Geocase held an online workshop entitled ‘Georgia and ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’: Japan’s Perspective’, which was the second mutual event in the framework of close cooperation with the Embassy of Japan in Georgia.

The Geocase Chairman, Victor Kipiani who moderated the event addressed the audience with a welcome speech and introduced the distinguished speakers of the webinar: a special guest, Dr. Ken Jimbo, Professor at the Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University, Japan, and Mr Emil Avdaliani, Director of Middle East Studies, Geocase. He also thanked the honorable guest H.E. Mr Imamura Akira, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Georgia, for all his support and input into promoting bilateral cooperation between Japan and Georgia. 

Ambassador Imamura Akira delivered opening statements and stressed the importance and relevance of the webinar in light of current developments in the Indo-Pacific region.

Within the webinar, the distinguished speakers talked about modern Japan’s foreign policy and the security issues in Indo-Pacific region through FOIP optics. 

Dr. Ken Jimbo provided the presentation regarding opportunities and challenges of the Indo-Pacific and the key concepts of Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy as well as opportunities from Georgian perspective.

“I think this could be a great opportunity for Georgia to forge its so-called gateway strategy into Indo-Pacific, first of all, this is strategic partnership between/among like-minded states and I think Georgia could be huge partner of those like-minded states coalition which involves EU, Japan, the United States, Australia, India and others. Secondly, it has already become an important platform for promoting infrastructure and connectivity. There is also an emerging concept – economic security: what kind of digital infrastructures, open RAN devices, B2B, B2C services or digitalization can be done in the public domain, in this regard we find several competing standards to be adopted. I think these are the common issues Japan and Georgia are currently facing and they will also provide great opportunity for both of the countries to discuss further”, - noted Dr Jimbo.

In his speech, after a brief historical excurse, Dr Emil Avdaliani explained why the Indo-Pacific region concept is so important.  

“Emergence of the Indo-Pacific region took place at the time when a unipolar moment of the United States of America came to an end. I believe that these two processes are deeply interrelated. We will see that the Indo-Pacific region will have a major impact on the new world order and the new world order will be much more chaotic than it is nowadays. We are moving from active expansion of liberal internationalism to something else which is more chaotic world based on multipolar system.”- said Dr Avdaliani.

While speaking of possible cooperation between Japan and Georgia, Dr Emil Avdaliani draw some parallels with Japan’s ties with the 5 Central Asia countries and their trade, economic and cultural cooperation. “Similar initiatives could be introduced between Japan and the Black Sea countries and Georgia could play a pivotal role in that sense”, - he added.

At the end, Q&A session gave attendees the opportunity to find out more about the discussed topics.

View the webinar recording