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Australia and Japan have been moving closer on security matters since the mid 2000s. The first ministerial Trilateral Strategic Dialogue between the two countries and the United States was held in 2006, and a Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation was signed in 2007. Yet, security cooperation between Japan and Australia has—until recently—been limited to ‘nontraditional’ issues.

It was surprising therefore, when news broke in mid-2014 that Australia might buy submarines from Japan. The export of Japanese submarines or submarine technology to Australia would extend the bilateral relationship into the arena of hard-edged defence. Moreover, because submarines are among the most closely guarded of military technologies, it would also reflect a remarkable level of trust and co-dependence between Japan and Australia.

I wonder if Japan knew what it was getting into. Of all the possible areas of cooperation with Australia, submarines are probably the most fraught. We’ve grossly mismanaged our submarine capability over the past 20 years, and our initial steps to replace the current fleet have been tardy and haphazard.

The Abbott government’s plans for the future submarines were initially unclear, but by mid-2014 rumours were afoot that Australia’s next generation of submarines would be built in Japan. Although it was never confirmed, many observers concluded that a deal had been reached behind closed doors between Abbott and Japanese Prime Minister Abe.

Whatever the understanding, domestic Australian politics soon threw things into disarray. Abbott’s waning popularity put his job on the line in February, and to head off a leadership challenge he was forced to open up the submarine project to broader competition. The reason: other potential suppliers were perceived to be more willing to build the vessels in Australia than Japan. The goal was to find work for the government-owned shipyard in South Australia. So it was that a three-way contest was initiated between France, Germany and Japan. Eventually, Japan also made clear that it was willing and able to build the vessels in Australia.

The resulting Competitive Evaluation Process (CEP) focuses on the credentials of the prospective suppliers with only ‘pre-concept’ designs and ‘rough order-of-magnitude’ costings requested—effectively a beauty contest. In any case, the government isn’t bound by its findings—it will merely inform their decision. Rejecting a recommendation from Defence wouldn’t be unprecedented. The Howard government overturned a recommendation to purchase a German combat system for the Collins class submarines ‘on strategic grounds’ and went ahead instead with a US solution.

A decision was expected in early 2016, but that may now be delayed after Malcolm Turnbull took the leadership reins in September.

The challenge for Turnbull will be to balance the commercial and technical inputs gathered by the CEP with the strategic implications of the Japanese option. And make no mistake. A decision in favour of Japan would have tangible strategic implications. It would hasten Japan’s military normalisation, and it would also send an unambiguous message to both Beijing and Washington about the willingness of Australia and Japan to work together.

What happens if Japan loses the competition? Will the relationship return to where it was previously—friendly and sympathetic but with cooperation limited to nontraditional security issues? That might be too optimistic. Japan moved outside of its comfort zone to offer submarines to Australia, and a legislative change was required to make it feasible. In return, the Australian government has been at best unpredictable (more like unreliable) as it contorted itself to accommodate the parochial demands of pork-barrel politics.

The critical question is the extent to which the submarine deal was conceived as a strategic, as opposed to commercial, initiative from a Japanese perspective. If it’s a purely commercial matter, a loss would merely be disappointing. But my instinct is that the original deal had much more to do with strategy than money—and the integrated whole-of-government approach to the contest by Japan is consistent with such an assessment. If I’m right, a Japanese loss would amount to, or at least be perceived as, Australia rejecting a closer strategic relationship with Japan.

Conversely, if Japan is awarded the contract, it will be perceived by many as another move in the great game that’s afoot in the Western Pacific; a ‘pivot within the pivot’ that strengthens the US position in the region through a strategic rapprochement between two key allies.

While I think the Japanese offer of submarines to Australia was underpinned by a desire for closer strategic ties, I’m less clear about Australia’s current position. At one end of the spectrum is a purely commercial deal; at the other is a substantive strategic partnership in the context of a region increasingly under pressure from Chinese assertiveness.

The Turnbull government’s perspective is unclear. Chances are it’s yet to form a view, and it may not do so until it has to make a decision about the submarines.

