Tag Archive for: 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.

Japan’s trust in Australia erodes in response to energy security fears

For many decades, Japan has looked favourably on Australia as a reliable producer of gas and coal. Japan’s long-term investments in Australia undoubtedly were a product of our natural endowment, but also the reliable and predictable legislative environment. This is increasingly not the case.

Concerned about the future reliability of the Australia–Japan multi-decade partnership in resources and energy investment and trade, Japan’s government and industry are becoming increasingly vocal about the importance of energy-supply security and certainty.

From the Japanese prime minister to the boss of energy conglomerate INPEX, supply security has been the focus of several recent speeches, interviews and no doubt meetings with Australian government representatives. The frequency and decidedly un-Japanese tone of recent statements is a clear indicator of the depth of Japan’s concerns.

By its lack of response despite some soothing words in October, Australia appears less than galvanised by Japan’s newfound directness and Japan seems unconvinced of a significant change in direction. Inaction by Australia could well have very real economic impacts, as well as perverse outcomes for global decarbonisation.

Japan has signalled by words and actions that it is looking elsewhere for future liquefied natural gas supply to shore up energy security. That could not only result in new LNG investment forgone in Australia but also threaten the emerging hydrogen and ammonia industries, which will rely on Japan as both customer and investor.

Japan’s disquiet about the potential consequences of Australia’s underappreciation of the trade and investment relationship isn’t new, but it has increased in urgency due to looming threats to Japan’s fuel security, in part as a result of recent Australian policy settings.

In the early 2000s, the emergence of China as another major resources customer and investor raised Japanese concerns about Australia’s focus being drawn away from Japan’s underpinning role in resources development and exports, which was larger than ever.

Delegates to a 2009 Indo-Pacific regional conference in Perth were left in no doubt that Japan was anxious about being taken for granted. Ambassador Takaaki Kojima gave an uncharacteristically blunt speech, reminding delegates of the then 50-year investment and trade partnership and the fact that Japan had been Australia’s largest export market for 40 years.

Kojima pointed out that Australia was the largest energy supplier to Japan and that Japan was the largest Asian investor in Australia. He then said, with emphasis, ‘[B]oth in Japan and Australia contracts are generally honoured in good faith. In case of disputes, rule of law is ensured.’

He spoke of ‘bilateral business relations of mutual trust’ and Japan and Australia being ‘reliable and trustworthy partners’, before pivoting, pointedly, to discussion of bilateral and trilateral (including the US) security cooperation.

The Japanese ambassador’s speech, which followed a speech by China’s ambassador, Zhang Junsai, was a talking point among conference delegates who included the now resources minister, Madeleine King, who was the conference convenor.

The interventions from Japan in 2023 have struck a more urgent tone, reflecting Japan’s deepening concern about the long-term security of LNG supplies from Australia, which currently delivers 43% of Japan’s gas needs.

Australia’s new ‘safeguard mechanism’ requiring all new gas fields—including those supplying existing LNG plants—to meet net-zero goals threatens delays in replacement of gas from existing fields as they run down, as well as increased development costs. This is despite LNG proponents charting credible pathways to net zero, albeit over longer timeframes.

At the same time, the use of Commonwealth environment and heritage laws to delay construction of the already-approved Barossa gas project raises the possibility of other projects in Australia’s northwest being similarly delayed.

Other potential suppliers of gas to Japan may not be so firm about domestic net zero or as rigorous in applying contemporary environmental, social and corporate governance standards.

In July, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited the Middle East, where he sought to strengthen economic ties and diversify LNG and oil supply. Qatar’s leader said his nation was prepared to ensure stable LNG supplies. Qatar vies with Australia as the largest LNG exporter.

Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics said in July that Australia was no longer being considered to make up an expected shortfall in Russian LNG supplies. The opportunity cost for Australia could be huge. For example, the current two-train (processing plant) Ichthys LNG project, owned by INPEX and French company Total, generates $8 billion worth of exports each year and is estimated to contribute taxation revenue of $73 billion over its life. The Ichthys project has room for two additional trains, which would at least double its capacity.

In November, Bloomberg reported that Japan’s trade ministry asked gas importers to sign long-term LNG contracts to help insulate Japan from energy shocks in the face of potential further restrictions on Russian supplies and a predicted fall of 30% in current supplies.

Resources investment and trade with Japan stretches back more than 60 years.

In the 1960s, Japan became the first customer for iron ore from Western Australia and for large-scale coal mining from Central Queensland. It was a foundation investor in both. Thus began the long and deep Australian–Japanese resources partnership that has hugely expanded iron ore and coal production and extended to other minerals and LNG—plus commercial demonstration of hydrogen production and shipping.

Japan was also Australia’s first LNG customer and foundation investor. It has repeatedly emphasised the importance of Australia’s reliability as its preferred supplier of energy and minerals.

Resources companies are keenly aware of this: their relationships with Japanese customers go far beyond the transactional. LNG developers have emphasised the importance of reliability of supply in Japan’s decisions to invest and enter long-term contracts.

Australia has plenty of untapped gas resources to both keep current LNG plants going for decades and to develop new trains. Construction work has started on Woodside’s Scarborough gas project and an additional LNG train at the Pluto plant, despite recently emerging uncertainties over approvals.

The previous high probability of further expansion projects must now be in doubt in the light of Japan’s energy security focus moving to gas-rich Qatar.

In December, Woodside signed an LNG supply agreement with Mexico Pacific’s Saguaro Energia LNG on the west coast of Mexico to bolster supplies in the Asian region.

LNG is not only vital to Japan’s energy supply for electricity generation; it also underpins Japan’s ability to decarbonise to meet its 2050 net-zero target. Limitations of current battery storage technology mean that gas is critical to it being able to increase renewables penetration while providing reliable electricity supply.

It would be ironic indeed if Australia’s domestic net-zero goals applied to existing LNG projects imposed limits on Japan’s—and other customers’—ability to decarbonise.

A perverse outcome would be Australia transferring carbon emissions to other supplier nations while forgoing the economic benefits of LNG expansion or even sustainment at home.

