Tag Archive for: Japan

After a rocky year in Northeast Asia, prepare for another

2024 proved to be an unexpectedly dynamic year for Northeast Asia, and we must be ready for an equally unsteady 2025. Changes in political leadership, evolving ententes and uncertain policy trajectories may all contribute to confrontation, or they could open policy windows to de-escalation and cooperation. Both risk and opportunity await in the new year, and it will be up to policymakers to recognise them and take deliberate steps towards desired outcomes.

To prepare for the new year, it is essential to set the scene for the current political-military situation among the major Northeast Asian players: Russia, China, North Korea, South Korea and Japan. This builds a foundation for tackling the regional issues that await.

Immediate attention will fall to Russia, whose war of aggression against Ukraine has gained from participation by North Korean soldiers. Although both Pyongyang and the Kremlin disavow formal North Korean involvement, its personnel and materiel support reflects deepening ties, that were formalised in what they called the ‘Treaty of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ signed during Vladimir Putin’s visit to the North Korean capital in June. An outstanding question heading into the new year is what North Korean soldiers will be bringing back from the Ukrainian front lines, be it tactics, techniques, and procedures; Russian equipment and technology; or all of the above.

Another lingering question is how deepening Russo-North Korean ties will affect each country’s relationship with China. North Korea has demonstrated its capacity for deftly playing the Kremlin and Beijing off one another, and while China still maintains substantial economic leverage over the North Koreans, financial and resource support from Russia shifts the power dynamics.

China has also expanded outreach and contact with other governments since the last meeting of the National People’s Congress in March, including resumption of the Military Maritime Consultation Agreement mechanism meetings with the United States, a trilateral summit with South Korea and Japan in Busan, and a stated ‘turnaround’ in relations with Australia in 2024. While Russia seems unfazed by this outreach, its impact on Sino-North Korean relations bears observation.

Meanwhile, North Korea began the year with its most important policy declaration since its announcement in 1993 that it was withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The government said in January that it was abandoning its decades-old unification policy with South Korea and, for the first time in its history, would recognise two sovereign states on the Korean peninsula. Steps to implement this policy soon followed, including dismantlement of inter-Korean related organisations and infrastructure. It also made substantial efforts to harden the boundary between the two Koreas with fences, walls and landmines.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula were low throughout 2024. While Pyongyang employed tactics such as propaganda broadcasting and delivering trash into South Korea with balloons, it took measures to mitigate risk of runaway escalation. This was evident in early October when North Korea notified the US-led United Nations Command before dismantling roads and railways in the northern half of the demilitarised zone, as well as by its muted response to South Korea’s unexpected political turmoil in December. The forthcoming end-of-year Workers’ Party of Korea meeting will offer insight into its policy priorities for 2025, including possible signals to foreign governments—particularly the incoming US administration. Given its policy trajectory since abandoning unification with the South, North Korea may seek to normalise its status as a separate sovereign state in the coming year.

Elsewhere on the Korean peninsula, South Korea will enter 2025 in political disarray. Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived declaration of martial law led to his swift impeachment. While this demonstrated the strength of South Korea’s democratic institutions, the saga is not yet over. There is still a constitutional process to determine Yoon’s fate, which could take up to six months, including for deliberations in the country’s constitutional court. If it confirms Yoon’s removal, final resolution of the crisis with a general election may take a further two months.

While the exact date is unknown, observers should expect a new presidential administration in South Korea in 2025. Assuming the transition happens, a shift in power from the country’s conservatives to its progressives will be all but certain. As it stands, the current conservative platform, which champions South Korea’s role as a ‘global pivotal state’ and embraces multilateral security ties, will likely give way to a platform that returns the government’s focus to rekindling engagement with North Korea. While those two lines of effort are not mutually exclusive, past progressive administrations in South Korea have treated them as such, leading many observers to wonder what may come of the country’s outreach to NATO, its increased joint training with foreign partners such as Australia, and its improving relations with Japan.

In Japan, meanwhile, the Liberal Democratic Party will enter the new year as a minority government for the first time in decades. Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru won his spot atop the government by a narrow margin in a surprise victory over intraparty opponents, further complicating the political landscape. Ishiba’s administration must navigate fraught political waters when attempting to pass legislation in the parliament, and the prime minister must do the same to build consensus within his own party.

Political discord and uncertainty tend to reinforce Japan’s foreign and security policy trajectory. In other words, formulation and implementation of those policies falls back to the historically strong bureaucracy that continues to move forward under the standing legislation and guidance. While this offers some stability, it presents challenges for championing new initiatives or adjusting to rapidly evolving situations. This may make it difficult for the Japanese government to respond to the changes that come with new US and South Korean presidential administrations or to any sudden shifts in Russian, Chinese or North Korean behaviour.

These conditions demand an agile approach to security decision-making in 2025. A new trilateral alliance forming between Russia, China and North Korea is not a foregone conclusion. Once-in-a-generation political conditions in South Korea and Japan should be given particular consideration by states looking to engage and respond to security issues. Those hoping for success must be ready to anticipate, assess and adjust to tackle the challenges that await in the new year.

To combat disinformation, Japan could draw lessons from Australia and Europe

Japan is moving to strengthen its resilience to disinformation, though so far it’s only in the preparatory stage.

The EU and some countries have introduced requirements in content moderation for digital platforms. By contrast, Japan has proceeded with only expert discussion on countermeasures against disinformation. While that progress is welcome, Tokyo needs to consider establishing its own standards and join a growing global consensus on countering disinformation, including foreign information manipulation linked to malign state actors.

