News FY 2025

Event Report: Public Forum
Europe’s role in Indo-Pacific
-Lithuania’s contribution-

Japan-U.S. and Security Studies Unit

June 4, 2025

On Wednesday, May 28, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, in cooperation with the Embassy of Lithuania to Japan, hosted a public forum welcoming Her Excellency Dovilė Šakalienė, Minister of National Defense of the Republic of Lithuania.

As a member of the EU and NATO, Lithuania has been playing an active international role, including in Indo-Pacific region. In 2023, Lithuania formulated its first-ever "Indo-Pacific Strategy." Building on the recent security and defense engagement with like-minded partners in Indo-Pacific, Lithuania announced its “Strategy for Defense and Security Engagement in Indo-Pacific Region.”

During the forum, Minister Sakaiene delivered a lecture on the newly formulated defense strategy, followed by a discussion on Europe’s role and Lithuania’s contributions to the Indo-Pacific region with Sasakawa Peace Foundation Executive Director Nobukatsu Kanehara and Senior Fellow Tsuneo Watanabe.

At this forum, Minister of National Defense Dovilė Šakalienė presented a newly developed “Defense Strategy” and discussed Europe’s role and Lithuania’s contribution to the Indo-Pacific region. Minister Šakalienė with Mr. Nobukatsu Kanehara, SPF Executive Director, and Mr. Tsuneo “Nabe” Watanabe, SPF Senior Fellow.

Prior to the public forum, Mr.Kanehara, AMB(ret.) Nobushige Takamizawa, ADM(ret.) Tomohisa Takei, Mr. Watanabe, and RADM (ret.) Katsuya Yamamoto held discussions with Minister Sakalienė at the Lithuanian Embassy regarding the current international security situation.

Follow the link for the Strategy of Security and Defence Engagement in the Indo-Pacific Region.
https://kam.lt/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Strategy-for-security-and-Defence-Engagement-in-the-IP4.pd

The General Affairs and Networking Program of Japan-U.S. and Security Studies Unit of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation conducted overseas research in Estonia and Finland from December 6 to 13, 2025, and in the Republic of Korea from January 31 to February 6, 2026, under the Study Group “Security Strategy Studies (Strengthening the Human Resource Base)”, chaired by Mr. Tetsuro Kuroe, former Administrative Vice-Minister of Defense. This study group is one of the study groups established within "Security Strategy Studies Project" (FY2024-2025).

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Event Report: Public Forum
Europe’s role in Indo-Pacific
-Lithuania’s contribution-