Japan must also be quietly concerned about future rule changes affecting the security of ongoing supplies of metallurgical coal, increased supply of Australian uranium for its restarting nuclear power industry, and future large-scale hydrogen and ammonia to accelerate its decarbonisation.

Another reason for Australia to be concerned is that the future hydrogen industry turns on Japan being a foundation investor and customer, just as it was for Australia’s iron ore and coal 60 years ago and for LNG more recently.

Now is the time for Japan to join AUKUS

In a report on the UK government’s Indo-Pacific policy, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee calls for the United Kingdom to propose to Australia and the United States that Japan, along with South Korea, be invited to participate in a AUKUS technical defence cooperation agreement focused on Strand B, or Pillar 2, activities.

AUKUS Pillar 2 designates cooperation in advanced capabilities in eight areas: autonomous undersea systems, quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, advanced cyber, hypersonic weapons, electronic warfare, innovation and information sharing. These lines of effort are critical in reinforcing the integrated deterrence capabilities of the US’s Indo-Pacific allies, including Japan.

Since Japan already has defence cooperation agreements for joint research and development with the US, the UK and Australia, there’s a foundation for AUKUS–Japan cooperation. But cooperation under these frameworks is project-based, with an emphasis on basic technologies rather than a list of priority capabilities. For example, most of the joint research with the US involves technologies directly related to equipment, such as next-generation amphibious technology and modular hybrid–electric vehicle systems. Based on this background, Japan could derive considerable benefit from participating in AUKUS Pillar 2.

The Japanese government stated in its 2022 national defence strategy that leveraging cutting-edge technologies for defence has become critical. Japan, which has high-tech capabilities, needs to cooperate with its allies and mobilise their capabilities to prepare for a long-term race for technological leadership. Because advantages in critical and emerging technologies covered by Pillar 2 of AUKUS will directly translate into military advantages, having access to these technologies will help deter potential adversaries in the Indo-Pacific.

Given Japan’s declining economic power, its future science and technology investment will likely also decline. Japan can acquire critical and emerging technologies more efficiently by closely collaborating with allies and partners. Cooperation through an expanded AUKUS Pillar 2 agreement would allow the participants to complement each other’s capability gaps and leverage economies of scale.

Most importantly, it will promote the internationalisation of Japan’s defence industry. For a long time, the Japanese defence industry’s only client was the Japanese Ministry of Defense and the Japan Self-Defense Forces. But they are undergoing major changes, including a relaxing of the restrictions on defence equipment transfers and promotion of exports. Strengthening ties between the defence industries of Japan and AUKUS members is a good opportunity to improve the Japanese industry’s competitiveness. In Japan, investment in critical and emerging technologies has been driven by civilian usage. In 2020, defence-related procurement from domestic manufacturers made up less than 1% of Japan’s total industrial production value.

The Japanese defence industry must become more internationally oriented. Although joint research and development takes time, the expanded AUKUS group can create an opportunity for the Japanese defence manufacturers to gain marketing and sales know-how from AUKUS partners.

But before it can join AUKUS, Japan will need to overcome a few challenges.

The most critical issue is the lack of an adequate security-clearance system. The Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, the only existing law on information security in Japan, limits the scope of information that can be classified as state secrets to four areas: diplomacy, defence, prevention of espionage, and prevention of terrorism. It does not cover information in economic and technological fields, and without a security-clearance system in these areas, Japanese manufacturers will struggle to access classified information in joint developments. Japan will need to develop a security-clearance system before it can join AUKUS.

In addition, Japan is striving to become a major arms exporter like the US and UK, so there are concerns about potential conflicts of interest. AUKUS Pillar 1 is reminiscent of Japan’s efforts to sell its conventionally powered submarines to Australia in 2015. But considering the lead time to acquire effective deterrence capabilities in the critical theatre of the Indo-Pacific, this is not the time for commercial clashes. Japan should accept the division of labour within the extended AUKUS framework.

Given the military-oriented nature of AUKUS, Japan joining AUKUS would signal to China that it is part of the ‘integrated deterrence’ network the US promotes. Considering that China, Japan and South Korea are working together to revitalise the dialogue channel through the Japan–China–Korea trilateral summit, policymakers in Tokyo may feel that the timing is inappropriate.

But the security environment in East Asia is more dire than ever, and technology implementation takes years, especially the critical and emerging technologies that define future victories. The US has also expressed a positive attitude towards the expansion of AUKUS Pillar 2 membership. Japan can’t afford to delay its efforts to strengthen its defence industrial base with these technologies. Now is the time to accelerate discussions on Japan’s participation in AUKUS.

Japan’s struggle to sell its ideals in the Pacific

Geopolitics in the Pacific islands has become increasingly crowded and complex. With China’s growing economic and strategic influence, shifts in the regional order have seen a power struggle emerge between may of the region’s democracies and China.

In this context, the diplomatic strategies of the US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan towards Pacific island countries (PICs) are at a critical juncture as each country aims to protect the current order and to secure and increase its presence in the Pacific.

Japan has convened the Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting (PALM) every three years since 1997, bringing its leaders together with those of 14 PICs: the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Government representatives from Australia and New Zealand also participate, and since the eighth PALM (PALM8) in 2018, leaders of New Caledonia and French Polynesia have attended.

The PALM has been a cornerstone of Japan’s diplomacy towards PICs, and has become especially important to Japan as its presence in the region is being gradually overshadowed by China’s increasing influence.

Since PALM8, Japan has used the meeting as an opportunity to push its ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ strategy, an evolving set of documents that profess a vision of the Indo-Pacific as a region where actors cooperate to protect the rule of law, promote free trade, respect sovereignty and ensure freedom of navigation. Japan hopes to achieve this through cooperation with countries sharing these values, with the result a more stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific.

Japan has looked to deepen its partnership with PICs by inviting Pacific leaders to support the strategy, but has struggled to the garner their full support. Because the PICs want to avoid being involved in a power struggle between the US and its allies and China, they are hesitant to openly endorse a free and open Indo-Pacific framework, which some suspect is primarily a containment strategy against China.

