Implications for Asia in Japan's economic decline (original) (raw)
Related papers
Pivot Towards China: Japan's Renewed Security Strategy in Asia
2016
This article is an attempt at making clear of Japan’s new strategic offensive in Asia and its implications for Sino-Japanese relations. Departing from domestic leadership change and geopolitical developments in the region, this article focuses on how the second Abe administration responds to China’s continuing rise in the new century. The central argument is that the new Abe administration has adopted a two pronged approach towards containing China’s expanding influence in Asia. On the one hand, Japan seeks to strengthen relations with India and Burma through security and economic cooperation in order to contain Chinese influence from the South. On the other hand, should the TPP be realized in the near future, together with the U.S. and other Southeast Asian states, the TPP would essentially reinforce Japan’s relations with member states and counter balance Chinese influence from the Pacific. By taking into account both economic and geopolitical initiatives adopted by the Abe administration, the author seeks to place Japan’s recent moves onto the strategic level and distinguish the discussion from purely political, economic or geopolitical considerations of Japanese foreign policy.
Survival, 2007
To rear a tiger is to invite disaster….' (Sima Tan, Records of the Grand Scribe, China, 2 nd Century BC) 'Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger usually ended up inside it' (John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 1961) New Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe has only been in office since late September, but already the outlines of his administration are becoming clearer, both in expected and unexpected directions. Abe's administration is proving to be conservative and revisionist, and even more so than that of his predecessor Junichirō Koizumi. Abe has certainly moved to improve ties with China and South Korea-Beijing and Seoul the October destinations for his first overseas visits within two weeks of taking power-and thereby to limit the damage wrought by Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine and bilateral wrangling over Japan's colonial history. However, the general thrust of Abe's diplomacy is built upon much of the legacy left by Koizumi, and is attempting to shift it on to a yet more pro-active and assertive path. The harder edge of Abe's self-proclaimed 'battling diplomacy' (tatakau gaikō) has already been revealed with Japan's swift imposition of financial and shipping sanctions on North Korea in reaction to its October nuclear test. Abe is also following Koizumi in seeking to strengthen bilateral security ties with the US, going beyond 1 anything Koizumi had sought to achieve. The Japanese government at the start of Abe's administration even mulled plans for the application of the US-Japan Guidelines for Defence Cooperation to enable Japan to support the US to interdict North Korean shipping. 1 Abe's foreign and security agenda, and attempts to place it on a more proactive footing, further include attempts to pick up and push forward on constitutional revision, a debate first opened up by Koizumi. Article 9 of the so-called 1947 'peace constitution', has been interpreted by the Japanese government as permitting the maintenance of the Japan Self Defence Forces (JSDF) only for the purposes of individual self-defence and as prohibiting the exercise of the right of collective self-defence in support of the US. Koizumi and now Abe have argued that Japan should consider breaching this self-imposed ban on collective self-defence under certain conditions in order to speed Japan's trajectory to becoming a more 'normal' state prepared in certain contingencies to fight alongside its US ally. 2 Abe has also indicated that Japan should enact a permanent law on 'international peace cooperation' that replaces the current piecemeal and time-bound legislation permitting the overseas dispatch of the JSDF, and thus enables more routine dispatch to support UN Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO), US-led 'coalitions of the willing', and even, as hinted at in Abe's visit to Europe in January 2007, NATO missions. 3 Abe has presided over the final elevation of the Japan Defence Agency (JDA) to full ministerial status as the Japan Ministry of Defence (MOD) in January 2007, and initiated plans for the
Asia-Pacific Review Japan's Choices in a Changed Security Environment
China's rise and clear ambition to change Asia poses both tactical and strategic questions, long neglected in Japan. Tactically, territorial challenges can be countered effectively by use of Anti-Access Area Denial [A2/AD] tactics, as Japan is now doing. The strategic issues: how to deal with a hostile nuclear super-power neighbor, counter nuclear blackmail, and so forth, are far more difficult. This author believes that US "extended deterrence" no longer exists. Washington in fact would never use nuclear weapons to defend Japan, whatever promises have been made. The only answer, and one that decreases rather than increases the possibility of conflict, is for Japan to acquire within a decade a minimal nuclear deterrent, too small for war-making but adequate to prevent attack, such as those maintained by Britain and France, who know America best. Without such a deterrent Japan will be defenseless against inevitable Chinese nuclear threats and blackmail.
Japan's 'Indo-Pacific' question: countering China or shaping a new regional order
International Affairs, 2020
Japan's primary objective of the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategy is to shape and consolidate regional order in the Indo-Pacific region based on the existing rules-based international order. The concept initially aimed to achieve two different objectives—shaping a regional order in the Indo-Pacific and ensuring the defence of Japan; however, Japan has gradually shifted its strategic focus onto the former, separating national defence from the FOIP concept, which reflects a change in the degree of its commitment to the two objectives. On the one hand, as its overall security strategy, Japan has determined to steadily enhance its national defence by increasing its own defence capabilities and strengthening the US–Japan alliance, while transforming its partnerships with like-minded states, such as Australia and India, into a diplomatic, and potentially military, alignment. This has been brought about by shifts in the regional balance of power, particularly the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States. On the other hand, as part of its FOIP strategy, Japan's attempts to build a new regional order in the Indo-Pacific region aim to defend the existing rules-based order established by the United States from challengers, particularly China. Yet, given the strategic uncertainty over Japan's international coalition-building efforts to create a new regional order, Japan has made its approach flexible; Tokyo is using its ambiguous FOIP concept to gauge other states' responses, understand their perspectives, and change its strategic emphases accordingly—so-called ‘tactical hedging’. Japan has pursued similar means to achieve the two key objectives. Nevertheless, the country's core interest, the defence of Japan, is more imperative than building a regional order in the Indo-Pacific region, and Japan faces different types of challenges in the future.