There are two schools of thought on whether closer strategic relations with Japan would be in Australia’s interest. The argument against was put succinctly by Kevin Rudd who argued that a formal defence pact with Japan would ‘unnecessarily tie [Australia’s] security interests to the vicissitudes of an unknown security policy future in North East Asia’. While a formal pact is not on the table, the desire to avoid even implicit understandings remains strong in some quarters of Australian defence thinking.

In fact, despite the US alliance, Rudd’s cautious approach is consistent with Australian defence policy since the early 1970s. Under the guise of the defence-of-Australia doctrine, we’ve long rejected any pre-commitments beyond the explicit demands of the ANZUS treaty. If Turnbull embraces this mindset, a closer strategic relationship with Japan would be approached with trepidation. If it did not militate outright against a Japanese submarine deal, it would mean that any deal would be cast in largely commercial terms so as to limit any implicit strategic quid pro quo. Caution over a closer Japan-Australia strategic partnership would be heightened by the tendency of the Australian media and some analysts to warn against offending China for fear of economic retaliation.

Not everyone shares Rudd’s fears. The argument for cosying up with Japan is that Australia cannot afford to sit on the sidelines as the balance of power in the Western Pacific shifts towards China at the expense of the United States. It can be argued, Australia needs to stand alongside the United States and its other allies and partners in the region to guard against creeping Chinese hegemony.  Of course, that assumes that a display of unity will moderate Chinese behaviour rather than harden its resolve not to be ‘contained’ by the United States and its allies.

At this point, it’s impossible to predict where the Turnbull government will come down on the question of closer Japan–Australia strategic ties. If it can, it will probably try to get past the submarine decision while retaining as much ambiguity about its strategic relationship with Japan as it can—irrespective of what it decides to do about the submarines. Nonetheless, observers in Beijing, Washington and Tokyo will each draw their own conclusions about the decision. One way or another, there’ll be some explaining to do.

Increasing strategic weight in Asia is making its effects felt in new ways. Australians are already familiar with Japan’s more open stance on military exports, with a possible submarine collaboration garnering plenty of local press. Less well known, but just as important, is Japan’s vigorous new space policy. At Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s urging, the country has begun to develop a comprehensive space policy. This is aimed at producing a bigger space industry—and it was sizeable to begin with—and a more comprehensive dual use of space for commercial purposes and as way of furthering Japan’s national security interests.

Japanese space policy up to now has been constrained and civilian, and it was effectively a client of US space based surveillance and intelligence collection under alliance arrangements. The 1998 flight-test of the North Korean Taepodong missile, in a trajectory that took it across Japan, constituted a major turning point for how Japan thought about security issues in relation to space, and spurred thoughts of greater sovereign space capability. Abe has brought a new dynamism to the portfolio, further boosting efforts that in coming years will see Japan have much more capable space-based assets and building stronger international linkages for space cooperation.

Japan isn’t attempting to militarise space—it doesn’t plan to deploy weapons in space or develop anti-satellite capabilities. Rather, this is another step in normalising its international security posture by moving into areas that many other countries already exploit. The sort of dual-use technologies which it is developing most rapidly—such as a GPS augmentation system with an accuracy of several centimetres—will have applications such as self-drive cars and automated farming.

Indeed, Japan’s responding to a shifting balance of power in outer space which is increasingly multipolar rather than the bipolar Cold War ‘space race’, and which includes a greater number of Asian players. It’s also responding to growing risks in the space environment, from space debris and the threat of anti-satellite attacks. And, naturally, it wants to be an independent contributor to tackling a range of global challenges where space-based assets can be of assistance.

Growth in space-related capabilities will underline Japan’s new relevance in Asia, so the effects will be regional and geopolitical, not merely national and industrial. Japan will likely find that its new space policy initiatives press up against those of other players, like China and India. But it should also find that those same initiatives open doors across much of Southeast Asia, where countries like Indonesia could benefit greatly from closer cooperation with Japan in this field.

There‘s probably an opportunity for Australia too, given the deepening relationship with Japan. There’s scope for cooperation in applications such as remote sensing and surveillance, in civilian or military applications, or both. As well as both countries being long-time users of space-based applications and beneficiaries of American satellite capabilities, there’s a geographical factor that helps align interests. The coincidence of longitude between the two countries means that the footprint of polar low earth orbit satellites covers areas of immediate interest to both several times a day. And the footprints of geostationary satellites covers both—Australian and New Zealand meteorological bureaux both use data from Japan’s Himawari satellites.

