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Which country is Australia’s most important defence partner in Southeast Asia? I’m guessing not many readers of The Strategist would put the Philippines at the top of their lists. The correct answer, of course, is, ‘It depends.’ Yet, for some of the most demanding military scenarios that may confront the Australian Defence Force in the decade ahead, such as a war over Taiwan or in the South China Sea, the Philippines could be an indispensable partner because of its location and potential willingness, as a fellow treaty ally of the United States, to grant access and logistical support to Australian forces. Although low profile, the Australia–Philippines defence relationship has surprising depth and potential, meriting a closer look.

Australia’s deepest defence ties in Southeast Asia are with Malaysia and Singapore, through the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) and as bilateral partners in their own right. Singapore’s military capabilities are the most advanced in Southeast Asia. But the utility of the FPDA in a South China Sea contingency is questionable because its remit is limited to West Malaysia and Singapore. The probability of these countries extending basing access to Australian forces for operations to defend Taiwan is almost certainly lower.

Australia’s defence relationship with Indonesia attracts a political premium for Canberra, but it lacks strategic underpinnings and Jakarta is unlikely to offer access for the ADF beyond transit through the archipelago. Vietnam holds out more promise of a like-minded approach to pushing back against China’s expansionism in the South China Sea. But Hanoi keeps its distance from the US and its allies in the military domain. Australia has expanded its defence relationship with Brunei since 2020, but like most Southeast Asian countries the small sultanate would tread very carefully in any crisis or conflict involving China unless it is directly threatened.

The US is likely to confront similar ambivalence across Southeast Asia, including from its ally Thailand. Laos and Myanmar would remain neutral, at best, while Cambodia is in an invidious position as the prospective host for Chinese naval and possibly air force assets.

The Philippines has been portrayed as an unreliable ally of the US, with some justification. The 2014 Philippines–US Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement failed to progress significantly under Rodrigo Duterte’s dyspeptic presidency. The vital visiting forces agreement was nearly terminated. But alliance relations have stabilised since 2020. Beijing’s relentless pressure tactics in what Filipinos call the West Philippine Sea have darkened perceptions of China in the Philippines. The government under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, though still new and by no means anti-China, appears to recognise the irreplaceable value of the US alliance for deterring further aggression by China, despite Washington’s mixed record of deterrence in the South China Sea.

In Philippine military circles there’s a sense of realism that proximity to Taiwan would make it extremely difficult for Manila to stay on the sidelines during a major conflict there. In the worst case, China could occupy Philippine islands in the Bashi Channel or even parts of northern Luzon, to deny the use of adjacent territory to the US or its use as a safe haven for Taiwan’s armed forces. Fighting could spread to the South China Sea proper, including China’s artificial island bases, one of which—Mischief Reef—sits within the Philippine exclusive economic zone.

The fraught prospect of a high-intensity maritime conflict between China and the US shines an uncommonly intense light on defence ties between Canberra and Manila. Fortunately, Australia and the Philippines, which have been comprehensive strategic partners since 2015, have already established a notably broad-based and durable bilateral defence relationship. It has deeper historical roots than widely assumed. In World War II, Australian forces made an active contribution to the liberation of the Philippines, incurring significant losses at Lingayen Gulf. The newly independent Philippines and Australia fought side by side in the Korean War.

In more recent times, the basis for cooperative defence activities was a bilateral memorandum of understanding agreed in 1995. That opened the door for members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to receive education and training in Australia. Around 100 AFP, coastguard and civilian defence personnel do so every year. ADF mobile training teams also deliver courses in the Philippines. Terrorism was the main focus of security cooperation with the Philippines for almost two decades after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US. The culmination of that effort was Operation Augury—Philippines, which provided training to more than 10,000 AFP personnel during and after the siege of Marawi city, from October 2017 until December 2019, when the operation transitioned to become the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Program. Since then, the emphasis has shifted towards assisting the AFP’s modernisation and external defence plans.