2024 was a tough year for Japan in countering disinformation campaigns. Immediately after the Noto earthquake in January, false rescue requests were widely spread on social media, diverting scarce resources of emergency services away from people who genuinely needed help. After record-breaking rainfall hit the Tohoku region in July, more than 100,000 spam posts disguised as disaster information appeared on social media. And ahead of the September election for the Liberal Democratic Party’s president and Japan’s October general elections, Japan Fact-check Center identified the spread of false and misleading information about political parties and candidates.

Japan is in a delicate situation. It’s one of the countries at the forefront of Chinese hybrid threats due to its proximity to Taiwan and principled stance upholding the rules-based order. But Japanese society, accustomed to little political division and to passively receiving information, may lack the resilience to disinformation of countries such as the United States or Korea.

Now, about 67 million Japanese are active users of X, more than half the population. X has become an important news and information source for a segment of Japanese society that is less inclined to confirm the accuracy of news items via more mainstream sources.

In response, the government has taken steps to combat disinformation and misinformation. In April 2023, a specialised unit was established within the Cabinet Secretariat to collect and analyse disinformation spread by foreign actors. As president of the G7, Japan introduced the Hiroshima AI Process in 2023 to address AI-enabled disinformation. Furthermore, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs produced solid evidence to effectively counter disinformation campaigns relating to the release of treated wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This disinformation may have come from China. The ministry’s effort should be applauded and serve as a model for future responses.

But simply responding to every incident may not be sustainable. Countering the proliferation of disinformation also requires content moderation, which must be balanced to protect freedom of expression and avoid placing an undue burden on digital platforms. Thankfully, international partners provide some good examples for reference.

The EU’s Digital Services Act (in full effect since 2024) forces digital platforms to disclose the reasoning behind content moderation decisions and introduces measures to report illicit content. In Australia, the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill (2024) was intended to provide the Australian Communications and Media Authority with powers to force digital platforms to take proactive steps to manage the risk of disinformation. While it was abandoned in late November, Japan could use this as a lesson to avoid similar outcomes.

Japan’s government has commissioned various study groups but so far has taken no legislative action to combat misinformation and disinformation. The present reliance on voluntary efforts by digital platforms is insufficient, especially given the growing likelihood and sophistication of disinformation threats. Concrete measures are needed.

The Japanese government should engage multiple stakeholder communities, including digital platforms, such as X, and fact checking organisations, to collectively set minimum standards of necessary content moderation by digital platforms. While the specifics of moderation can be left to the discretion of the digital platform, minimum standards could include, for example, labelling trusted media and government agencies and assigning them a higher algorithmic priority for display. If minimum standards are not met, the digital platform would be subjected to guidance or advice by a government authority. But the authority would not have the power to remove or reorder individual content.

Setting standards in this way would respect existing limits of freedom of expression while reducing exposure of users to disinformation that could cause serious harm. It would require, however, verifiable criteria used to determine trusted accounts and the establishment of a contact point for complaints within digital platforms or trusted private fact-checkers.

Regulating digital platforms will not be enough. It’s also important to call out malicious actors and strengthen public awareness and media literacy. Proliferation of disinformation with political intent by foreign actors is a global problem. So Japan should cooperate with partners with similar democratic values, such as Australia. As such, Tokyo should be prepared to be more proactive in joining public attributions of malicious state-sponsored campaigns. It was, for example, with the advisory, initially prepared by Australia, on the cyber threat actor APT40.

Japan’s resilience to disinformation is still developing. Given its prevalent role in the regional and global order and its proven commitment to a rules-based international order, a higher level of urgency is required.

Training in Australia is a big chance for Japan. Let’s make it permanent

Valuable training in the Northern Territory for Japan’s key amphibious force from next year should be only a step towards more extensive use of Australian exercise areas by the Japanese armed forces.

Canberra should now offer Tokyo a permanent arrangement for Japanese armed forces to train in the Northern Territory, similar to the initiative for Singaporean troops training in Queensland.

The plan for the Japanese brigade to begin training in the Northern Territory was announced on 17 November during a meeting in Darwin of the three countries’ defence chiefs. Japan’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade (ARDB), a marine unit of Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF), will join the training and exercises held by the US Marine Rotational Force–Darwin (MRF-D) and the Australian Defence Force from 2025.

The ARDB incorporates Japan’s former Western Army Infantry Regiment, the dedicated amphibious warfare unit of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. It conducts a full range of amphibious operations and limited training with the US Marine Corps to enhance the skills and doctrine for retaking Japanese territory seized by a foreign power.

To support the ARDB, Japan has bought amphibious assault vehicles. It has also modernised ships for operating F-35B Lightning fighters and MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft, both types also used by the USMC.

Peace in Japan since World War II and the country’s pacifist constitution have ensured that its armed forces haven’t fought a war for almost 80 years. Training opportunities of the highest quality are therefore even more important to them than they are for the militaries of other countries.

The Northern Territory provides the space and the multi-domain training that the JSDF needs to better prepare its soldiers and equipment for the battlefield. It is arguably the best place on this side of the world for the sort of unrestrained, combined-arms training the JSDF is seeking.

Japan’s training spaces are limited, because of the country’s high population density. Alternatives in the US don’t have the unique characteristics of the Northern Territory, which provides for multi-domain training across air, land, sea, space and cyberspace.

JSDF presence in the Northern Territory would also be useful in accelerating unilateral, bilateral and multilateral testing and evaluation for dual-use technologies. By adding Japanese systems to those that are already tested an evaluated in the Northern Territory, we can develop a larger and more robust private support industry.

It is good news that the first Japanese Joint Staff liaison officer will be placed in Australia’s Headquarters Joint Operations Command (HQJOC) in November. Also welcome is the commitment to send an ADF liaison officer to JSDF Joint Operations Command (JJOC) once it is established in 2025.

Australia should continue the momentum of those announcements and focus on initiatives that build the people-to-people linkages.

