Tag Archive for: Japan

Pacific maritime security—from quad to hexagon

Solomon Islands Police Vessel Lata departs from Honiara as part of Operation Kuru Kuru, a regional maritime surveillance operation in September 2008, as part of the Pacific Patrol Boat Program.

In the joint statement following Prime Minister Abbott and Prime Minister Abe’s meeting, titled ‘Special Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century’, one of the action items listed was tasking officials to develop a ‘coordinated strategy to strengthen cooperation in the Pacific region, commencing with consultations to identify priorities’. The two leaders stated that the strategy would ‘support economic prosperity, peace and stability in the Pacific region’.

To get the ball rolling, both countries should now be talking about cooperation on maritime security in the South Pacific. The timing couldn’t be better. It’d not only build on the goodwill from the Abe visit but also on changes to Japan’s aid policy that could strengthen defence and security cooperation.

Late last month, recommendations for changes to Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) policy were sent to the Minister for Foreign Affairs by an expert committee. The committee suggested relaxing the ODA ban on military-related projects, arguing that, as military capacity can assist in non-military areas, such as disaster relief, Japan shouldn’t exclude all military activities from its ODA. Read more

An Australia–New Zealand defence gap? Political more than technical

The Beehive is the common name for the Executive Wing of the New Zealand Parliament Buildings.

New Zealand watchers of Australia’s defence policy won’t be surprised by Graeme Dobell’s point that alongside New Zealand and the United Kingdom, Japan now rates as one of Canberra’s second-tier partners. But more intriguing is the notion that Japan has now taken New Zealand’s old place in the triangle with the United States which is the ‘foundation for Australian defence thinking’. If that doesn’t grab attention in Wellington, then the explanation will: New Zealand’s defence capability is apparently ‘grinding to a standstill’.

Graeme attributes that bold view to a post written by ASPI colleague Andrew Davies after the recent 1.5 Track Dialogue held at Victoria University. In reality, Andrew doesn’t go that far, but he does argue that New Zealand’s forces will struggle to operate with a modernising ADF.

Retaining that ability won’t come cheap to Wellington, but as I noted in an earlier post, the Key government has signaled a willingness to commit additional funds for defence. And there are signs the longer-term challenges aren’t being forgotten. New Zealand’s refreshingly concise (and anti-standstill) Defence Capability Plan contains the following warning from the Defence Minister: Read more

Reinterpreting Article 9: enhancing Japan’s engagement in UN peacekeeping

A Japanese engineer at work at the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), in Juba.The decision by Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s cabinet last week to reinterpret Article 9 of the Japanese constitution has been met with mixed reactions in the region. In his address to Australia’s parliament earlier this week, Abe said that Japan ‘was more willing to contribute to peace in the region and beyond’. Significant analysis has been devoted to interpreting how those changes might affect ongoing tensions in the region. But in many cases that analysis has overlooked the implications the changes will have in enabling Japan to enhance its contribution to international peacekeeping efforts.

Personnel from the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) have been participating in UN peacekeeping operations since 1992. Since then, Japan has deployed over 10,300 personnel to UN peacekeeping missions in places such Cambodia, Mozambique, the Golan Heights, Timor-Leste and Haiti. As of May 2014, Japan currently has 271 JSDF personnel deployed to the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), making Japan the 45th largest troop contributor to UN peacekeeping. Read more

Australia, Japan and the future of strategic relationships in Asia

His Excellency Shinzo Abe, PM of Japan & Mrs Akie Abe visit AWM 8/7/14

The rapidly-warming strategic relationship between Australia and Japan has drawn considerable attention this week. Some are for it, some are against it. Some see it as a mechanism to reinforce the growth of a responsible Japanese strategic role in the Indo-Pacific. Others see it as likely to entangle Australia in an emerging zero-sum strategic contest between China and Japan. And still others believe it’ll enable us—finally—to solve the issue of Australia’s future submarine.

I tend to favour the first of those views, but want to explore a different side of the relationship here: what does the emerging ‘special relationship’ between Canberra and Tokyo tell us about future strategic relationships in Asia? Since the early days of the Cold War, the Asian security architecture has been characterised by three core elements: a set of US alliances; a range of countries pursuing national, self-reliant defence policies; and (since the late 1960s) a set of multilateral security dialogues. Actual, close, bilateral or trilateral defence cooperation between Asian countries has been rare. Yes, the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) have provided a framework for Malaysia and Singapore to interact, but FPDA tends to be an exception that underlines the more general rule. Read more

Japan and Oz—ready, willing and Abe

Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan talks to the audience during the session 'The Reshaping of the World: Vision from Japan' at the Annual Meeting 2014 of the World Economic Forum at the congress centre in Davos, January 22, 2014.Australia is developing the habit of balancing an address to the Parliament by an Asia-Pacific ally with a matching speech by China’s President.

The contentious words in that sentence are ‘balancing’ and ‘ally’, even if the pattern is evident.