Defence capacity-building delivered to the Philippines has focused on maritime security and domain awareness, as well as the lingering threat from terrorism and pandemic healthcare more recently. In July 2015, Australia donated two landing craft to the Philippine Navy. A further three were acquired in March 2016.

Australia is the only country apart from the US with which the Philippines has a reciprocal visiting forces agreement, signed in 2007. It entered into force in September 2012, fortuitously facilitating the ADF’s delivery of disaster relief assistance to the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. In August 2021, the two governments concluded a mutual logistics support arrangement, providing a second pillar to sustain the deployment of ADF assets and personnel to the Philippines. It would be too crude to suggest that Australia provides capacity to the AFP and receives access for the ADF in return, though that does provide a basis for reciprocity in the defence relationship. Underpinning the relationship at a human level are close interpersonal connections across the armed services and defence bureaucracies.

Like most militaries in Southeast Asia, the AFP is army dominated, despite the Philippines’ archipelagic geography, but there are also bilateral links between the Australian and Philippine navies and air forces. The Anzac-class frigate HMAS Arunta and corvette BRP Apolinario Mabini exercised together in the Celebes Sea in September 2020, and Australian navy patrol boats have previously been deployed to the Philippines. The Philippine Air Force is currently participating in Exercise Pitch Black in northern Australia. Earlier this year, the Royal Australian Air Force delivered a combat air control simulator to the Philippine Air Force ‘to support training’. Since at least 2017, the RAAF has periodically conducted surveillance flights over the South China Sea from the Philippines.

In May, one of a pair of RAAF P-8A Poseidon aircraft operating from Clark Air Base, north of Manila, was unsafely intercepted by a Chinese J-16 fighter reportedly near the Paracel Islands. Australia’s ability to fly P-8A missions out of the Philippines demonstrates the strategic potential of the relationship. One obvious deficiency in defence relations is the absence of an industrial-level partnership. The recent failure of Australian shipbuilder Austal’s bid to supply six new offshore patrol vessels to the Philippine Navy was a missed opportunity in this regard.

One reason Australia’s defence profile in the Philippines doesn’t receive more attention is because the US alliance still tends to overshadow Manila’s defence policymaking. Australia’s defence offer to the Philippines is on a modest scale compared with US programs. Nonetheless, Australia benefits from operating in a complementary fashion without the political drag that sometimes attaches to US activities in the Philippines because of historical baggage.

US military exercises with the AFP provide opportunities for the ADF to train alongside Americans and Filipinos. In the 2022 iteration of Balikatan, for example, Australian commandos took part in a helicopter raid on the island of Corregidor together with US and Philippine marines. However, Australia’s population is around a quarter of that of the Philippines and there are just 60,000 ADF personnel in uniform. Canberra therefore needs to manage Manila’s expectations of what Australia can realistically deliver, short of a formal alliance.

Australia’s defence partnership with the Philippines is repaying the dividend of past investments at a time when the limits to more traditional relationships in Southeast Asia are becoming increasingly apparent.

Missed by many amid Russia’s war on Ukraine, Australia’s federal election and China’s inroads into the Pacific was the European Union’s strategic compass, launched in March after almost two years of development. As Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles announces a visit to France, we should understand its importance—and its significance for Australia—and encourage its implementation.

Much happened in the past two years, including Covid-19, a deterioration in EU–China relations and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In this context, the strategic compass is a potential game-changer or, in the words of EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, a ‘turning point’. It’s the first time the 27 EU members have come together to focus on defence and security rather than just trade. France considers it a significant achievement of its role as chair of the EU Council.

The strategic compass, which the EU Council describes as ‘an ambitious plan of action for strengthening the EU’s security and defence policy by 2030’, launched in a ‘more hostile security environment’. It is aimed not only at empowering the bloc’s strategic autonomy, but also at fostering its cooperation with security partners. It coincides with NATO’s launch of its 2022 strategic concept, which in an unprecedented way refers to China as a challenge.

This shift in Europe comes at a time when Australia is resetting its relations with France following the cancellation of the Attack-class submarine project and with the EU after years of misalignment on climate policy. Australia’s national security and regional stability require both resets to happen, so the government should embrace the compass as an opportunity to proactively encourage the EU’s strategic shift, notwithstanding its focus on Russia.