Canberra should also offer Tokyo a permanent Japan-Australia Training Initiative located in the Northern Territory along similar lines to the long-standing Australia-Singapore Military Training Initiative (ASMTI) based in central and northern Queensland.

Under the ASMTI, Singapore has invested in the development and enhancement of two training areas in Queensland, owned and managed by Canberra. These will support future needs of the ADF and facilitate an increased presence of Singapore Armed Forces personnel. When the ASMTI reaches maturity, up to 14,000 Singaporean troops will train in Queensland for up to 18 weeks a year, split into two nine-week periods.

In deepening the engagement with Japanese forces, there will be political hurdles and challenges posed by public perception, but now is the time to think boldly and act quickly. Japan’s participation in US and Australian training in the Northern Territory has great potential to lead to a more extensive collaboration that’s beneficial to all parties.

Ishiba’s Asian NATO: a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow

Newly installed Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s idea for an Asian NATO is probably not achievable in the short term. It’s a good idea for the more distant future, but for the moment there’s nowhere near enough support and preparedness in Japan and elsewhere in the region for it to go ahead.

The idea is not new. Michael Green pointed out the emerging plausibility of such a bloc last year, noting the urgency of collectively countering China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. Shinzo Abe promoted less formal cooperation between such democracies as Australia, India, Japan and the US to dissuade China from aggression. Since China has become more aggressive, not less, formalising the integration of the hub-and-spokes alliances centred on the US should be part of strategic discussions in the coming years.

Even a mere proposal for Asian NATO would be helpful. It warns China that its aggression could result in the formation of a multilateral alliance to oppose it.

Ishiba has promoted the idea for more than 10 years. In the context of enabling collective self-defence in Japan in 2014, he stressed the importance of extending collective self-defence with countries that shared democracy and freedom, especially with other US allies, including Australia. And an Asian NATO may be an unspoken goal of the US policy to build collective military capability through a latticework of western Pacific alliances.

Nonetheless, Ishiba’s proposal does not look like an immediate remedy for the deteriorating Indo-Pacific security environment.

First, Ishiba himself noted in 2014 that Asia had greater disparities of military and economic resources and more ethnic and religious diversity than Europe, so the Asian NATO ambition would take time and energy.

His intention appears to have turned from general collective defence to specifically deterring China from attacking Taiwan. Just before the LDP leadership race in 2024, he raised the idea of a coalition of democracies with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te in Taipei, implying that Taiwan would be in an Asian NATO and, given China’s ambitions, become its main concern.

But, across the region, there is no consensus support for using force to protect Taiwan. A Lowy Poll in 2023 revealed that only 42 percent of Australian respondents supported the Australian Government sending troops to Taiwan to defend it. In another survey, such support in South Korea was 34 percent.

Crucially, only 11 percent of Japanese survey respondents said they would want their country to force alongside the US to protect Taiwan; 56 percent backed logistical support to US forces, and 27 percent opposed working with US forces at all in such a contingency. In Southeast Asia, the ISEAS survey found that 15 percent of Filipinos supported military help for Taiwan, and even that was higher than the average of 5.7 percent across the Association of South East Asian Nations.

Second, Japan already extended the right of collective self-defence to the United States and potentially US allies, without an Asian NATO. In the 2014 interpretation of its constitution, it can exercise the right of collective self-defence only ‘when attacks against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan threaten Japan’s survival and pose a clear danger to its people’.

While Japan’s response to the Taiwan contingency remains ambiguous, the US-Japan alliance would end if Japan failed to extend the collective self-defence to the US forces fighting for the island.

An obstacle to creating an Asian NATO would be the continuing political unacceptability in Japan of an obligation to use military force, like that created by Article 5 of the NATO treaty. If Japan wants to establish an Asian NATO, it should take the first steps of amending its constitution and taking more responsibility for its own defence.

Ishiba does want delete Paragraph 2 of Article 9 of the constitution, which prohibits possession of offensive military potential, and reform Japan’s military as more than a self-defence force. Still, achieving that would be as hard for him as walking on the Moon, and then creating an Asian NATO would be as hard as walking on Mars.

Also, Ishiba may have quite enough to do in trying to revise Japan’s status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) with the US. He dislikes Japan’s asymmetrical obligation to allow foreign (US) forces on its territory.

All in all, the benefit of promoting an Asian NATO is highly limited.

Moreover, in mobilising political, diplomatic and military resources to pursue the ambition, Ishiba could switch attention away from, and thereby weaken, less ambitious but useful attempts at deterring China. Examples are improving interoperability and responsiveness, and achieving smoother coordination in command and control. The US and its allies should focus on concrete and practical next steps of patchworking bilateralism and minilateralism to address the China challenge, rather than dreaming of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Lacking: Japanese security cooperation with Taiwan

‘Only thunder, no rain’ is the Chinese saying.

Plenty of serious-sounding noise has come from Japan in the past few years about the need to back Taiwan against conquest by China, but it isn’t turning into much practical security cooperation.

Taiwan’s lack of such collaboration with its great democratic neighbour leaves the island with less than optimal defence preparation. Also, anything that would make Taiwan more secure against China would also make Japan safer.

‘There are … areas where Taiwan really, really needs Japan,’ a Taiwanese security insider says. ‘And to some extent Japan really needs Taiwan.’

There should be ‘cooperation on a wider range of issues that involve security,’ that person says, citing ‘supply chain security and traditional military security—even just having an entry-level exchange of intelligence that concerns national security.’

Among the world’s politicians, former Japanese leaders have made some of the most enthusiastic declarations of support for Taiwan over the past few years.