At the 2018 meeting only Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and Marshall Islands declared their explicit support for Japan’s framework. Other PICs probably regarded it as mostly a way to gauge their appetite for containment measures against China, and their hesitance was likely compounded by Japan introducing the idea of involving PICs in the framework only two months before the meeting. Pacific leaders would have felt they had insufficient time to consider the framework.

Two years later, at the October 2020 PALM ministerial interim meeting, several PICs indicated that they still lacked a clear understanding of the role expected of them if they were to support Japan’s approach. They requested more detail from the Japanese government, reflecting lingering suspicions about it being for the purpose of containment. Despite Japan’s efforts to focus on the strategy’s cooperative elements and insistence that it isn’t directed at China specifically, these suspicions persist.

In June this year, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida unveiled the government’s ‘new plan’ for a free and open Indo-Pacific. Along with partnership with India, it underscores the need to support principles such as diversity, inclusiveness and openness in the region. It emphasises that Japan’s ‘vision’—the term it now uses instead of ‘strategy’—doesn’t exclude or divide, or impose values other countries, and it focuses on presenting its mission as cooperative and inclusive.

At PALM10, scheduled for 2024, one of the main agenda items will likely be sustaining and strengthening the free and open international order in the Indo-Pacific region. The Japanese government is sure to use this chance to seek the PICs’ endorsement of its slightly rebranded plan.

Whether they see Kishida’s softened approach as sufficiently distinct from a containment strategy will determine the outcome of years of diplomatic effort from Japan. Throughout the PALM10 process, diplomats must engage deeply with PICs—providing a credible explanation of Kishida’s updated conception of the free and open Indo-Pacific, actively listening to PICs’ perspectives, and understanding their concerns and addressing their objections—if Japan is to achieve its goal at last.

Exercise Yama Sakura and how Australia’s defence of Japan is strategic

Australia and Japan have enjoyed a special strategic partnership since 2014, but present momentum, evident through their 2022 joint declaration on security cooperation and reciprocal access agreement, suggests strong appreciation of threats to regional stability.

These documents don’t directly reference the source of potential threats and in their announcement, Australia’s deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, simply noted: ‘Both Australia and Japan recognise the increasing complexity of our security environment and the need to grow our partnership to support a stable and prosperous region.’ But Australia’s 2023 defence strategic review is more direct. It notes China’s military buildup and lack of transparency, and calls Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea a ‘threat to the global rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific’. It also argues for expanding relationships with regional partners like Japan and India, saying this would serve Australia’s interests in an increasingly contested region. Then, a 3 June 2023 communique from the United States–Japan–Australia defence ministers’ meeting expressed serious concerns about the severe security environment in the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, and over North Korea’s nuclear and missile development.

Military exercises can be designed to advance tactical, operational or strategic objectives and, in some cases, all three. To meet the often-elusive threshold of a strategic-level impact, an exercise must meaningfully influence adversary or partner decision-making, increase the capability and will of a bilateral or multilateral security relationship, and support a deliberate strategy, like regional integrated deterrence. The groundbreaking introduction of the Australian Army as a full participant in exercise Yama Sakura achieves this threshold, especially when viewed in tandem with last month’s combined naval exercises, the ongoing reciprocal F-35 deployments, and other key areas of cooperation discussed in the 10th Japan–Australia 2+2 foreign and defence ministerial consultations in December 2022.

Exercise Yama Sakura focuses on the defence of Japan and has been run for 42 years, 10 of which included Australian observers. It supports the 1954 US and Japan Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement and has matured into one of the region’s largest and most complex exercises, involving almost 6,000 participants in 2022.

Yama Sakura is important to Australia for a number of reasons.

Yama Sakura (mountain cherry blossom) is a meaningful expansion of both Australia’s bilateral security relationship with Japan and its trilateral relationship with Japan and the US. The exercise is focused on the requirements and challenges of large-scale operations in the Pacific at the theatre army, corps and division levels.

Yama Sakura’s defence of Japan scenario is useful as preparation for how Australia and its allies may choose to reinforce one another in crisis or conflict. It provides insight into the nuances of securing and regaining territory in archipelagic environments—specifically on a large scale, using joint capabilities and against a capable adversary with interior lines, greater resources and equal to or greater multi-domain capabilities.

Not discounting the importance of tactical interoperability achieved through field training exercises and exchanges, Yama Sakura focuses instead on operational-level interoperability by simulating the execution of a complex joint and multinational campaign. This teaches critical lessons to senior headquarters about effective intelligence sharing and communication, strategic force projection, contested logistics, and cross- and multi-domain effects coordination, to name just a few. Repetition matters in training, and Australia’s role in Yama Sakura builds on exercise Talisman Sabre 2023, where it commanded a combined division of 11 nations.

Finally, it advances integrated deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. While militaries are not the only drivers of integrated deterrence, they are critically important to its execution. Integrated deterrence requires militaries to work with other instruments of national power, provide combat credible capabilities and prepare to operate effectively with allies and partners. The scope, scale and nature of exercise Yama Sakura directly provides adversaries and allies important perspective about the strength and will of this critical partnership.

Yama Sakura 85, to be conducted in December 2023, will provide yet another opportunity for senior military headquarters to equip themselves for the challenges of a large-scale Pacific conflict, while signalling to China and North Korea their resolve to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific. There is a high probability that this signal will be met by a condemnatory communique suggesting that an expanded security relationship between Australia and Japan is provocative. However, post-exercise the most important message will be from Japan and Australia reinforcing the value of Yama Sakura and their ever-growing commitment to the strategic partnership.

Why Japan and South Korea care about Taiwan

A piece missing from Australian conversations on the China–US tangle over Taiwan is the island’s growing strategic importance to other countries in the region. What happens between Beijing and Taipei matters for Japan and South Korea.

Things are moving fast in Northeast Asia. Seoul has long been reluctant to speak out about China’s claims over Taiwan or its expanding military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. Under President Moon Jae-in, South Korea was wary of offending China, its largest export market, and had its hands full countering North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs without worrying unduly about Taiwan. It seemed inconceivable that Seoul would coordinate with Tokyo and Washington to oppose Chinese policy in the Taiwan Strait. And yet towards the end of his term, in May 2021, Moon issued a joint statement with President Joe Biden emphasising ‘the importance of preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait’. That was a small step for Washington but a big step for South Korea.