The EU has for many years approached its relationship with China hoping an engagement strategy that was relatively silent on malicious activity would result in both EU economic prosperity and increased liberalisation in China. The result has been some economic prosperity but more dependence and interference, with greater opportunities for attempted coercion by Beijing.

While the EU’s 2021 Indo-Pacific strategy referred to China as a systemic rival, it also called it a partner. This is true for almost all countries by virtue of China’s trading relationships, but the inconsistency and ambiguity were always a short-term tactic rather than a long-term strategy.

The strategic compass needs to be that long-term security strategy. A lasting problem is that some EU members view the US with cynicism. The clear emphasis of the compass on EU security autonomy is in part born out of an aim to quell limited but loud public discontent about the union being too reliant on the US. Ensuring the US is held accountable for its actions is vital, but EU members’ hesitancy to consistently hold Beijing to the same standards has hurt Australia, because it feeds into regional fears of Beijing’s coercive power and reinforces a false narrative that strategic competition is limited to the US and China.

On the other hand, EU countries collectively have more influence and trust than they may realise in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Australia should work with the EU to turn this position of trust into a position of positive influence. The strategic compass must be part of this, with Australia able to emphasise the strategy’s focus on strengthening security partnerships with both the EU and individual member states. This is vital for foreign and defence policy, to ensure EU members know that groups like AUKUS and the Quad don’t rule out broader security partnerships.

The EU’s experience with China should be a key lesson for our region, which would benefit from EU members being upfront about the challenges they have faced. The Chinese government has tried to use its economic heft to bully and coerce individual EU members like Lithuania and the union as a whole. By itself, the Baltic country would not have stood a chance, but the EU showed its collective strength and how to counter coercion from a major power. This is something that single member states too often forget.

The response required EU members to be willing to forgo short-term economic gain and impose costs—both reputational and economic—on Beijing, a combination that has in the past often proven to be an insurmountable obstacle for collective action. It stymied China’s attempt to embed itself in Europe through the 17+1 trade grouping and other initiatives—thinking it could rely on those in Europe who thought the easiest way out of economic crisis was through Beijing’s largesse. The 17+1, now effectively 14+1 after Lithuania and, more recently, Estonia and Latvia left, is on the verge of collapsing because of China’s malicious activities, in particular economic coercion and failure to deliver promised results.

While the EU–China relationship shouldn’t have become as entangled as it did, the Lithuania case was the catalyst for refocusing on individual and regional sovereignty. The EU has finally found some momentum to look after its unity and integrity.

Why does this matter to Australia? Apart from the principle of supporting all partners subject to coercion, the similarities with the Pacific are clear—China is picking off those small nations keen on quick financial support and making inroads through what it sees as weak links.

Hoping, or even expecting, a Lithuania-style own goal from Beijing in the Pacific is not a strategy. Australia now has a chance to become the leading partner for the EU in the region, especially with its renewed focus on climate policy that matches the Pacific’s top priority, as well as the EU’s. Combine that with Australia’s efforts to reset with France and expect to see a Pacific program as part of reinvigorated relations.

Active Australia–EU collaboration, along with partners such as the US and Japan, can ensure we are not just relying on China’s own goals but scoring plenty of our own.

The way Australia goes to war needs new conventions to give parliament a greater role in the weightiest choice any nation can make.

Creating parliamentary customs or conventions is the only realistic way to touch the prime minister’s almost unfettered power to launch war.

The parties of government—Labor and Liberal—will not give parliament any legal hold over the prime minister’s profound prerogative for war. Convention will have to be created, instead. Much history—both military and political—informs this understanding.

Since federation, war has been a defining element of Australia’s identity and the way we approach the world. In a span of nearly 90 years—from 1914 to 2003—Australia chose to go to war nine times.

The political truth is that prime ministers and governments—creatures of the House of Representatives—are usually fighting the Senate, where the government of the day seldom commands a clear majority. The parties of government will not give the Senate any more power, especially over the war powers.