Late prime minister Shinzo Abe said in 2021 that Japan and the United States could not stand by if China attacked Taiwan. ‘A Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency and therefore an emergency for the US-Japan Alliance,’ he said. Abe went on to call for the US to ditch its policy of strategic ambiguity, which leaves Beijing guessing about Washington’s possible response to attempted conquest of the island, and instead make it clear it would defend it.

Last year, former prime minister Taro Aso said Japan should ‘be the very first one’ to show it had capabilities that could defend Taiwan.

Prominent strategic documents, including Japan’s annual defense white paper and National Security Strategy, in the past few years have begun listing peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait as important to Japan’s own security. Japan last year quietly appointed a serving government official to its Taiwanese de facto embassy to act as a military attache.

The Japan Forum for Strategic Studies for the first time has invited think tankers from Taiwan to attend a tabletop exercise simulating a conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Whether it had an official okay in doing this isn’t clear.

These developments reflect Tokyo’s growing worries about China’s massive rearmament under Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Beijing’s intentions to build sufficient capabilities to forcefully take Taiwan through an invasion or blockade. Taiwan lies 111km west of Japan-administered Yonaguni Island and 170km southwest of the Senkaku islands, Japanese ownership of which is disputed by China.

If China attacked or blockaded Taiwan, its forces would very likely intrude into Japan’s airspace and waters, potentially dragging Tokyo into a war over the island democracy. A cross-strait war could also potentially involve attacks on US bases in Japan and disrupt Japanese commercial shipping. In 2022, Japan relied on imports, such as crude oil and natural gas, for 97 percent of its energy supply.

Perhaps the greatest issue, however, is that seizure of Taiwan would mean China would own part of first island chain, which stretches from Japan to Indonesia and restricts China’s access to the Pacific. With the island under its control, China’s naval and air forces could range over the ocean without having to pass so close to potentially hostile territory on their way out and back. That would increase the threat to Japan.

So, reasons for Japanese security cooperation with Taiwan are obvious, and authoritative voices in Japan are calling for it. But Japan has still rejected Taiwanese requests for formal security cooperation, even at a rudimentary level. Even unofficial security ties between the two countries look hard to develop.

There is now some frustration in Taiwanese security circles, where officials say exchanges of retired generals and defence think-tankers cannot act as a substitute for direct contact and coordination between the two nations’ militaries.

In 2019 former president Tsai Ing-wen publicly asked for direct dialogue with the Japanese government over cyberspace and regional security issues, saying it was important for them to share information in real time about Chinese military movements. Japan was indifferent.

Lack of cooperation means, for example, that Taiwan’s air force cannot coordinate with Japan’s on where each would defend airspace in the event of war with China. The two countries are not developing military equipment together. And they don’t take the opportunity to improve the performance of their forces by exercising with each other.

Why is Japan dragging its feet? Extensive Japanese business exposure to China is one obvious reason, and another is Beijing’s diplomatic heft. ‘Japan still feels pressure from China,’ Lii Wen, now Taiwan’s presidential spokesperson, said in an interview earlier this year. ‘Japan’s foreign ministry will feel the pressure more acutely,’ he said. Lii was then head of international affairs for the Democratic Progressive Party, the party of President Lai Ching-te.

Japanese bureaucracy is conservative and therefore much less inclined to change policy on Taiwan than members of parliament are. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s Abe faction, a typically pro-Taiwan group, may have lost influence since some of its members were punished in April by a disciplinary committee over a political funding scandal.

Whereas the United States has its Taiwan Relations Act, Japan has no legal basis for security interactions with the island, which, under the one-China policy, it does not recognize as a country.

Japan also faces significant constitutional restrictions on taking military action. Altogether, then, it clearly prefers to manage security issues relating to Taiwan through the United States, with which it would probably coordinate in case of war.

Still, there are ways that quiet unofficial security cooperation could proceed. One possibility would be to use the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, a platform set up by the United States in 2015 to exploit Taiwanese strengths in addressing issues of global concern. Japan and Australia take part in it. In the past, the platform has covered energy issues but has shied away from overt security themes. Yet there is no institutional reason why it could not address them.

Taiwan and Japan might also think of creative ways to circumvent diplomatic restrictions preventing military contact, such as unannounced cooperation between their coast guards.

Still, all that would be a long way from the full military cooperation with Japan that would maximise Taiwan’s security.

From the bookshelf: ‘Deterring Armageddon: a biography of NATO’

In April the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or more precisely the Washington Treaty that forms the basis for the alliance, turned 75.

NATO’s visibility has waxed and waned, but Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine has put the alliance firmly in the spotlight. Its secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has been called on to play an increasingly prominent role as the alliance’s leader and a spokesperson for the West. And NATO members are under growing pressure to spend more on defence, strengthen their planning and step up their capacity to develop and manufacture military hardware.

The recent accession of Finland and Sweden strengthened the alliance. It was also the exact opposite of what Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was seeking with his territorial aggression.

With NATO at the centre of any current discussion about Western security, Deterring Armageddon is the right book at the right time. The author, Peter Apps, a Reuters columnist specialising in political risk and global defence, has extensive operational experience in the British military. His book is ambitious in scope, detailed in coverage and was written for both specialist and generalist readers.

Apps anchors his narrative firmly in world events. From the Suez crisis, the Berlin blockade, the Cuban missile crisis and the collapse of the Soviet Union to more recent crises in the Balkans and the Middle East and the ongoing realignment of global power structures, Apps recounts how NATO responded, at times from the sidelines.

Apps also links NATO’s evolution to changes in weaponry and strategic thinking. In the early 1950s, limited nuclear arsenals provided the basis for a doctrine of massive retaliation. However, nuclear proliferation and technological advancements rapidly made nuclear war unthinkable, with strategies of deterrence becoming the norm. The emergence of hybrid and cyberwarfare, multi-purpose drones and artificial intelligence have required a further strategic rethink.