Then, at Camp David earlier this month, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol issued a joint statement with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Biden affirming ‘the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity in the international community’. Declaring stability in the strait a concern for the international community is what China calls ‘internationalising’ the Taiwan issue, another no-no. This was hardly new for Yoon’s Japanese and American co-signatories, who issued a similar statement at the close of the G7 meeting in Hiroshima in April, but for Seoul it was another big step.

Between times, Yoon mooted developing a nuclear deterrence force but opted instead to visit Washington and secure express commitments from the American president on stationing nuclear weapons and on sharing sensitive information over North Korean missile activities. Another big step. Why?

The audacity and timing of Seoul’s comments point to a growing convergence between the tensions dividing China and Taiwan along the Taiwan Strait and those dividing the two Koreas at the 38th parallel. These two flashpoint fault lines are merging, geopolitically, around an unresolved and potentially explosive historical impasse concerning national division and reunification in Northeast Asia.

A fundamental principle of nationalism, understood as the everyday ideological underpinning of the international state system, is that nation-states should be whole, bounded and sovereign. A nation-state that regards itself as substantively incomplete, rightly or spuriously, is likely to be an unstable revisionist member of the international system. China is such a state, as are the two Koreas and post-Soviet Russia. Today these self-proclaimed incomplete states are concentrated in one volatile region, Northeast Asia, where irredentist sentiment can be heard clamouring on one side or the other for territorial unification.

Systemic instability of this kind need not portend conflict, but the likelihood of conflict rises and falls with other factors, including economic relations, ideological affinities, and relative military strength among revisionist and status quo states.

One factor is trade dependence. Claims of bilateral trade dependence on China are often overstated—as Australia discovered to its relief—but just 10 years ago dependence on China was very real in the case of Taiwan and South Korea. As value chains and supply chains move out of China, those claims are losing traction.

Taiwan’s policy options have long been thought constrained by its dependence on trade with China. True, China absorbs around 40% of Taiwan’s total exports, but final demand in China for Taiwan’s products is minimal. Jason Kao of the College of Management at Yuan Ze University in Taiwan estimates that 90% of Taiwan’s exports to China are processed for re-export from China for consumption elsewhere. If these value chains move out of China, Taiwanese firms are likely to follow them wherever they lead, taking the value with them. What’s more, says Kao, six of China’s top 10 exporting manufacturers are Taiwanese firms. If they were to leave, along with the value chains, it’s not Taiwan that would suffer but China.

Political and business leaders in South Korea appear to be drawing similar conclusions. Yoon’s decision to align with Japan and the US over Taiwan points to a major strategic reassessment by South Korea that its future is tied, not to China as it appeared a decade ago, but to an open global trading system governed by markets and the rule of law, with mobile value chains. As the China-dependence argument loses weight, its passing carries strategic implications as well as lessons for economic policy and businesses strategies.

This can’t be separated out from ideological differences. Ideological issues are gaining weight in political decision-making in the region’s key mover, China, as John Garnaut pointed out more than six years ago. Ideological differences alone are unlikely to cause interstate conflict, but they hamper efforts to resolve it, the more so when they map directly onto divisions between states or alignments among them. In this case, geopolitical divisions separating each aggrieved state map closely onto their differences as either highly personalised dictatorships or constitutional democracies, and are reflected in evolving alignments among them, with the dictatorial states merging on one side and the democracies aligning on the other. It should be noted that none of the democracies proposes to invade or seize territory from its counterpart on the authoritarian side. Yet each faces a bullying neighbour that threatens to absorb or cut away at it.

A third factor is relative military strength, including nuclear capability. The most glaring difference separating the two aligned sets is that all three dictatorships are independently nuclear-armed while none of the democratic states they threaten possesses nuclear weapons. So the lessons that Sweden and Finland took from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have not been lost on South Korea: whereas Stockholm and Helsinki scrambled for cover under NATO’s nuclear umbrella, Seoul doubled down on its commitment to US comprehensive deterrence.

And then there’s Japan. The region’s three incomplete revisionist states are not only nuclear-armed and aligned, but they share a deep hostility towards the other major non-nuclear democracy in the region, Japan. Taiwan and South Korea are on relatively good terms with each other and with Japan, giving Tokyo a stake in both converging issues, particularly the dispute between Beijing and Taipei.

In recent years, Japan’s leaders have declared peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait a matter of life and death for their country. On 8 August, former Japanese prime minister Taro Aso reaffirmed his country’s commitment to non-nuclear principles, in a keynote address to the Taipei Ketagalan Forum, even when facing ‘the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II’. Echoing Kishida’s projection at the 2022 Shangri-La Dialogue—‘Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow’—he said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed that unilateral changes to the status quo could happen overnight and East Asia could be next in line. This matters for Taiwan, obviously, but it matters no less for Japan. Referencing the Hiroshima G7 statement, Aso said that peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait was an ‘indispensable element in security and prosperity in the international community’.

Aso’s message reinforced a statement he made two years earlier that an invasion of Taiwan by China would pose a ‘threat to Japan’s survival’. He is not alone in this assessment. Few former leaders of Japan are quite as outspoken, but many concur with his assessment of the risks to Japan if a hostile government in Beijing were to take Taiwan. China would control commercial shipping in the Taiwan Strait, much as Russia now seeks to control cargo vessels in the Black Sea. That would threaten sea lanes vital to Japan and South Korea, and it could slice away the string of islands linking the main islands of Japan to the seas east of Taiwan, much as Russia is chipping off oblasts in eastern Ukraine. For Japan, as for South Korea, credible nuclear deterrence is a matter of national survival.

Only the US can provide that level of deterrence and, as the Hoover Institution’s Larry Diamond and James Ellis point out, US credibility is on the line in Taiwan. Yoon went to Washington to secure further nuclear guarantees in the conviction, shared with his Japanese peers, that at this moment in history American comprehensive deterrence is essential for preventing the region from blowing itself apart.