The Senate experience means that politics pushes against the logic of putting into law the proposal in 2010 from a former Australian Army chief, Peter Leahy, that a resolution of each house of parliament should authorise overseas service. Leahy’s recommendation for parliamentary ratification for military deployments reads:

Both Houses of Parliament should be required to authorise by resolution any decision to commit the Australian Defence Force to warlike operations or potential hostilities within sixty days of the decision to commit forces. Given that the contemporary kinds of conflict tend to run for many years, ADF deployments should then be reconsidered by the Parliament on an annual basis.

A resolution of parliament within 60 days of war or deployment draws on a similar period in the US War Powers Act. Skip by the question of how much the US Congress has checked the president’s war powers to consider Leahy’s equally important call for clear public statements of national interests and strategy. Here his wording shifts from parliamentary resolution to government statement:

For each military deployment, the Australian Government should provide and routinely update a clear statement of national interests and strategy. The strategy statement should include the elements of power to be used, the end state to be achieved, an indication of the exit strategy and likely time frame for the commitment of force.

The many parallels between Australia’s entry into the Vietnam and Iraq wars offer the history for seeking benchmarks the parliament can apply to the executive’s profound prerogative. If not aspiring to legal checks, let’s at least have a good checklist.

Former Australian ambassador Garry Woodard’s examination of how the prerogative worked in deciding to commit in Vietnam and Iraq showed ‘the dominance of the Prime Minister, decisions made in secret by a small group of ministers obedient to him, minds closed against area expertise, preference for party political advantage over bipartisanship, and willing subservience to and some credulity about an ally, the United States’.

As usual, Woodard shows his deep understanding of the Canberra system. The caution also offered by history, though, is that greater parliamentary involvement would not have stopped Australia going to Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. Parliament can give greater transparency about Australia’s march to war and set benchmarks for judging the course of war. But parliament might not curb the war habit.

Wedging Labor on the Vietnam commitment in 1965, the Coalition government rode initial voter enthusiasm for the war to increase its majority in the 1966 election, arguing that Labor’s opposition to Vietnam showed it was weak on the US alliance. Both sides of Australian politics supported the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and any greater parliamentary involvement would have been an expression of that unanimity.

Iraq divided the parliament just as it split Australia from the very start. John Howard used his prerogative as prime minister with the precision of a master politician. He held his cabinet and party together (Labor was again wedged), and Australia joined the Iraq invasion—lots of alliance loyalty but few smarts in committing early with few questions.

The idea of more smarts and more questions is where a bigger role for parliament comes in.

Australian researcher Peter Mulherin pursues this in ‘War-power reform in Australia: (re)considering the options’, arguing for a new war-powers convention as a small step towards democratising the decision of going to war: ‘While not legally binding, this constitutional convention would represent an agreement by the major parties that overseas combat operations will be properly debated in Parliament.’

Beef up the informal rules that guide the parliament so it can impose informal constraints on the executive’s power. Express what parliament and the people are owed, perhaps codified in a non-binding resolution. Strengthening parliamentary convention would be an improvement on the status quo, Mulherin concludes:

Despite some arguing that legislative reform is preferable, it may also be impossible, given the reluctance of the Coalition and ALP to change the law. Therefore, a new constitutional convention would be an important step towards strengthening debate when Australia goes to war.

In ‘Going to war democratically: lessons for Australia from Canada and the UK’, Mulherin argues that Canada and the UK have taken steps this century to ‘parliamentarise’ their war powers, while in Australia the prerogative remains absolute.

Citing Canada and the UK as comparable parliamentary democracies with close alliance and historical ties, Mulherin lays out a three-step argument about what Canberra can learn from London and Ottawa: ‘(1) a more democratic foreign policy formation is a normative “good”; (2) war-power reform is one way to democratise foreign policy formation; and (3) lessons drawn from the examples of Canada and the United Kingdom may help Australia reform its war-power arrangements’.

So, no law, but stronger conventions in the House of Representatives offering more detailed benchmarks for the powers of review held by the Senate.

