Executive summary
- Japan is progressively overcoming historical constraints on the exercise of its national power, opening up new possibilities in its role as a regional strategic actor. Though Japanese regional material power is in relative decline, Tokyo is nevertheless undertaking a proactive effort to ensure that it remains a significant player in what it views as an increasingly multipolar regional security order.
- Internally, Japan seeks to better mobilise its comprehensive national power in the service of a well-crafted grand strategy, reflected in its flagship Free and Open Indo-Pacific Vision.
- Externally, Japan seeks to deepen key relationships with key strategic partners such as Australia, both bilaterally and through minilaterals such as the Quad and Trilateral Strategic Dialogue. Japan views these as an integral element reinforcing these efforts collectively, including building up a regional deterrence front.
- Ultimately, Japan’s internal and external efforts to implement its strategy are designed to entrench a multipolar regional security order in which Japan plays a larger, more proactive role.
Introduction: Japan’s strategic awakening
Now that the region has moved on from the Cold War days of US unipolarity, Japan seeks to forge a regional order in the Indo-Pacific that is dominated neither by Chinese hegemony, nor Sino-American superpower bipolarity (an exclusive “G2”).1 Instead, Tokyo perceives its best interests to lie in a multipolar region, where power is distributed between multiple capable actors, even if each of these putative ‘poles’ varies in aggregate strategic weight.2 As Suzuki Hiroyuki from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation argues, “this reflects the reality that the Indo-Pacific region is geographically extensive and culturally and politically diverse — and therefore should not be subject to unipolar or a bipolar hegemony.”3 In such a setting, Japan views itself as serving as one of these poles, along with China, the United States, India, and perhaps ASEAN, supplemented with supporting roles for strong ’middle power’ actors such as Australia and South Korea. Yet, to realise its position as a credible ‘pole’ within this envisaged multipolar structure, Japan will need to draw more fully on the resources available to it and embark on unprecedented efforts to mobilise some of its latent capabilities.
This endeavour is already well underway. Japan has made concerted efforts to overcome legacy constraints on the exercise of its national power and to carve out a more prolific role for itself as a regional actor, which amounts to nothing less than a transformation in its security identity. In response to what it officially describes as an “increasingly severe security environment,” Japan is now pursuing a range of proactive policies aimed at the full mobilisation of its “comprehensive national power.”4 Its efforts to shape regional order through intensive diplomacy (such as the Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision), the reform of its security and defence apparatus, and the augmentation of its military capabilities, are exemplary of this process. When combined with its range of external alignments, including its bilateral alliance with the United States, its portfolio of bilateral strategic partnerships with like-minded countries like Australia, and related minilateral forms of security cooperation, Japan increasingly represents a major actor in an emerging multipolar Indo-Pacific security environment. In other words, given its efforts to revitalise its security posture and restore and entrench its position as a viable pole within a multipolar Indo-Pacific, lingering perceptions of Japan as a strategically immobile and quiescent power are no longer appropriate.
Given its efforts to revitalise its security posture and restore and entrench its position as a viable pole within a multipolar Indo-Pacific, lingering perceptions of Japan as a strategically immobile and quiescent power are no longer appropriate.
Japan’s determination to consolidate its position as a regional pole has great implications for the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific, including for Japan’s closest allies and partners. By mobilising its resources and strengthening its resilience, Japan is seeking to maintain and expand its role in counterbalancing China by underwriting a stable and rules-based regional order. This concomitantly increases its value as an ally and partner to others seeking the same outcomes. Though Japan cannot directly compete with China and the United States in sheer material terms, it can nevertheless call upon a formidable range and depth of national resources to support such an enterprise. Importantly, Japanese policymakers have expressed their resolution to ”restore the regional strategic balance” through all means at their disposal.5
Since Japan’s efforts to mobilise its power and improve its national resilience are numerous and diffuse, it is useful to distil some of the most salient aspects and to capture the intentionally synergistic nature of Japanese power and purpose. This report is therefore divided into three sections designed to offer a composite assessment of Japan as an (re-)emerging ‘pole’ of power within the Indo-Pacific, whilst noting weaknesses as well as strengths, and with a view to identifying convergences with allies and partners.
Though Japan cannot directly compete with China and the United States in sheer material terms, it can nevertheless call upon a formidable range and depth of national resources to support such an enterprise.
There are three major aspects considered here that provide a composite and structured account of Japan’s efforts to revitalise its status as a viable pole in a multipolar Indo-Pacific:
- First, how Japanese policymakers have progressively recast the country’s security identity, what this involves, and what roles the country envisages for itself. This context will determine the parameters within which Japan exercises its power and will permit allies and partners to modulate their expectations accordingly.
- Second, how Japan is mobilising its national resources and capabilities to ‘internally balance’ challenges and threats, and bolster national resilience, in a competitive strategic environment. This is essential for identifying Japan’s national contributions to regional security and stability, including its potential to contribute to a broader regional deterrence strategy in partnership with like-minded countries.
- Third, how Japan has invested in mobilising its external alignments. Through collective action with like-minded parties, Japan has sought to generate wider regional support for its own aspirations as a regional pole. This includes through its bilateral alliance with the United States, and a range of ancillary Strategic Partnerships, both separately and in coordination through minilateral forums like the Quad. These constitute the tools through which Japan seeks to externally balance threats to its national interests.