Taiwan was not party to those conversations, nor was it invited to the Camp David summit, but with the growing convergence of interests among conventionally armed democracies facing nuclear-armed revisionist dictators, Taiwan can no longer be left out of consideration when Japan, South Korea and the US meet and act in the region. They each have good reason to care about Taiwan.

Japan’s pioneering policy to bridge the Indo-Pacific’s capacity gap

The Japanese government has initiated a new program to provide capacity-building support to foreign militaries. Tokyo’s provision of ‘official security assistance’, or OSA, has the potential to make Japan a more effective and active player in regional security.

The OSA concept first appeared in the government’s updated national security strategy in December 2022, which noted the need for ‘a new cooperation framework for the benefit of armed forces and other related organizations … in view of strengthening their security capacities and improving their deterrence capabilities’. In April, Japan’s cabinet set out guidelines for implementing specific OSA projects.

Assistance under the program will come in the form of grants and it is open only to developing nations as defined in OECD standards. OSA can be granted for three designated purposes: ensuring peace, stability and security based on the rule of law; conducting humanitarian activities; and supporting international peacekeeping efforts. The first four recipient countries in 2023 will be the Philippines, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Fiji. While more detail is still to come, these pilot cases will include, at the very least, the transfer of satellite and radio communication systems.

The program’s main policy objective is to secure the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region, where the line between war and peace is becoming increasingly blurred. Specifically, OSA is designed to help Japan’s partners enhance their maritime awareness, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. While the guidelines cautiously depict it as a policy for ‘peace’, OSA is a step forward in Japan’s capacity-building efforts for foreign militaries.

Over the past decade, Japan has gradually been removing self-imposed restrictions on defence-related activities. In 2014, Shinzo Abe’s government replaced the de facto prohibitive ‘three principles of arms export’ with the slightly relaxed ‘three principles of defence equipment transfer’ or DET. It also revised the Self-Defense Forces Law to allow used military equipment to be provided to Japan’s partners, which enabled the transfer of used TC-90 training aircraft to the Philippines.

In the wake of these reforms, Tokyo has so far signed DET agreements with 14 partners. Some of these joint development efforts for future military capabilities, such as the Global Combat Air Programme with the UK and Italy and the Australia–Japan research, development, test and evaluation agreement, were unthinkable a short while ago. Japan has also provided patrol vessels, training and technical assistance to regional coastguards that face grey-zone coercion.

However, DET has had little success, except for the transfer of surveillance radar units to the Philippines. While Japan’s overseas development assistance was widely used for capacity-building for constabulary and armed forces, its administration for strictly nonmilitary uses created inconsistencies and put constraints on the DET program.

By providing civilian, dual-use and military equipment to foreign militaries without a formal DET agreement, the OSA program can bridge this gap. Unlike in the past, partner militaries will be able to use OSA-granted equipment for defence and military purposes as long as they adhere to conditions related to information disclosure, assessment and monitoring, prohibitions on extra-purpose use, and conformity with the UN charter.

Still, there is some uncertainty about the program’s sustainability and impact. OSA is constrained by the three principles of DET, which means it can only be used to provide non-lethal equipment for rescue, transport, warning, surveillance and minesweeping. That may change; there is ongoing debate in the ruling coalition about reforming the DET principles to allow exports of lethal weapons, such as minesweepers equipped with machine guns or surveillance ships armed with weapons.

Resource mobilisation for OSA is another challenge. The program’s yearly budget is just ¥2 billion ($21 million), which is the equivalent of 0.4% of the total budget for defence transfers. Better allocation of funding and staffing exclusively for OSA will determine the policy’s impact in the coming years. Some good news is that on 11 July, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it would establish a new division to work exclusively on OSA.

Finally, a successful OSA requires coordination between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense and the Self-Defense Forces—especially to provide training and aftercare support for equipment and to avoid duplication of capacity-building efforts. To this end, keeping OSA so low key is unproductive. Given the strong public support for reinforcing the SDF, the government should use OSA to engage Japanese defence industry providers, which currently teeter on the edge of extinction.

Despite these challenges, OSA can be a new frontier of Australia–Japan cooperation for capacity-building with regional partners. Communication at various levels is essential, including political meetings, traditional embassy diplomacy and informal interactions. This helps to avoid duplication and maximise each government’s capacity-building efforts.

While some liberal groups in Japan have recently criticised OSA as antagonistic towards China, that argument only serves Beijing’s interests at the expense of regional partners facing China’s grey-zone coercion. OSA will be a litmus test of whether Japan can graduate from its pacifist stance to being a realistic peacebuilder and proactive contributor to ensuring a free, open and ‘secure’ Indo-Pacific region.

Japan targeted by Chinese propaganda and covert online campaign

The Chinese Communist Party is ramping up a multi-year propaganda and covert social media campaign focusing on Japan’s plans to release wastewater from the earthquake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This is happening as a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency visits Japan to complete its final review of the plan.

Chinese diplomats have raised the topic at numerous international forums. Chinese state media outlets have increased their multi-language coverage of the issue, including in articles and social media posts referencing an anonymous ‘insider’ and reporting that South Koreans are opposed to the plan. In the first five months of 2023, Chinese diplomats and state media tweeted about it more than 300 times, already surpassing total mentions in 2022.

ASPI has identified at least 33 inauthentic accounts on Twitter posing as women from Western countries or using anime images as profiles. As a part of this ongoing campaign, these covert social media assets have posted more than 600 tweets calling on Japan not to release the wastewater into the Pacific.

These accounts are likely to be linked to previous CCP covert influence operations on social media. The coordination of covert and overt approaches is typically intended to spread a narrative for a strategic purpose. In April 2022, a similar CCP-linked network posed as foreign citizens to criticise the Quad and Japan’s plans to deploy missiles in Okinawa.

This time, inauthentic accounts are receiving minimal engagement but are part of Beijing’s broader messaging, which is gaining traction. In drawing public attention to Fukushima, the CCP is disregarding other power plants releasing nuclear wastewater, including ones in China. The campaign is threatening Japan’s relationships with its neighbours and imposing an economic cost by delaying demolition of the damaged plant.