One possibility is satellite radar surveillance. Australia has floated the idea of having its own synthetic aperture radar satellite in the past and the idea even found its way into the 2009 Defence White Paper as stated policy, though the system never eventuated. Australia could develop its own satellite if it decided to—Canada has—but a joint development and splitting of R&D and acquisition costs with a like-minded partner would make good sense, especially if it resulted in a larger number of satellites with subsequently greater coverage. Alternatively, there might be a business case for Australia to buy into a Japanese system. One potential model is the way that Defence has bought into the American WGS communication system, paying for one satellite in a larger constellation, to the benefit of both parties.

Australia doesn’t have a national space policy, and perhaps we need to follow Japan’s lead on this one. There have been studies over the years that have suggested some possible directions for Australian space capability but the idea hasn’t got a lot of traction in the Canberra policy community. Part of the problem is that the topic sometimes gets taken up by ‘true believers’ who think that Australia could and should have an end to end space capability, right up to its own launch facilities. While we could do that, there’s no need to, given that much of what we need is available elsewhere. But some careful thought about how we could leverage the opportunities provided by our geography and industrial capability and the investment of friends and allies could pay off. We could do a lot worse than look at what a potential partner like Japan brings to the table.

Japan has appeared to surrender, and we are waiting this weekend to hear whether this will become effective. If so, this horrible war will be at an end, but many of its ill-effects will be with us for a long time. It is, in fact, a new world that lies before us. I hope that freedom, beauty, quiet and security may find a place in it. It is a hope without much confidence.

Those words are part of a diary entry written by an Englishman on 12 August 1945, as the world waited for news of the end of the Asia-Pacific War. The author was neither well-known nor politically significant. I can quote his reaction to the end of the war only because he was my father and I have a copy of his 1945 diary.

But his words are worth recording because they remind us that, despite the images of flag-waving crowds and triumphalism that so often accompany reports of the allied response to Japan’s surrender, this was a moment of deep anxiety for many people. If Japan’s citizens responded with disbelief, exhaustion and despair to news of their country’s defeat, Americans, British, Australians and others responded to victory with feelings of relief that were often tinged with fear and sadness, particularly because victory was darkened by the shadow of the atomic bomb.

Earlier in his entry for 12 August, my father wrote:

On 7th August there was announced to an unsuspecting world the news that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan … It soon appeared that its power was not overstated, and that the town of Hiroshima, with over 200,000 inhabitants, was destroyed. This appalling weapon, and the new power that can be released for peaceful purposes, clearly alter the course of human development. It says something for present day humanity that there has been a profound sense of despondency since … Another war is too awful to contemplate.

By August 1945, many people were already beginning to fear that the new world ushered in by the allied victory and the atomic bomb would be a world of very incomplete peace; and so it proved to be. A global conflict between the two new great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, was prevented, in part by the ‘balance of terror’. But the Cold War world became the site of many smaller ‘hot wars’ that inflicted terrible suffering on the people of the Koreas, Vietnam and other countries.

The new security obsessions of the Cold War order diverted and forestalled the process of peace making. Because of Cold War tensions, the 1951 San Francisco Treaty, which supposedly sealed the peace between Japan and its former enemies, was not signed by the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), nor by North or South Korea.

In the processes of redrafting, the terms of the treaty were revised in ways that left key territorial claims undefined. This served the strategic interests of the moment, but left unresolved a host of problems that plague international relations to this day. In the context of US Cold War strategy, Japan was encouraged to enter into reparations agreements with its Asian neighbours. This promoted a particular model of economic development, but failed to address individual claims by victims of war. Meanwhile, the nuclear arsenals of the Cold War powers expanded to grotesque proportions.

A second opportunity to address the unfinished business of peace making came in the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in Europe. The new, fluid global order offered opportunities to both drastically reduce the stock of nuclear weapons, and to resolve territorial problems and questions of war responsibility.

During the 1990s, there were promising moves in this direction. The Japanese government issued the 1993 Kono Statement, which apologised for the Japanese military’s wartime abuse of ‘comfort women’, and the 1995 Murayama Statement, which expressed Japan’s heartfelt apology for its wartime actions. And new visions of East Asian regional cooperation were seriously debated.

