How Australia Can Work With Japan in the Indo-Pacific (original) (raw)
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East-West Center Occasional Paper, 2024
This East-West Center Occasional Paper is the second of a set of two papers examining how Japan and Australia are seeking to employ minilateral institutions to enhance their cooperation and compete strategically in an increasingly contested region. The first paper demonstrated how Japan and Australia have adopted a minilateralist approach that chiefly prioritizes traditional security concerns, in contrast to China's emphasis on geoeconomics alongside its efforts to entrench its global/regional leadership and shape the international order. This second paper considers the strategic objectives underlying China's practice of minilateralism and reevaluates the order-building and geoeconomic dimensions within the Australian/Japanese practice of minilateralism. It concludes that for Australia and Japan minilateral cooperation in these areas continues to lag traditional security efforts, and thus points to the need for the partners, along with the United States, to invest greater attention and resources in these directions to give greater substance to their joint vision of Free and Open Indo-Pacific. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: This Occasional Paper was written with the generous support of the Australia-Japan Foundation. The East-West Center promotes better relations and understanding among the people and nations of the United States, Asia, and the Pacific through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. Established by the US Congress in 1960, the Center serves as a resource for information and analysis on critical issues of common concern, bringing people together to exchange views, build expertise, and develop policy options. The East-West Center in Washington provides US and Indo-Pacific government stakeholders and program partners with innovative training, analytical, dialogue, exchange, and public diplomacy initiatives to meet policy priorities. CITATION: Envall, HDP, Hatakeyama, Kyoko Wilkins, Thomas S., and Hirono, Miwa (2024) “Japan/Australia Minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific (II): Advancing Cooperation in Order-Building and Geoeconomics,” East-West Center Occasional Paper 10, 10 June, Washington, DC: East-West Center.
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.
the special japan-australia strategic partnership within the ambit of
This paper examines Japan’s and Australia’s efforts to enhance the maritime capabilities of the Philippines in the face of China’s maritime expansion in East Asia. It observes that both Japan and Australia are members of a loose association of maritime democracies called “Democratic Security Diamond (DSD).” A brain child of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the DSD was formed by four naval powers—Australia, India, the United States, and Japan--to safeguard safe guard the maritime commons stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific. As members of the DSD, Japan and Australia have emphasized the relevance of the regional security architecture through the creation of multilateral organizations as a means of upholding a stable and rules based order in East Asia. Both are also actively involved in joint assistance to the development and maritime capacity building of third countries that might be threatened by the rise of China such as the Philippines. Since the formation of their special strategic partnership in 2012, Japan and Australia have assisted the Philippines in building up its navy, coast guard, and air force. In conclusion, this paper argues that in building up the country’s maritime security capabilities, the Philippines should look at the prospect of signing a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with Australia and the Japan and forming a trilateral security partnership made up of Tokyo, Canberra, and Manila.
India-Japan Cooperation towards a Rule-Based Order in the Asia-Pacific
2015
The political leadership of the leading democracies in the Asia-Pacific has been arguing for the creation of a rule-based order in the region. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe put forth this idea in his speech at the 2014 Shangri-La Dialogue urging the international community to adhere to "international law" when making their claims and resolving their disputes. Similar statements have been made by leaders in the US, the G-7, and India. They have expressed concerns about China's expansive behavior and claims in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. This research paper evaluates the statements and speeches of Japanese and Indian leaders. It also tries to assess how the strategic thinkers and the media that help shape public opinion view their calls for forging a new regional architecture. Analyses of their debates in India and Japan would be helpful in understanding the converging and diverging points toward creating a new rule-based order. Interestingly, though both Indian and Japanese leadership have sounded positive about forming a rule-based order to check China's rise, they have not hesitated to embrace China wherever their national interests converged with Beijing's. While Japan denounces China's aggressive behavior, Tokyo has been amenable to the idea that Beijing should play an influential role in the Six-party Talks to restrain Pyongyang's provocations. The need for a new architecture can be seen not only in the field of security but also in the economic realm. While Japan so far finds itself comfortable with the European-and US-led economic order, India is uncomfortable with this Western-led economic order as the existing order is based on the 1950s economic order and does not represent the changed economic realities of the present world. Though India allies with Japan on security issues, it has aligned with China to forge a new alternative economic order that includes the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This paper, while summarizing the Japanese and Indian strategic thinking, suggests India and Japan to bridge their perceptions over various global and regional issues and offers policy recommendations in order to forge a strongly-knit rule-based order in the Asia-Pacific.
FOIP 2.0: The Evolution of Japan's Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy
Asia-Pacific Review, 2019
The “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) is the most important feature of Japan’s foreign policy under the Abe Administration. One of the most important questions is whether this vision aims to contain a rapidly rising China. Along with the amelioration of the relationship between Japan and China, this diplomatic strategy has been evolved from the quadrilateral security cooperation among leading democracies in this region, namely the US, Japan, Australia, and India, to a more comprehensive regional cooperation. This article regards the latter diplomatic strategic as the “FOIP 2.0” and that there emerges a possible harmony between Japan’s FOIP and China’s controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Redirecting Strategic Focus in the Age of the Indo-Pacific
Comparative Connections, 2018
Japan and Southeast Asia faced a new regional dynamic in 2017 following the inauguration of President Donald Trump in the United States and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s accommodative foreign policy toward China. US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Philippines’ unwillingness to discuss the 2016 South China Sea arbitration award forced Japan and some Southeast Asian states to redirect their strategic focus. Most Southeast Asian states increasingly welcome Japan’s regional initiatives in trade, security, and development to fill the vacuum created by these policy shifts. Japan has actively emphasized the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy,” the geographic scope of which goes well beyond East Asia and covers the entire Pacific Ocean to East Africa. This new strategic focus has revitalized Japan’s cooperation with Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, there are serious challenges that Japan needs to overcome, particularly in clarifying ASEAN’s roles in the strategy.
JAPAN: COMING UP WITH THE INDO-PACIFIC CONCEPT
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Dr Rahul Roy-Chaudhury is the Senior Fellow for South Asia at the IISS. He leads the Institute's South Asia research programme, looking at India's neighbourhood foreign and security policies; Pakistan, Afghanistan and regional security; counter-extremism and terrorism; regional nuclear matters; and the Indian navy and the Indian Ocean. Rahul gives select policy-relevant talks and briefings, and regularly organises several 'track 1.5' meetings.