These social media accounts started posting about Japan’s plan to release nuclear wastewater as early as April 2022. Posts often stoked fears about drinking contaminated water (for example, one post reads: ‘Japan decided to discharge contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. The damage is borne by the people of the world. Bad Japanese government.’)

Other posts were more evocative (for example, ‘Originally, l had sympathy for the victims of the Hiroshima nuclear accident in Japan, but Japan actually designed a mascot for the purpose of discharging nuclear wastewater?! Why is it even auspicious for you to discharge nuclear waste into the sea against humanity? ×XX!’). And some, such as those below, were more hyperbolic.

The handling of these accounts closely matches that of networks that Twitter and Meta have linked to the Chinese government. Accounts have attacked a Chinese businessman, Guo Wengui, and a virologist, Yan Limeng, both of whom are common targets of China’s Ministry of Public Security’s influence operations on social media. As with previous iterations of the network harassing and threatening women of Asian descent, nearly 90% of these tweets were posted within Beijing business hours.

Rather than flooding hashtags on Twitter, accounts in the network tend to post phrases criticising the Japanese government—with some combination of ‘Japan’ or ‘Japanese’, ‘nuclear’ and ‘waste’—and describing it as a threat to people or the environment. More than 28% of such posts include a call to action, encouraging everyone to ‘resist such behaviour’.

Accounts using hashtags such as #Fukushima were exceptions rather than the rule. A possible explanation is that hashtags would stop the topic trending. While that may seem counterintuitive, it could help the accounts avoid detection by social media platforms’ anti-spam machinery and keep their content searchable.

One Twitter persona stood out as more sophisticated than others. ‘EcoSupport Ltd.’ was created in May 2023 and its posts are consistently liked or retweeted by the same few accounts. The account has tweeted the same text posted by other accounts in the CCP-linked network focused on the Japan campaign. EcoSupport Ltd. has copied the identity of a real UK ecological consultancy (see the fake ‘EcoSupport Ltd.’ profile (top) and the real Ecosupport account (bottom) in the images below).

Unusually, on 5 June, the fake EcoSupport Ltd. account gained more than 5,000 followers despite having no tweets with more than 10 engagements. Manually analysing a sample of recent followers revealed that they all promoted cryptocurrencies, and Twitter has since suspended around 200 accounts.

The fake EcoSupport Ltd. bio links to the real Ecosupport website but promotes a fake cryptocurrency to draw users to a separate Telegram channel. This account may have been created by a commercially motivated actor to build a follower base before being sold or repurposed for pro-CCP propaganda.

The posts in the fake EcoSupport Ltd. Telegram channel were almost all direct copies of the tweets on the fake account’s Twitter timeline, except for one that appears to duplicate a post by the gold-check-marked Twitter account of the UCLG ASPAC Tourism Committee based in China. The ‘committee’ describes itself as a non-profit organisation launched by the Xi’an Municipal People’s Government, but its president is Li Mingyuan, a former mayor of Xi’an and current official in multiple United Front agencies.

The exploitation of environmental and health fears is a common tactic in CCP propaganda that seems to resonate with public audiences. In June last year, social media accounts linked to the Chinese state sought to harm the reputation of Australian and North American companies over their rare-earth mining and refinery operations by spreading claims that they posed significant risks to the environment and people’s health.

The CCP also tends to reference the Fukushima disaster and related issues when the bilateral relationship with Japan deteriorates. In April 2021, Zhao Lijian, China’s foreign affairs spokesperson at the time, posted a variation of Hokusai’s painting The Great Wave off Kanagawa that depicted it as a nuclear disaster, prompting Japan to launch a forceful protest to delete it. Japan may have irked the CCP when its diplomatic ‘Blue Book’ called out China’s maritime military activities.

A few months earlier, Zhao posted an image depicting an Australian special forces soldier killing an Afghan child, which caused a similar media sensation in Australia. The Afghan tweet was pinned to Zhao’s Twitter timeline before he replaced it with the Fukushima tweet, indicating that he believed both set international news agendas. Despite Zhao’s reassignment from the foreign ministry’s information department, Fukushima still appears to be a useful trope in CCP propaganda.

In its more recent campaigns, the CCP is likely attempting to deter and disrupt Japan’s increasing engagement with its neighbours and the West. Reports that NATO is discussing establishing an office in Japan are a concern to Beijing strategists, who are also dismayed that Japan is working with the US to strengthen export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment to stymie China’s military development. Likewise, renewed engagement between South Korea and Japan was the first bilateral step in over a decade towards overcoming unresolved historical disputes.

By drawing undue attention to Japan’s planned wastewater disposal, the CCP is fuelling tension between Tokyo and numerous governments and civil-society groups in the Indo-Pacific. China and South Korea, along with Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna, have previously raised concerns about the wastewater release and suggested Japan consider alternative options.

The power plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), says radiation levels in the water will be too low to harm marine life or people, a conclusion international nuclear experts support. Japan is also working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet international safety standards and review the safety of the release. Japan hosted South Korean nuclear experts who toured nuclear facilities at Fukushima.

That’s not to say that there are no risks with nuclear wastewater disposal. But Japan has been transparent with its plans and has opened itself up to international scrutiny and testing. TEPCO is also filtering almost all radionuclides from the wastewater to below international regulatory standards. An exception is tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is difficult to remove from water but occurs naturally in trace amounts.

Other countries are already releasing nuclear wastewater into oceans or steam into the air—including from two nuclear power plants in China. For comparison, the annual amount of radioactive tritium in wastewater that Japan is planning to discharge from Fukushima is half what the Fuqing Nuclear Power Plant in China’s Fujian Province discharged in 2020, and around one-tenth of the 2018 discharge from Canada’s Darlington nuclear power plant.

The CCP continues to spread disinformation through its foreign propaganda system and to conduct covert influence operations on social media because there’s minimal pressure from governments in identifying who is behind these campaigns and a lack of action by some social media platforms to stop coordinated inauthentic behaviour. Public attribution is important to deter these activities, but it also helps civil-society organisations and businesses understand the broader geopolitical context of narratives coopted by nefarious actors.