But today, rather than building on those cautious positive steps, the countries of the region appear to be retreating behind the barricades of an emerging ‘Second Cold War’. Fear of China and Russia is leading to spiralling military expansion, and diverting attention from the still-urgent task of nuclear disarmament. A formal peace treaty between Japan and Russia has never been signed, and the territorial issues left in limbo by the San Francisco Treaty are becoming ever more intractable. Meanwhile, the Japanese government and sections of the media have been cultivating a dangerous climate of historical denial about war history within Japanese society.

The 70th anniversary of the end of the Asia Pacific War should be a time for reflection on the legacies of an incomplete peace process, and for renewed efforts to bring that process to completion. The task is a huge and challenging one; but now as then, the alternative to lasting peace is indeed ‘too awful to contemplate’.

This piece was originally published on East Asia Forum. 

During Asia-Pacific security dialogues such as the Shangri-La Dialogue and ASPI’s recent Northeast Asian Forum, the lack of trust between major players is commonly identified as a reason for limited regional cooperation on strategic and defence matters. Conversely, it’s argued that trust-building will drive deeper cooperation and bring about more effective dispute resolution mechanisms. While that sounds perfectly plausible, a key question remains: if trust is the answer to all of international relations’ problems, why haven’t policymakers just built trust and moved on?

Three questions help to guide the argument: first, what is trust? Second, how do you build trust? And third, is there a threshold where trust necessarily leads to deeper cooperation?

First, trust is about reliability. It’s the belief that others are doing what they say they’re doing, even when they aren’t being watched. Assessments of trustworthiness are rooted in patterns of behaviour, the consistency between words and deeds, and evidence that unwatched behaviour is the same as watched behaviour.

As individuals base their assessments of trustworthiness on their observations, measurements of trust are subjective and dependent on available information from their memory. That subjectivity creates challenges for setting policy goals and measuring changes in trustworthiness over time.

There’s an even more serious shortfall in the way countries (and also individuals) understand trust. A disconnect in understanding between countries can exist, where one country perceives trust as transactional—you do what I want, and I trust you—while others understand trust as something built from the bottom up through the pursuit of common interests.

So when there’s a lack of trust between countries, who also have different ideas of what trust is, how do policymakers strive to build it? Will joint military training drills or a memorandum of understanding build trust? How quickly? And will the level of trust achieved from those exercises translate to more meaningful cooperation in more serious policy settings? In Asia, where the strategic hierarchy is itself in contest, it seems a big ask for one country to trust another so fully that it would be willing to stand on a lower rung of the regional ladder than its former enemy.

Moreover, while it’s possible to improve trust, there’s no threshold where past grievances are automatically forgiven and cooperation eventuates. Because trust is about consistency over time, trust takes time to build—and can be quickly lost. That’s why cooperation is limited even in less politically sensitive areas.

Those conceptual features make trust analytically difficult to work with. The analytical focus on mistrust in security dialogues also presents a serious practical limitation. Despite being an inherent part of the anarchic international order, mistrust has become a convenient concept for countries to use to avoid cooperation and reject joint projects that would otherwise create positive-sum gains. A later blogpost will explore why countries are so stuck on mistrust.

What’s needed instead is a forward-looking concept that identifies opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation, and mitigates conflict. That’s where national interests offer a more useful approach. National interests are features of the international system that a country seeks to preserve or pursue to ensure its security, prosperity and reputation. They are the interests that countries are willing to stand up for, sometimes even go to war to defend.

Because countries clearly define national interests in government documents, national interests provide tangible guideposts for increased interstate cooperation. Where interests converge, countries can develop cooperative mechanisms; and where they diverge, countries can acknowledge their differences and establish mechanisms for conflict prevention. But convergent interests actually provide incentives that unwatched behaviour should indeed be like watched.

So how might we apply this approach to the Sino-Japanese conflict? Their shared histories of war and competition over their respective positions in the regional pecking order have created deep-seated perceptions of mistrust, with relatively low levels of security cooperation. While no common threat like Hitler or the Islamic State exists to override deep-seated historical biases, the absence of that overwhelming threat doesn’t mean Beijing and Tokyo should forego the potential benefits from security cooperation in areas where their national interests converge (such as humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, peacekeeping and climate change). Just as economic benefits haven’t been sacrificed between the two countries, non-traditional security gains can still be achieved for both countries. What’s more, security and economic links can also help increase the costs of conflict.