In October 2003, US President George W. Bush and China’s President Hu Jintao addressed the Australian Parliament on consecutive days. Both were visiting Oz for the APEC summit in Sydney. Previously, only American presidents had addressed Parliament (Bush Senior, 1992; Bill Clinton, 1996). Read more

Cyber wrap

Today’s cyber wrap comes to you from Tokyo where members of the ICPC team are soaking up the warm weather and engaging the Japanese Institute of International Affairs on their thoughts on cyber dynamics in the region.

On Japan, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, one of the largest police forces in the world, revealed in a report this week that 30 agencies within Prime Minister Abe’s Government had fallen victim to cyber attacks. Most of the attacks utilised phishing emails, with many of them successfully hooking a catch. One agency’s compromised computer was hit with an onslaught of 400,000 remote access attempts within an 18-month period. Officials haven’t commented on what data, if any, was compromised, but have linked many of the attacks to Chinese language malware and, in some cases, Chinese servers. Read more

Asia Security Summit: trust lost, order wobbly

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel hosts a bilateral meeting with Vietnams Minister of Defense Gen. Phung Quang Thanh at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore May 31, 2014. The theme of last year’s Shangri-La dialogue was the need to build trust and confidence. As Vietnam’s Prime Minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, said then: ‘If trust is lost, all is lost’. Well, trust is lost. This year’s Shangri-La is desperate for some law and a smattering of order. This year’s speech from Vietnam gives the flavour. The Defence Minister General Phung Quang Thanh, spoke in the session on ‘Managing Strategic Tensions’. His opening line praised the keynote address from Japan’s Prime Minister and Japan’s ‘positive pacifism’. Score that Japan 1, China 0.

Thanh referred back to his Prime Minister’s trust line and lamented that ‘trust building is evermore imperative’. Then he turned to China, saying relations ‘have seen overall strong growth’ with ‘frictions from time to time’.  For friction, read high-seas confrontations with China’s roving oil rig. The General said China’s unilateral action in placing a deep water rig in Vietnam’s EEZ had caused ‘anger to the Vietnamese people and concerns to countries in the region’. Read more

Asian security doctrines (1): Japan steps up

US Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, Australian Minister of Defense, David Johnston, and Japanese Minister of Defense Isunori Onodera held a trilateral discussion regarding mutual security interests during the 2014 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. In the keynote address to the Dialogue, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced Japan's new security role in Asia and reiterated the importance of Japan's relationships with Australia and the US.

The Japanese Prime Minister came to Singapore to announce Japan will have a military and security role in Asia’s future. Shinzo Abe told the Shangri-La dialogue: ‘Japan intends to play an even greater and more proactive role than it has until now in making peace in Asia and the world’.

Japan, he said, would offer its utmost support to ASEAN ‘to ensure the security of the seas and the skies, and thoroughly maintain freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight’.

In the Abe description of what’s happening in Asia, China is challenging the status quo while Japan is standing up for the law. Read more

ASPI suggests: Washington, DC edition (II)

Members of the Royal Thai Naval Air Wing practice before the opening ceremony for exercise Cobra Gold 2010, on Utapao Royal Thai Naval Air Force Base, Thailand, Jan. 29, 2010. Still reporting from Washington DC, this week’s ‘Suggests’ is jam-packed with links, reports, podcasts and videos on strategy, security and defence.

I’m kicking off today with a general shout-out for a handful of stellar American defence blogs and sites you should be following: DefenseOne, The Bridge, War on the Rocks, CIMSEC’s Next War, RealClearDefense, Blogs of War, CogitASIA, The National Interest, Small Wars Journal and, of course, the Duffel Blog. Read more

The pulse in Washington: US analysts’ views on the rebalance and Australia

US analysts said that Australia could further contribute to the rebalance by upgrading existing military bases in the Northern Territory and at HMAS Stirling in Perth. Pictured is USNS Cesar Chavez coming alongside for replenishment and stores, at Fleet Base West (HMAS Stirling), Western Australia.

Discussions with analysts in Washington over the last couple of weeks have provided a set of insights into how the US think-tank community views the US rebalance to Asia. I asked analysts from prominent think tanks and the National Defense University a number of questions, including how they saw the progress of the rebalance; how domestic and external factors were impacting the rebalance; and how they judged the contributions of US allies—Japan, South Korea and Australia—to US objectives in Asia.

On the first question—the progress of the rebalance—opinions were split. Some thought the US had pursued different aspects of the rebalance, be they military, economic or diplomatic, disjointedly, resulting in mixed messaging. During the first twelve months, the US had focused too heavily on military aspects of the rebalance, announcing Marine deployments to Darwin and increases in US Navy presence in the region. That signalled—incorrectly—that the rebalance was primarily about hard power. Then, from the end of 2012 to around October 2013, the momentum behind the rebalance was lost, primarily due to leadership transitions both in Asia and in the US, with President Obama shuffling his security team. In the last six months, the focus has shifted away from the military and towards the economic aspect of the rebalance, namely the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The overall effect has been to reinforce a picture of inconsistency, causing confusion and alarm in American allies in Asia and China. Read more