As ASPI has previously written, the CCP’s increasingly sophisticated efforts to influence global audiences online often target state sovereignty and democratic discourse and support the party’s broader strategic and economic goals. Even covert campaigns that initially appear to have little online engagement are useful tests of which messages the CCP can refine for diplomatic engagements or international forums. Covert campaigns on social media help the CCP gauge public opinion, identify potentially useful proxies and develop strategies to promote its preferred narratives.

While fact-checking can counter some forms of disinformation, studies suggest that that alone won’t change people’s mistaken beliefs. Foreign affairs departments and security and defence agencies in the Indo-Pacific should use social media better to explain their policies to global audiences and challenge problematic narratives before they mislead people. This will require risk-averse government officials to not just counter disinformation head-on but also be more creative and refresh their digital media and public diplomacy strategies to use new tactics such as strategic humour or influencer diplomacy.

Japan could quickly build a more powerful fighter force

As the US, Taiwan and Australia struggle to assemble forces to face the challenge of a rapidly arming China, Japan is planning to discard good equipment that could be kept in service.

It proposes to throw away more fighters than are in all of Australia’s air combat squadrons, and it’s sticking with a policy of retiring submarines long before other countries would regard the vessels as worn out.

Fighters and submarines would be central in any war to defend Taiwan. Fighters would intercept bombers and other strike aircraft trying to get within weapon range, and they’d provide protective cover to friendly forces.

Fighters Japan could choose to keep are F-15 Eagles. They’d need deep modernisation, but Japan is already running an excellent upgrade program for some F-15s it plans to retain.

Money to upgrade more should be available as Tokyo lifts defence spending to 2% of GDP by 2027 from a long-standing limit of 1%. A defence build-up plan published in December is clearly not spending all that money.

Indeed, suspending equipment retirements and extending manufacturing programs are relatively easy ways to usefully spend a rising defence budget while officials and service officers work on complex new programs that won’t produce results for many years.

The potential addition to Japanese air combat capability is huge: 132 F-15s that, instead of being scrapped or probably relegated to training, could have advanced avionics and weapons and be fully fit for the front line.

Japan has 200 Eagles, survivors of 213 bought in the 1980s and 1990s from Boeing predecessor company McDonnell Douglas, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI). Most are F-15Js, single-seaters similar to F-15Cs used by the US Air Force, and the rest are two-seat F-15DJs, equivalent to US F-15Ds.

About half of Japan’s F-15s were delivered without a 1980s upgrade called the ‘Multi-Stage Improvement Program’ (MSIP). The other half got the MSIP features which included wiring to support the Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile. So Japanese MSIP F-15s are easier to upgrade, and most have already been upgraded once.

Now the country is four years into a second upgrade program that is lifting MSIP F-15Js to a new standard called F-15JSI, for Japan Super Interceptor. In important respects it matches the hot Eagle version in production for the US Air Force, the F-15EX. Note that the unstealthy F-15, offering high flight performance and able to carry a large load, is still in demand by the USAF, Qatar and, persuasively, Israel.

For situational awareness and targeting, upgraded Japanese F-15s will have thoroughly modern Raytheon APG-82 radars and BAE Systems ALQ-250 Epawss passive-radio outfits. They will carry a probably large load of AMRAAMs (the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo declines to say how many), plus the highly capable Mitsubishi Electric AAM-4B air-to-air missile. Later, the AAM-48’s intended far-flying successor, the Anglo-Japanese JNAAM, will probably appear on F-15JSIs.

Adding strike to their traditional air-superiority role, F-15JSIs will also carry Lockheed Martin AGM-158 Jassm air-to-surface missiles of an undisclosed version.

The F-15JSI is likely to be competitive against the Shenyang Aircraft J-16, the fighter that Aviation Week analysts estimate China is building fastest. The upgraded Japanese fighters would certainly be powerful tools against H-6 bombers and their salvoes of cruise missiles.

Japan’s remarkably extensive F-15 upgrade work is costing just ¥3.5 billion (US$27 million) per aircraft, the Defense Ministry says. That compares with the US$80-90 million fly-away cost of a new F-15EX or Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II.

The problem? Only the 68 F-15Js of MSIP standard are to be modernised. The pre-MSIP F-15Js and F-15DJs are to be disposed of and replaced with F-35s. And the 30-odd MSIP F-15DJs are presumably intended to become just training aircraft as their combat competitiveness fades.

Yet the entire Japanese F-15 fleet could be upgraded and retained—an opportunity that seems all the more stark when one considers that the US Air Force is struggling to keep a sufficient fighter force.

The Defense Ministry says studies by the USAF and Mitsubishi show that the country’s F-15 force is theoretically capable of serving until the mid-2060s. Most of these fighters have not been flown a lot.

If Japan chose to upgrade and keep them all, it could still receive the 105 F-35s intended to replace the pre-MSIP F-15s. The new aircraft are due to arrive from 2034 to 2038, but accelerating orders is surely a possibility.

So, the fighter fleet, which is now intended to remain at its current level of about 330, could grow by about a third. The effective improvement would be greater than that because the MSIP F-15DJs would be modernised.

To achieve this higher force level, MHI and its system suppliers, notably Raytheon and BAE, would have to step up production. That could be a challenge.

The Japan Air Self-Defense Force would have to attend to the usual measures associated with expanded air power—finding more pilots, technicians and ground facilities.

The easiest decision for Tokyo is to extend the JSI upgrade to the MSIP F-15DJs which would require just a little more engineering, exploiting work already done for the two-seat F-15s being built for Qatar and the USAF.

Going further to also upgrade the pre-MSIP F-15Js and F-15DJs would add only a little more complication, industry executives tell me, even though Japanese policy discussion tends to treat those aircraft as incurably unfit for improvement because of their lack of MSIP features. A reasonable guesstimate is that their upgrades might each be up to US$4 million more costly but they’d still be bargains.

That increment would allow for the possibility that the oldest aircraft, when opened up for modernisation, could turn out to have unexpected problems, such as corrosion.

