efforts to support independent journalism, assist election management, share analysis and promote the responsible adoption of new technologies could significantly strengthen local resilience against FIMI.
Given that adversaries persistently combine information manipulation with economic and military levers, it is difficult to see how uncoordinated, siloed responses by Japan and Europe could suffice over the long term.
The same geopolitical environment that needs such responses, however, may also create obstacles to cooperation. Europe’s immediate threat environment is undoubtedly dominated by Russia and the war in Ukraine, with FIMI viewed through the lens of existential conflict on its eastern flank. Japan also supports Ukraine through various schemes and support groups with Europe/NATO, beyond coordinating policies with G7 member countries and institutions. However, for Japan and the broader Indo-Pacific, to a varying degree and in different ways, China is an immediate and long-term strategic challenge (and, for some, an opportunity); hence broader foreign and security policy coordination, including geoeconomic policies vis-à-vis China, tends to matter more than focus on information resilience alone. Ultimately, Europe and Japan would need to find a mutually compatible way of understanding where FIMI fits into their own strategic priorities and then coordinate a collaborative approach.
Differences in responses to US intransigence and unpredictability also matter. Many European policymakers have responded to shifts in US policy by calling for ‘strategic autonomy’, including in defence and information resilience, to a great extent pushed also by public opinion in their own country. Japan, and other US allies in the Indo-Pacific, whose security remains heavily dependent on the US, not to mention the provision of extended deterrence, has far less room for manoeuvre, although Japan, too, has pursued vigorously middle-power associations and minilaterals, most notably the Quad, while seeking to reduce asymmetrical dependence in certain supply chains.
A third cluster of obstacles concerns technical capabilities and intelligence culture. Several European states and EU institutions have developed relatively robust FIMI monitoring structures, including dedicated task forces, early warning mechanisms and regulatory initiatives affecting digital platforms. They have also engaged in high‑profile public attribution of foreign information campaigns. Japan’s information collection and analysis, including by intelligence institutions, are more discreet, and historical experience would indicate more stove-piped information collection and analysis by several engaged agencies. While OSINT‑based research is expanding, formal mechanisms to translate findings into policy –let alone engage in public attribution, as noted above– remain relatively underdeveloped and context-dependent.
From an EU-Japan cooperation perspective, these differences raise practical questions, including to what extent and at what level(s) FIMI analysis, which would by nature include sensitive information, can be shared. It would be desirable to agree upon workable modalities for sharing information, if both parties are to develop common situational awareness, or coordinate any responses to FIMI attacks or synchronise public messages on specific FIMI cases.
Conclusions
Japan’s FOIP vision demonstrates how strategic communications and geopolitics intersect in the Indo‑Pacific: the vision of the Indo-Pacific and the FOIP were devised to shape the regional and global order, to expand the group of like-minded partners and shape behaviour and expectations of others, and to create space for enabling liberal values and principles to thrive. Because the FOIP as strategic communications and geopolitics in action is central to Japan’s posture, it offers a uniquely revealing lens for viewing the dynamics of FIMI or disinformation.
Japan’s information environment, with its own distinctive political/social/economic cleavages, presents both strengths and vulnerabilities. OSINT‑based research has begun to map how foreign actors target the FOIP and related discourses, but it also reveals a pervasive tendency to conflate the mere presence of FIMI attempts with impact on societal perceptions in the target state(s). Addressing this conceptual gap is essential if counter‑FIMI policies are to be effective.
For Japan and Europe, cooperation in countering FIMI is clearly warranted. Their interest in preserving an open, rules‑based world order and stable information environments are closely aligned, and their Indo‑Pacific strategies already overlap in important respects. Yet cooperation will be constrained by geopolitics and divergent strategic priorities, including responses to the rise of China and evolving US policies, differing technical capacities and distinct information/intelligence-gathering cultures. These constraints suggest that Japan-Europe collaboration will be most productive in areas such as shared analysis, conceptual alignment and coordinated strategic communications, rather than in fully harmonised counter-FIMI operational responses.
In a world where coercion and information manipulation are becoming normalised, the instruments of statecraft and middle‑power coordination of this kind will not, by themselves, resolve all our strategic challenges. But they can help ensure that Japan and Europe retain and strengthen agency in shaping how that challenge is understood and addressed, so that we are not merely objects of other powers’ narratives, but co‑authors of a more resilient security order.
[1] Part of this work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP23K25483.