From its earliest days, NATO faced three challenges that were to repeat themselves throughout its history: assertive behaviour of the Soviet Union (and later Russia), fluctuation of American political support, and disunity of NATO’s European members. Apps reminds us that in 1966 President Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from military cooperation with NATO, evicting US and NATO forces from France and forcing the alliance to move its headquarters from Paris to Brussels.

During his presidency, Donald Trump demanded that NATO members’ military budgets should be at least 2 percent of their gross domestic products, indicating in no uncertain terms that the US was tired of subsidising its European allies and might withdraw from the alliance. The issue was by no means new. As early as 1963, President John Kennedy wondered why the US should ‘have in Europe supplies adequate to fight for 90 days when the European forces around our troops only have enough to fight for two or three?’ In 1973, President Richard Nixon went a step further, telling the Europeans that unless they increased military spending, America might pull out its troops.

Apps peppers his narrative with little-known anecdotes. Among them: Stoltenberg, as a teenage activist, called for his home country, Norway, to withdraw from NATO.

The alliance’s post-Cold War expansion is often cited as a trigger for Russian aggression. Apps carefully documents the fact that in 1990 US Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that ‘not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction’. The promise has never been repeated, and the subsequent expansion of the alliance led to decades of resentment in Moscow.

Apps concludes with an important chapter on NATO’s future. China’s rapidly expanding military budget and nuclear stockpiles have highlighted to alliance members the global nature of security issues, including in Asia and the Pacific.

In 2023, NATO signed a partnership agreement with Japan, building on similar deals with Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, whose officials are now semi-permanent fixtures at major alliance meetings. There was also talk of establishing a NATO liaison office in Tokyo, but this aggravated China and was vetoed by France, leaving the issue on the table.

Nor is US support set in stone. In a 2023 campaign video, former president Donald Trump pledged to finish the process of ‘fundamentally re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and … mission’. Last year, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton controversially noted that ‘in a second Trump term we’d almost certainly withdraw from NATO’. Subsequently the US Congress passed an amendment making it impossible for any future president to quit the alliance without congressional approval.

Deterring Armageddon provides a balanced and thoroughly researched account of the many storms weathered by NATO. Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine, and the possibility that it could escalate into a much broader conflict, is NATO’s greatest challenge to date. However, the outcome of the upcoming American presidential elections could challenge the alliance further.

Australia’s gas strategy conflicts with its national interest

Australia’s Future Gas Strategy poorly reflects northern Australian resource needs and undermines the national interest. It will delay Australia providing for both regional energy and climate security. It is particularly out of step with First Nations priorities.

These assessments contradict Ian Satchwell’s recent Strategist article, which celebrated the gas strategy’s importance to northern Australia and Asia and invited more government support. Satchwell rightly noted northern Australia’s ‘pivotal role in national and international energy and minerals security.’ But we must more closely scrutinise key claims in the Future Gas Strategy and the debate that produced it.

If we account for Australia’s complete national interest, we see that resource security is possible without the role for gas that the strategy envisions. Gas should get less, not more, government support.

Even for national security reasons, we must adequately assess the effect on greenhouse emissions of future resource development. The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group has noted the growing and still underestimated security threat that climate change poses. Australia presenting as a credible climate actor is also critical to managing traditional security threats, including China’s influence in the emissions-conscious Pacific.

Australia should lift support for resource activity that helps minimise climate change and cut support to that which exacerbates it. The Future Gas Strategy promises to do otherwise. It treats sustained gas demand as unavoidable rather than something that policy might influence. It uses this to justify a regulatory environment that invites continued gas investment, including in new supply, ‘to 2050 and beyond.’

The gas strategy repeats Australian producer and Asian consumer arguments that sustained use of a fossil fuel can not only coincide with but even drive climate action. This is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.

The strategy does not at all convince that sustained gas use is key to national or global decarbonisation. That claim was already challenged by more extensive, integrated and unbiased assessment from the International Energy Agency, whose most recent net-zero roadmap finds ‘no new long-lead time upstream oil and gas projects are needed’.

In contrast to its extensive modelling of future gas demand, the strategy provides no detailed assessment of how Australian gas might specifically reduce emissions. Past investigations have concluded it could do the opposite. A CSIRO report commissioned by LNG exporter Woodside found expanding Australian supply to Asia could displace renewables, prolong coal usage and increase emissions, absent a global carbon price.

The gas strategy rightly notes that Australia’s more genuine commitments to emissions reduction might entail short-term rises in gas consumption and associated domestic emissions in some sectors. One reason is that current processing of critical minerals for clean technologies is gas-intensive.

Yet Australia’s Critical Minerals Strategy commits to expediting renewables-based processing alternatives. Moreover, if industrial gas consumption must rise for the global good, government commitments could ensure it declines more rapidly elsewhere. Australia could pursue Paris climate agreement-facilitated trade deals that verify net global emissions reductions. It could keep more gas at home rather than export it. The gas strategy pays insufficient attention to these alternative futures.

The other big claim amplified by the gas strategy and the Strategist piece concerns Australia’s responsibility to ensure Asian energy security through the net zero transition.

Asian critics of past Australian gas-threatening policies mostly argued that those policies would reduce their own countries’ strategically vital energy access. Yet the most vocal Japanese critics now largely celebrate the gas strategy as helping to advance projects likely to provide Japanese companies with commercial opportunities in new gas markets, underpinned by Tokyo’s significant public financial assistance. The head of Japanese petroleum company Inpex, Takayuki Ueda, last year argued that Australian gas was critical to meeting Japan’s ongoing energy security needs. In a speech in Perth last month, he had turned to mostly celebrating Australia’s potential role as an LNG supplier to broader Asia.