A compensating effect of modernising more aircraft would be the fall in unit costs to be expected from an expanded and accelerated program.

As is common in fighter fleets, Japan’s earliest F-15s are a good deal more worn than the rest because they were used intensively for training as the type was introduced about four decades ago. Maybe 30 to 40 are in that category, says a source familiar with the fleet.

That should not exclude them from upgrades since fleet usage could be managed to hold down flight hours on those aircraft. They would still be fully useful in war.

Japan puts great emphasis on stability of work at defence factories, with the usual result that its aircraft production programs run at low and uneconomical rates and equipment keeps dribbling into service long after it ceases to represent advanced design. This is becoming more unacceptable as the risk of war rises.

Conveniently, a stepped-up F-15 upgrade program could deliver results fast and still keep factory managers happy. MHI is likely to begin volume production of Japan’s next fighter in cooperation with British and Italian companies in 2031. So, an F-15 modernisation effort would ideally be wrapped up in 2030. That would be possible if the current work ramped up between now and 2027 to a steady rate of three aircraft a month, incidentally helping MHI to build up the workforce skills it would need to make future fighters.

It’s difficult to think of how Japan could more economically and rapidly improve its air force, especially in the risky 2020s.

Japan needs stronger deterrence than its new defence strategy signals

Since World War II, Japan had long chosen not to possess long-range strike capabilities that could be used against enemy bases. But the Japanese government changed course in December 2022 when it adopted the new national defence strategy (NDS), which included a commitment to acquiring a so-called counterstrike capability. But in order for this new strategy to contribute to deterrence and alter the nation’s defensive role as the ‘shield’ in its alliance with the United States, Tokyo needs to go further than what the NDS outlines.

The NDS says that by possessing counterstrike capabilities, ‘Japan will deter armed attack itself.’ But as it stands, that’s not certain.

Japan’s current deterrence policy is multi-layered to address varying threats, and it’s an appropriate mix of ‘deterrence by denial’ and ‘deterrence by punishment’. Police and the Self-Defense Force (SDF) can be deployed to respond to threats in the low-intensity ‘grey zone’, as shown by the recent stationing of new SDF units in Japan’s southwestern islands to deter increasingly common intrusions by Chinese ships. Were confrontation to escalate into the ‘red zone’, Japan would protect itself from ground invasion by fully mobilizing the SDF and using missile defences to intercept a limited number of long-range missiles. Finally, Japan relies on US extended deterrence to manage nuclear threats—categorised as the ‘black-white zone’.

But the effectiveness of Japan’s deterrence in the ‘red zone’ is being threatened by the deterioration of regional security in East Asia. The missiles of China and North Korea are growing in number and sophistication, and they could penetrate Japan’s missile defence. Although the aim of Japan’s missile defence is not to counter hundreds of missiles, it should still be able to deter a ‘cheap shot’ from the enemy, as in a small number of missile attacks intended  to threaten the public and end a war on the adversary’s terms.

Japan’s new counterstrike capabilities would contribute to deterrence by attacking enemy’s missile launchers and command-and-control systems, reducing the number of missiles coming from the continent and enabling missile defences to intercept them. But the NDS reiterates that strikes against enemy missile bases are only lawful after an initial attack against Japan, and so these counterstrike capabilities remain essentially defensive. And targets can only be military. Strikes against the enemy’s cities or population—so-called counter-value strikes—are to be left to US strategic forces.

Were Japan’s new counterstrike capabilities to go further and contribute to deterrence by denial at the threshold where the enemy threatens nuclear strikes, then Tokyo would need to work on three areas key to damage limitation—more comprehensive counterstrike capabilities, missile defence and civil protection.

There are plans to boost counterstrike capabilities by improving the SDF’s Type 12 surface-to-ship guided missile, developing high-speed glide missiles for island defence and purchasing Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US that have the ‘stand-off’ capability to strike an opponent at greater range. But it’s not clear whether the Tomahawk remains sufficiently fast and manoeuvrable to penetrate the latest missile defence systems. Even when the missiles reach their target, they may not destroy it. For instance, when the US military struck a Syrian airstrip in 2017, the airstrip was restored within a short time. Therefore, Japan cannot be confident that its Tomahawk capability alone will destroy the opponent’s fixed missile-launching bases, underground command centres or other military facilities effectively enough to stop further attacks.

It would be a challenge to improve the destructive potential of the Tomahawk and the other missiles. But if Japan could possess cruise missiles capable of directly threatening mainland China, that would force Beijing to strengthen its air defences, complicating its strategic calculations.

Which brings us to Japan’s own missile defence system. The NDS includes plans to improve warning and control radars and surface-to-air guided missiles, and to procure more Aegis combat system equipped vessels, but Tokyo must go further. It must improve the resilience of its bases and critical infrastructure for when an enemy missile hits its target. The NDS contains no concrete plans to prepare airstrips and ports for attacks or to quickly restore any that are hit to full operation. What’s more, Japan’s existing missile defence system only assumes attacks by ballistic missiles, so it needs to become capable of intercepting other types including cruise missiles. Japan must also develop medium- and short-range surface-to-air missiles and plan responses by aircraft to cope with cruise missiles.

Finally, Tokyo’s plan to protect the public must go further than what the NDS outlines. It currently aims to formulate evacuation plans using ships and aircraft, strengthen civil protection training and improve the national early warning system. But compared to the US civil protection policy during the Cold War, this is limited. The strategy states: ‘Japan will facilitate initiatives for civil protection, including evacuation guidance for residents, when an invasion of Japan is predicted’, but if a residential area were to become the battlefield, it would be extremely difficult for the SDF to simultaneously carry out combat and evacuation operations.

Admittedly, a public protection role might prove to be a double-edged sword. The more evacuation training military personnel do, the more prepared they are, but they also become more anxious, so striking the right balance is a challenge.

With that in mind, the Japanese government should still do more—specifically, to plan for evacuation in the event of a blockade of Japan’s southwestern region. By improving the process of stockpiling food and medicine, people in the region can continue to live their lives even if supplies are disrupted.