So before China and Japan stall dialogue and leverage security cooperation for symbolic pronouncements of guilt, they can skip the deadlock and explain why specific issues matter to them in the context of their national interests.

Hard security contests will still remain. But interpreting state behaviour through the lens of national interests, means countries can come to understand others’ intentions as not inherently malicious, or untrustworthy. For example, through developing an appreciation of Japanese interests, China mightn’t immediately perceive Japanese claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands as covert methods of containment or revisionist behaviour. Similarly, Chinese actions to secure its ‘territorial sovereignty’ won’t be automatically interpreted by Japan as hegemonic, antagonistic or expansionist. Such an understanding can help countries in their assessment of threat, and—over time—inform a more tempered response.

While this approach accepts the uncertainty and subsequent mistrust that’s inherent in international relations, it doesn’t assume all countries act benevolently within the confines of national interests. Indeed, some countries may use national interests to justify actions that secure competitive gains. Despite that caveat, the concept is a more useful tool for increasing interstate cooperation than a course in international psychological counselling.

Mistrust serves as a scapegoat which emphasises the past and stalls dialogue and cooperation in areas where positive gains can be made. National interests set out tangible guideposts that explain state behaviour, as well as outline where mutual gains can still be made and where conflict may arise. Shifting the language and focus of Asia-Pacific security dialogues from trust to interests can open up more options.

At the recent meeting of the US–Japan Cyber Defense Policy Working Group, both countries agreed to deepen their already extensive cyber cooperation. In a joint statement the two nations spoke of the increasing risk posed by malicious cyber actors in the region, and released their ‘shared views’. Japan and the US have agreed to assist each other in the event of a major cyber incident that threatens their partner’s national security. The statement made a point that following a major cyber event ‘the DOD will consult with the MOD and support Japan via all available channels, as appropriate.’ This inclusion has led some in the media to see the move as one that brings Japan under the ‘cyber defence umbrella’ of the US.

On Monday China’s cyber police stepped out from behind the shadows. The existence of the ‘internet inspection force’ responsible for detecting cybercrime and ‘preventing improper words and deeds online’ was officially acknowledged by the Ministry of Public Security. Units at over 50 locations across China launched social media profiles to help them to ‘get their message out’ and better connect with the public. Early offerings from the accounts ranged from the bizarre (‘air conditioning makes your feet cold’) to the somewhat helpful (‘watch out for wedding invitations bearing viruses’) to the threatening (‘don’t spread rumours online or we’ll pull you in for questioning’).

The state owned China Daily reported this week that China is developing a new cybersecurity plan. The five-year strategy to protect state secrets and data will make global tech giants nervous as the Chinese government has already foreshadowed that the plan may make foreign produced software illegal on government computers and within the finical sector.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is currently holding its first ever conference on cyber security and nuclear facilities at its headquarters in Vienna. The International Conference on Computer Security in a Nuclear World was launched by IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano to an audience of 650 experts from 92 member states and 17 regional and international organisations. The conference seeks to position itself as a forum for the exchange of best practice, to build cooperation and understanding of national approaches, as well as knowledge on threats and security for industrial control systems. The conference is a welcome move with critical national infrastructures increasingly targeted by hackers around the world.

In other multilateral cyber forum news, the ITU has played host to The World Summit on the Information Society Forum 2015 (WSIS) in Geneva, billed as ‘the world’s largest gathering of the ICT for Development community’. Topics discussed included everything from spam to CERTS, building trust and confidence between states, the internet of things and development. John Quinn, Australia’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, spoke at the forum sharing his views on building trust and relaying the positive outcomes from last year’s ARF CBM workshop in Kuala Lumpur, led by Australia and Malaysia. A rundown of the conference’s highlights are now available online.

Finally, cyber security expert Brian Krebs was in Sydney this week for AISA’s Cyber Security Symposium. Krebs appeared on Monday night’s Lateline program to share some of his insights on the Sony hack and Russian cybercrime, and imparted some solid cyber hygiene tips. Check out the video here.