Over the past two decades, prime ministers as diverse as Howard, Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard have offered small footholds on which parliament could build. My next column will draw wordage from those footholds to do some convention drafting.

‘For a century, Australian leaders have been engaged in the war game. And just as a game has rules, there are rules for effectively playing the war leadership game.’

— David Horner, The war game: Australian war leadership from Gallipoli to Iraq

Examining how Australia decided to go to war nine times in a span of nearly 90 years—from 1914 to 2003—the military historian David Horner distils 10 rules.

The rules are short and sharp.

Yet like the Bible’s Ten Commandments, Horner’s rules are simple only in their expression. What is asked for is the ultimate test of leaders and it’s devilish in what it demands of the nation. Failure in this game is deadly.

Embracing the ‘cautious recommendations’ of Horner’s The war game, the former Labor leader and defence minister Kim Beazley observes: ‘This is a book of lessons for Australian political leaders on managing wars. An analysis of actual performance against those lessons is humbling.’

After analysing Australian war leadership in the wars from Gallipoli to Iraq, Horner offers these rules.

1. The war leader’s most important decision is whether to commit the nation to war. In the First and Second World Wars, Horner writes, ‘this decision was taken out of the hands of the Australian government’. But in all the wars that followed, from Korea to Iraq, the decision to commit forces ‘became increasingly controversial, raising questions about the process, and whether legislation should be introduced to ensure these decisions are taken by the parliament rather than the executive government’.

In an ASPI interview (audio below), Horner judges:

I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps there should be some limit on the power of the prime minister and the government to make these decisions. Because, as I said, these are the most important decisions. They result in deaths to Australians. Tragedy for the families. The financial cost to Australia. The cost to Australia’s reputation.

If there was an emergency, the government has to have the capacity to react, straight away. But for so many of the commitments that we have made since the Second World War, it was not absolutely vital that we go into operations straight away, tomorrow. No. There was always a period of time. Maybe there’s a political imperative with our allies to make an announcement. On the other hand, if we had delayed in so many of those commitments, would it have made the difference?

That leads to the consideration, with these decisions being extremely important and far-reaching, whether there should be some mechanism by which the government has to put the decision to the people of Australia through the parliament.

2. War leaders determine the level and nature of the commitment. In the First World War, Horner writes, the decision was taken before the formal outbreak of the war. Robert Menzies’s government was more cautious about this in 1939, while the decisions in Vietnam were incremental. During all the wars from Korea to Iraq, Horner observes, Australia has ‘tried to keep the commitment as small as possible’ while reaping the alliance benefits.

3. The prime minister is not the source of all wisdom. ‘Obviously, expert military advice is important, but so too is the advice of senior ministers with their specific responsibilities.’

4. The government must have confidence in its military commanders. In a democracy, Horner writes, ‘war leadership involves the interaction between the political leaders and their top military advisers’. And, he judges, there’s ‘no perfect model for the civil–military relationship’. The outstanding war leader Winston Churchill ‘drove his military advisers to distraction, but in the end was loath to overrule them’.

5. Ensure that operations are conducted in accordance with government policy. ‘A fundamental of effective war leadership is to ensure that the government’s wishes are followed on the battlefield.’

6. Get access to allied strategic decision-making. ‘Menzies and [John] Curtin struggled with this issue in the Second World War, and it persisted in the later wars. In the invasion of Iraq, the Australians detected that the plans for the subsequent post-invasion phase were deficient, but were unable to change them. The lesson for Australia is to remain constantly vigilant, and a prime task for war leaders is to manage Australia’s role in the alliance.’

7. Australia must gather its own intelligence. Don’t rely on the big alliance partner for all the facts, interpretation and understanding. The message for Australia’s leaders, Horner writes, ‘is not just the need to have effective diplomatic and intelligence agencies, but also for the government to listen to them’.