Gas strategy commitments clearly reflected criticisms from Ueda and other Japanese and Asian sources. The recent Strategist article celebrated the strategy for outlining the ‘steps needed to rebuild Australia’s reputation as a reliable trade and investment partner.’ Yet this reputation mostly suffered under unproven claims that gas was central to decarbonisation and under misleading arguments around whose needs were threatened by previous policies.

These flawed justifications matter when we consider that the only way Australia can provide both regional energy and climate security is our alternative ‘renewable superpower’ vision. Pursuit of this renewable model has particular support among First Nations communities, who form a key northern Australian constituency and a prominent stakeholder in Australia’s current diplomacy. Groups such as the First Nations Clean Energy Network have captured a zeal for climate-friendly economic development with no fossil fuel precedent. The Future Gas Strategy highlighted supposed gas-linked opportunities that First Nations communities might seize. In reality, however, Indigenous leaders have been among the loudest critics of the gas strategy and its purported misrepresentation and misalignment of their interests.

Gas will undoubtedly help Australia achieve its renewable superpower vision. But, to serve the broadest national interest, the government should minimise that role. Rather than offer more support to gas, it should redraft or abandon its flawed strategy for the sector.

Focused on its region: an overview of Japan’s latest security moves

As Japan becomes more forward-leading in national security, it is signaling a greater interest in the wider world. But a review of its latest moves shows its main focus is on reinforcing its armed forces, particularly through a new military command structure with its most important ally, the United States.

Last month Prime Minister Kishida Fumio reiterated before the US Congress that Japan was a ‘global partner’ to the United States. Nonetheless, Tokyo’s main concerns remain closer to home, as it worries about North Korean and Chinese aggression.

Still, a key implication from Kishida’s Washington visit was Japan’s unswerving commitment to greater integration with the US armed forces—via enhanced command and control and intelligence-sharing, and in emerging domains such as space. Tokyo is also expanding its security relations with other like-minded neighbours and opening the door to defence technology cooperation.

Japan has come a long way since former prime minister Abe Shinzo, standing nine years ago on the same spot as Kishida, ‘resolved to take yet more responsibility for [world] peace and stability.’ It has redoubled its leadership in the G7, G20, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, World Bank and other international groups. And it played a critical role in negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade agreements. It even deepened its connection with NATO after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

But Japan’s threats are close, and addressing them at home and in its own region remains its top priority, as evidenced by the actions it has taken in the past few years to bolster its security and work more closely with partners. Keeping track of its many steps is challenging, so what follows is an overview.

Sharpening strategic focus

Japan’s latest strategic documents—an updated national security strategy, national defence strategy and defence build-up program, all released in December 2022—do not dramatically differ from earlier policies in their primary security commitments. But they do reflect a deepened concern over Russia’s war in Ukraine, North Korea’s continued nuclear provocations, and worsening tensions over Taiwan.

They also demonstrate Tokyo’s determination to build world-class capabilities in active cyber defence and economic security fit for today’s changed information-security environment.

Growing defence spending

Japan is moving ahead with plans to increase annual defence spending from ¥5.4 trillion in 2022 to ¥8.9 trillion by 2027. While not quite the doubling of defence spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product that is sometimes reported, the buildup still sends a strongly positive signal to countries and companies invested in Japan’s defence.

Already, Tokyo’s defence budget is up by 50 percent from 2022 levels, and this new funding is being put to a variety of acquisitions.

Missile defence and counterstrike

Japan is systematically upgrading what it calls ‘shield’ and ‘spear’ capabilities. Its navy is developing a design for two ships with the Aegis air-and-missile defence system; these will be built instead of formerly planned Aegis Ashore batteries. The ships will complement Japan’s eight destroyers that have the original Aegis system designed for naval installation.

Japan is also acquiring various counterstrike capabilities, including Tomahawk sea-launched and JASSM-ER air-launched cruise missiles, both types coming from the United States. In 2023 alone, Tokyo secured US foreign military sale determinations for the medium-range AMRAAM and short-range AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, along with the RAM Block 2B naval air-defence missiles.

Japan is even helping to backstop Western armaments sent to Ukraine. Side-stepping its own long-standing weapons export rules established in 1967, Tokyo approved the transfer of Japan-manufactured Patriot surface-to-air missiles to the United States to replenish stocks that the United States had depleted in supplying Ukraine.

Defence technology cooperation

Notably, Japan is opening the tap for defence technology co-development. In 2014, it ended nearly 50 years of self-imposed international arms controls. Until then, the United States had been one of the primary exempted nations from  Tokyo’s restrictions on defence technology-sharing, while other countries like Indonesia and the Philippines benefited from occasional one-off transfers.

The SM-3 Cooperative Development program, begun in 2006, has been the most fruitful example of US-Japan military co-development. But the defence technology transfer principles set in 2014 and revised in December allow Tokyo to pursue wider defence-technology research and development with the United States and other countries.

Japan, Britain and Italy agreed last year to jointly develop an advanced fighter. That’s an example of what is becoming possible as Tokyo expands and deepens security partnerships.

Enhanced operational command

At their meeting in April, Kishida and President Joe Biden unveiled an important set of long-awaited measures to modernise the alliance command and control architecture. The two countries are also deepening their interoperability and combined force planning and plan to strengthen bilateral intelligence collection, sharing and analysis.

Major overhauls to day-to-day alliance coordination are anticipated in the coming months as Washington weighs options for a counterpart to Japan’s plans for a Joint Operations Command.

Space and emerging domains

In addition to operational support for Tomahawks, the Kishida-Biden summit produced new deliverables around cooperation on a future low-earth orbit satellite constellation for detecting and tracking hypersonic weapons. The two countries will also work together on a counter-hypersonics Glide Phase Interceptor.