8. Manage the politics. The power of Australia’s prime minister to wage war depends on their power in parliament. Billy Hughes split Labor over conscription in World War I. In World War II, Menzies fell as prime minister because he ‘failed to manage the politics of his own party in 1941,’ Horner writes. ‘It is just as important to deal with the politics within the party as to deal with the Opposition. [Bob] Hawke understood this as he sought to deal with his party critics in the Gulf War. [John] Howard managed the Coalition’s politicians superbly and gave the Opposition little capacity to manoeuvre in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.’

9. Manage the media. Tough censorship and tight control of newspapers worked during the two world wars. Since then, speaking to the voters depends on versions of media ‘management’.

10. War leadership will always take place in an environment of uncertainty. In this game, the other side plays as it wants, and can make its own rules. ‘Intelligence assessments can usually determine an enemy’s or potential enemy’s capabilities, but they are less certain about actual intentions.’

The 10 rules of Australia’s way of war act as guide, not law. Here’s my interview with David Horner on the rules.

Pressure from an increasingly aggressive China and the example of Russia’s war on Ukraine have driven rapid changes in the views of Japan’s people on defence and military cooperation with nations such as Australia.

Launching a new ASPI report, Japan’s security strategy, Ambassador Shingo Yamagami said attitudes in his country had shifted very significantly in recent years.

That view was reflected strongly by the report’s author, ASPI senior fellow Thomas Wilkins.

The two were joined at the launch by Australian National University professor Rikki Kersten, an expert on modern Japanese history who has focused extensively on foreign policy, security policy, the US–Japan alliance and Australia–Japan relations.

Yamagami said that as a diplomat and a national security professional he’d spent the best part of his career examining how Japan could better defend itself against external and internal challenges. ‘Japan has witnessed an increasingly severe security situation, partly as a result of the emergence of a new and more belligerent regional power, coupled with events in Europe.’

Aware of their longstanding defence and security relationship with the United States, many Japanese people spent decades in what the ambassador called ‘a relatively benign state of awareness’ about their nation’s security and the threats from beyond its borders. That allowed Japan to concentrate primarily on economic recovery and growth following the devastation of World War II, while providing the US with bases for the defence of Japan and the peace and security of the region.

In time, Japan’s economy gathered strength to the point where it supported the economic development of many countries, including Australia and China.

‘Yet the legacy of the war years, which led to the loss of 3.1 million Japanese lives, still lingered deep within the national psyche of the Japanese,’ Yamagami said. Having been brought to the edge of the abyss, there was a strong, almost a visceral reluctance to become engaged in any activity that might resemble a proactive defence stance.

Only after lengthy constitutional legal arguments were Japan’s first peacekeepers deployed in 1990 to Cambodia where they worked in tandem with the Australian Defence Force, he said. Members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces were deployed to the Middle East after the first Gulf War in 1991.

Over a decade later, challenges to Japan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity by an increasingly assertive China, North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and the attempts of China and Russia to undermine the rule of law accelerated a shift in Japan’s collective mindset towards an active, dynamic national security doctrine, Yamagami said.

‘Some might say that what was once considered a glacial change in mindset, as in negative terms, jumped to light speed in the wake of Russia’s egregious and brutal invasion of Ukraine.’

That was borne out by public opinion polls supporting the provision of non-lethal defence equipment to Ukraine and adopting more proactive activities abroad. In May, a majority of respondents to an NHK poll said they agreed with Japan possessing counter-strike capabilities and increasing its defence spending. This remarkable change in mindset was reflected in Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government agreeing to a substantial increase in the defence budget and fundamentally reinforcing defence capabilities.

‘What has happened to Ukraine has come as a stark reminder of how deterrence must be used to defend the national interest and uphold territorial integrity, sovereignty and the rule of law,’ Yamagami said. Such changes meant that Japan’s forces could now legally help protect Australian and US naval vessels in a conflict.

Yet, said Yamagami, Japan also knew it could not ensure its security by force of arms alone. ‘It has presented an ambitious vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific in which each and every member enjoys security and prosperity.’

Japan revived and had been a driving force in promoting the Quad arrangement with Australia, the US and India, with new initiatives in maritime domain awareness, climate change, disaster relief, cyberspace and infrastructure announced.

‘Japan has been blessed by the strong support Australia has shown in building defence ties with us over the past decade, which recently culminated in the reciprocal access agreement. This is the first such agreement that Japan has signed with any country and is a mark of the respect and trust in which we hold our special strategic partner Australia.’

There was an expectation that the bilateral defence relationship would become a lot more active with much more exercise activity.

The ambassador said that with changes in Japan’s strategic thinking, it was making a much larger, much more dynamic and much more ambitious contribution to regional and global security than at any time since World War II, and ‘when change comes, it is permanent and irreversible’.

The world, he said, stood at a precipice and faced choices between protecting the rule of law or submitting to the law of the jungle. ‘Japan is actively working to keep the beast at bay with the help of like-minded and law-abiding residents of the global village.’

Wilkins outlined the three key elements of Japan’s security strategy covered in detail in his report— diplomacy through the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific, domestic mobilisation of its security apparatus and defence forces, and the strengthening of alliances and partnerships. ‘The Japan–Australia partnership is a valuable joint mechanism for diplomatic, security, defence, economic and military coordination to the benefit of both parties,’ he said.

The ideal of a free and open Indo-Pacific had been adopted or engaged with by the US, Australia and Asian nations, and stood out as a successful example of Tokyo’s new entrepreneurship in regional order building.

Tokyo recognised that to support this vision in tandem with allies, partners and other willing states, as well as to safeguard its own national security, it must do more.

‘Though Japan remains committed to an exclusively defensive military posture, it has sought to meet intensified regional challenges through the creation of a multi-domain defence force.’

Japan had steadily worked to craft a purposeful and multi-layered security strategy that would permit Tokyo to shape the regional order in line with its values and interests, enhance national and regional deterrence, and allow better responses to regional contingencies, Wilkins said.

‘Much of the credit for this significant achievement should be accorded to the late prime minister [Shinzo] Abe.’

Kersten acknowledged the changes in Japanese policy development but suggested that the nation still embraced a culture of self-constraint. ‘Even former prime minister Abe, with his incredible policy ambition, had to buckle to reality and resort to the self-imposed constraint that attaches to every single Japanese security policy.’

There clearly remained in Japan a gap between policy ambition and public opinion, Kersten said.

Yamagami responded by repeating that public opinion in Japan—’what Japan stands for’—was shifting in response to what was happening in the East China Sea and Ukraine.

Wilkins made the point that Japan had made very sensible and incremental rational responses to a rapidly changing environment. By taking those steps with other nations, Tokyo had provided reassurance that Japan was not just going out there on its own in a very radical or unpredictable direction.

Yamagami said he expected to see a greater exchange of military personnel between Japan and Australia. ‘We would like to welcome more ADF personnel to Japanese bases and we would like to see more Japan Self-Defense Forces personnel coming down to Australia. This will certainly serve as a strong deterrent.’

Kersten said ‘the most astonishing thing’ about the positive trajectory of the Australia–Japan security partnership was that it was trust-based. ‘It’s not utilitarian. We don’t have a strong trading partner who we’re trying to keep happy with a nice little security ribbon tied on top. The relationship had overcome a wartime past that was tough to overcome. It’s not just about trade, it’s not just about security; it’s political, it’s cultural and all these other things are enmeshed together.’

Kersten said Japan and Australia were increasingly collaborative in regional multilateral settings. ‘They came to the table with joint principles and values and objectives and worked together to achieve a jointly desired outcome.’

In terms of where the Japan–Australia relationship could go, Yamagami emphasised the importance of involving the private sector in areas such as biometrics, artificial intelligence and cyber technology—areas where Japanese companies are world-leading and always on the lookout for opportunities in Australia, also involving the US.

Kersten said a renewed joint security declaration should include a clear statement of intent to involve relevant private-sector entities in the joint enterprise of security. ‘This would mark out the new joint declaration as more than just a feel-good anniversary event. It would actually mean something then.’

Wilkins said Japan had much to offer in developing standoff and strike capabilities. ‘That might be something to think about given the shortage of stockpiles that we all face.’