Three US-based operational ground stations for Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, which supports US military space domain awareness, were completed in time for the summit, expanding collaboration in this critical emerging domain of strategic competition.

Regional networked deterrence

Kishida and Biden announced new efforts focused on minilateral collaboration designed to project regional deterrence. The two countries are exploring collaboration in advanced projects as part of AUKUS Pillar 2, a security partnership of Australia, Britain and the United States. The Biden administration has indicated it will seek to identify a suitable project for expanded Pillar 2 cooperation with Japan by the end of the year.

Tokyo and Washington are also developing a new missile-defence network with Australia and exploring further cooperation on drone development, other combat aircraft and autonomy. Japan and Australia are pursuing bilateral collaboration to develop integrated radar and sensor capabilities.

Trilateral exercises with South Korea to enhance multi-domain readiness, similar exercises with Britain next year, and emerging maritime cooperation with the Philippines all will provide additional vectors for enhanced minilateralism in the months ahead.

Defence industrial alignment

Biden and Kishida announced a forum on Defence Industry Cooperation on Acquisition and Sustainment (DICAS) to identify further opportunities for co-development, co-production, and co-sustainment. This will tap into Japan’s revitalised interest in defence technology collaboration. The forum will seek to build on the Systems and Technology Forum established in 1980 to promote two-way defence technology sharing and transfers.

DICAS follows the signature in January 2023 of technology research and security of supply arrangements to strengthen bilateral collaboration on advanced technologies and defence supply chains. It also builds on last September’s launch of a Defence Science and Technology Cooperation Group to improve alignment of the two countries’ innovation ecosystems.

Already, these efforts are broadening cooperation. For instance, US and Japanese air forces are working together on artificial intelligence and machine-learning systems for advanced drones that would operate alongside Japan’s next fighter aircraft. The US Navy is also investigating the use of Japan’s large commercial shipyards for short-term maintenance and repairs for warships  forward-deployed to the Indo-Pacific, as well as potential collaboration with Japanese companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to restore dormant US shipyards. Speaking at the annual Sea-Air-Space Conference in April, US Navy secretary Carlos Del Toro reiterated Washington’s interest in Japan’s shipbuilding capabilities—and South Korea’s—which he marveled could produce ‘high-quality ships, including Aegis destroyers, for a fraction of the cost that we do’ using digital tools.

In the coming months, DICAS is expected to convene two initial working groups—one focused on ship repair—to explore these and additional emerging areas of defence industrial alignment.

Domestic industrial security upgrades

Finally, Tokyo is in the process of upgrading its industrial security and cyber practices to keep up with today’s threat environment.

It is undertaking a major overhaul of its primary cybersecurity agency and a significant expansion of its civil-service and military cyber workforce.

In addition, the Japanese parliament on 10 May passed legislation to enhance protections for confidential information and to mandate security clearance checks at government agencies and companies with access to official and proprietary secrets. The bill is a crucial step towards facilitating domestic public-private and international cooperation on defence technology development.

On both sides of the Pacific, it will be necessary to apply pressure to sustain the momentum of US-Japan defence cooperation achieved with Kishida’s visit to the United States.

Access to Northern Territory can be a military asset for Japan

As Japan steps up military cooperation with the United States and Australia in an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific, the Northern Territory is becoming strategically more important.

From it, forces can reach into the Indian or Pacific oceans, including the South China Sea. Its location is also ideal for military units, including Japan’s and India’s, to meet and exercise with acceptable transit time.

For the Japanese and US militaries, northern Australia allows access to key Australian Defence Force bases, vast air, land and maritime training ranges, and essential logistic support and maintenance facilities. Importantly, the north has a history of hosting and supporting large multinational activities and exercises.

The Australian government recently announced an acceleration and expansion of funding for hardening existing bases and facilities in the territory, as well as developing new ones. In addition, the Australian and territory governments are embarking on an ambitious plan there to build a digital economy and associated infrastructure, all of which will be available to support military operations. This is aimed at promoting employment and economic growth and supporting resiliency and security across the north.

Japan is the first country to be formally considered for joining AUKUS Pillar 2, aimed at breakthrough technological advances apart from nuclear submarines. The move reflects the interest of Australia, Britain and the United States in tapping into Japan’s strong industrial and technological capacity. It also reflects Tokyo’s willingness to join more allied security arrangements amid worsening provocations by China and North Korea.

On 2 May, US, Japanese and Australian defence ministers signed a trilateral Research, Development, Test and Evaluation Projects Arrangement, reinforcing their technological cooperation.

Testing and evaluation may indeed be one area where the Northern Territory can benefit Japan, notably with the Royal Australian Air Force’s Delamere Air Weapons Range, comprising more than 2000 square kilometres south of Katherine. It’s far from strong sources of electromagnetic interference—and from foreign aircraft and ships that might loiter near the coast to pick up signals. The Australian Army’s Bradshaw Field Training Area, roughly the size of Belgium, offers multidomain training and exercising options and is frequently used in major exercises in the north.

In increasingly cooperating with the United States and Australia, Japan’s initial focus will be on development and sharing of advanced capabilities in such areas as hypersonics, anti-submarine warfare, cyberweapons, quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Military-technological cooperation with Britain will also deepen if Japan does begin to work in AUKUS Pillar 2.

Examples of Japan’s earlier achievements in defence technology include the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries F-2 fighter, the AAM-4B air-to-air missile and the Taigei submarine class with lithium-ion batteries.

Japan has made significant strides in space technology, which has both civilian and military applications. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and innovative Japanese companies are further developing satellite-based intelligence and surveillance capabilities.

The Northern Territory has a proven space launch facility, the Arnhem Space Centre. The centre offers launches to equatorial orbits, among others, is in a remote area with almost no commercial overflight and importantly is supported by the local traditional owners. There is the potential to expand its use for hypersonic test and evaluation, including linking it to existing ADF areas.

Like all modern militaries, the ADF requires fast, secure data links connecting its naval, air and ground forces to each other and to allied forces, many of which are or will be based in the Northern Territory. Data sharing among Allies is critical for civil and military collaboration and for Australian-Japanese-US joint multi-domain defence. Japan and Australia will need to depend on each other’s data and its security during regional crises.

To help strengthen the defence ecosystem, the territory government is investing in and supporting a range of initiatives that will also be useful to the forces of Japan, the United States and others when operating in the Top End.

An example is the Inligo Networks ACC-1 project. This is a network of cable connections across the Indo-Pacific that bypass the congested cable network in the South China Sea. Key nodes will include Guam, continental United States, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia and East Timor, all connected to a landing station in Darwin. This will be particularly important to militaries operating in the Northern Territory.

Connectivity is incomplete without storage capability. The government is working with data centre operator NEXTDC as it develops a flagship facility in Darwin to provide 100 percent uptime plus fast, secure and flexible access to major cloud platforms. This will be a first for the Top End and an invaluable asset to Australia’s nearby allies.

Other projects in the pipeline will provide much needed critical infrastructure in the territory to support and enable our military and those of our allies and partners, including Japan.

 

Geopolitics, influence and crime in the Pacific islands

Getting caught up in geopolitical competition may seem uncomfortable enough for Pacific island countries. What’s making things worse is that outside powers’ struggle to influence them is weakening their resistance to organised crime emanating from China. 

And that comes on top of criminal activity that’s moved into Pacific islands from elsewhere, including Australia, Mexico, Malaysia and New Zealand. 

This situation must change if peace and stability are to be maintained and development goals achieved across the region. 

The good news is that, Papua New Guinea excluded, Pacific island countries have some of the lowest levels of criminality in the world. The bad news is that the data suggests the effect of organised crime is increasing across all three Pacific-island subregions—Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. 

The picture is worst in Melanesia and Polynesia, where resilience to crime has declined. In many cases, Pacific Island countries are insufficiently prepared to withstand growing criminal threats, exposing vulnerable populations to new risks. 

As China has gained influence in these countries, its criminals and criminal organisations have moved in alongside honest Chinese investors. Some of those criminals, while attending to their own business, are also doing the bidding of the Chinese government.  

If the criminal activity involves suborning local authorities—and it often will—then so much the better for Beijing, which will enjoy the officials’ new-found reliance on Chinese friends that it can influence. 

Democracies competing with China for influence, such as the US, Japan and Australia, are unwilling to lose the favour of those same officials. So, they refrain from pressuring them into tackling organised crime and corruption head on. The result is more crime and weaker policing. 

But more factors are at play here. Growing air travel and internet penetration have helped turn the islands into more accessible destinations and better-integrated points along global supply chains of licit and illicit commodities. 

When one starts mapping who is behind major organised criminality, the protagonists are almost always foreigners. The islands do have home-grown gangs but, when there is a lot of money to be made, there is usually the involvement of a Chinese triad, a Mexican cartel, a law-defying Malaysian logging company, or some similar criminal organisation. 

Groups that have entered the islands, such as Australia’s Rebels and New Zealand’s Head Hunters, both outlaw motorcycle gangs, or the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, are overtly criminal. Yet, some hybrid criminal actors are making their presence felt even more in some of the islands, and they are arguably even more pernicious and complex to eradicate. They tend to be foreign individuals who operate in both the licit and illicit economies, have become associated with local business elites, and enjoy political connections both at home and in the Pacific. 

As their operations have become bolder, as seen in Palau and Papua New Guinea, there are substantiated concerns that the perpetrators may be, or could become, tools of foreign political influence and interference. 

The poster boy of this cadre of actors is Wan Kuok Koi, aka Broken Tooth, a convicted Chinese gangster turned valued patriotic entrepreneur. Despite being sanctioned by the US, Wan has leveraged commercial deals linked to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and established cultural associations that have enabled him to co-opt local elites. He has also exploited links with the Chinese business diaspora to identify entry points for his criminal activities (such as establishing online scam centres) and has used extensive political connections to ensure impunity in his operations. 

Although they have a lower profile than Wan, many other foreign business actors are active across the region. They often gain high political access, preferential treatment and impunity through the diplomatic relations between their countries of origin (not just China) and the Pacific countries in which they operate. A further risk is that criminal revenues could also be channeled into electoral campaigns, undermining local democratic processes. 

These entrepreneurs have exploited favourable tax regimes, limited monitoring and enforcement capabilities and corrupted political connections. They often operate in extractive industries, real estate and financial services. 

As bribes pass from hand to hand, and as outside countries weigh their political considerations, Pacific citizens lose out. Some are vulnerable to labour and sexual exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous (and criminal) foreign businesses. Others see their lands, forests and waters degraded, or they are exposed to the introduction of new narcotics for which health services are unprepared.  

Fighting this transnational organised crime is critical to strengthening institutions in Pacific island countries and helping them build long-term sustainable prosperity. 

Outside countries should consider lateral approaches to crime fighting in the Pacific that may provide a framework for action that is more palatable to island-country governments than more sensitive, purely law-enforcement-driven strategies.  

Crime can be both a cause and an enabler of fragility and underdevelopment. With that in mind, the fight against crime and corruption could be framed as necessary primarily to address those two issues. They deeply impact Pacific populations, so it would be crucial to engage with affected communities along the way.

In the absence of such an approach, and with geopolitical and diplomatic considerations taking precedence, criminals will continue to exploit the limited attention that is paid to crime fighting and will profit as a result.

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