1. Recasting Japan’s security identity to serve as a ‘pole’
Japan’s efforts to mobilise its internal and external sources of power cannot be properly understood without first examining the very specific national context in which these processes occur, and appreciating how far the country’s position has shifted on security matters in a short period of time. Indeed, Japan’s self-perception as a security actor — its “security identity” — determines the various ‘roles’ it may be willing and able to play as a resurgent pole of power. Contemporary Japan as a “power” can be effectively understood first through an examination of its relative power position and its historical legacies, followed by a depiction of how it has sought to surmount these conditions to transform its security identity and act commensurate with its self-identification as a regional pole.
As Kenneth Pyle, the founding president of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), has pointed out, Japan has typically been highly sensitive to the distribution of power within the international system.6 This is particularly true in the Indo-Pacific, where the regional balance of power has shifted to the detriment of Japan over the past two decades. Since the heady heights of the 1980s and early 1990s, the utility of Japan’s post-Second World War state-developmental economic model has long expired, and it has since experienced several ‘lost decades’ of economic stagnation.7 Such has been Japan’s stagnation that its once central role in the region has become tenuous.8 For example, the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index accords Japan a Comprehensive Power value of 37.2/100, compared with 72.5 for China and 80.7 for the United States. This places Japan in the same band as India (36.3) and a decent margin above Australia (30.9) and South Korea (29.5), who are typically framed as “middle powers”.9 Though Japan is often grouped into the company of other middle powers, applying such a label is contested both inside and outside Japan, given that it could be cast as a great power on the basis of some (though not all) power metrics.10
Attendant to the rise of China and other emerging powers, Japan has experienced a relative decline, whilst its US superpower protector no longer exerts unrivalled regional pre-eminence.
Attendant to the rise of China and other emerging powers, Japan has experienced a relative decline, whilst its US superpower protector no longer exerts unrivalled regional pre-eminence. The 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS) recognises that “it is becoming increasingly difficult for the United States, Japan’s ally with the world’s greatest comprehensive power…to manage risks in the international community and to maintain and develop a free and open international order.”11 The relative decline of US and Japanese power has occurred even as government policy documents have pointed to an increasingly dangerous and threatening regional security environment, amplifying a profound sense of national vulnerability.12
Indeed, as Japan has lost its former economic ascendency, a narrative of decline has coloured debates on the country’s future trajectory both within and outside the country.13 As a consequence, Japan’s strategic mindset has been forced to adjust and reconceptualise its regional role accordingly. The reliance on an economically-driven foreign policy and near-exclusive dependence upon the US alliance for security, embodied in the so-called “Yoshida Doctrine” (named after post-war Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru), is no longer appropriate given Japan’s changing internal and external circumstances.14 Under this prior arrangement of “bilateralism” and “economism”, Japan forewent the full panoply of capabilities and roles normally associated with a “great power” and was thus viewed as an “abnormal state”.15 However, after tectonic shifts in the regional power balance, Japan has therefore found itself compelled to overcome an outdated strategic culture embedded in the long-standing Yoshida doctrine.
Japan has also been subjected to a range of often institutionally embedded historical legacies that have inhibited Japan’s role as a ’normal power’. The most salient of these is the 1947 Japanese Constitution imposed by the occupying forces of the United States in the aftermath of the Pacific War. It contains an unusual clause (Article IX) — the so-called Peace Clause — in which the country renounces the right of belligerency. In line with popular anti-militarist sentiment in Japanese society (frequently mischaracterised as pacifism), and the need to reassure its East Asian neighbours that suffered from its wartime aggression, successive Japanese governments adopted and observed other self-imposed limitations on Japanese military power, including arms export limitations, a one per cent GDP ceiling on defence spending, and the “three non-nuclear principles” (non-possession, non-production and non-introduction of nuclear weapons).16 These deeply ingrained doctrinal legacies ensure that Japanese strategic policy agendas must pay attention not only to internal constraints on the nation’s power but also to the effects that the perceptions of Japan’s regional neighbours have had on this power.
With the preceding contexts in mind, the transformative nature of its national security identity and new role as a regional pole can be appreciated. Though this process — “towards a normal country” — began with former Prime Minster Koizumi Jun’ichirō (2002–06), the late Prime Minister Abe Shinzō (2006; 2012–20) is normally afforded the greatest credit for the changes that have redefined Japan’s strategic outlook.17 Conscious of the sense of ‘declinist malaise’ that had permeated perceptions of Japan’s status both inside and outside of Japan, in 2012 Abe assured the world that “Japan is back”, and that under his leadership he had no intention of letting the country slip from being a “tier one” nation.18 In other words, Abe wished to restore Japan as a pole of power. To achieve this, he set in motion a wide array of reforms and initiatives that during his long tenure would substantiate his claim, including overcoming the passive international role that Japan had comfortably slipped into and instead casting the country as a “proactive contributor to international peace”.19
Prime Minister Abe energetically pursued his agenda through global diplomacy and the launch of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (described below) — a rare occasion where Japan successfully offered a regionally-encompassing policy vision that would re-establish Japan’s influence as a power.20 He initiated far-reaching reforms of Japan’s national security and defence architecture, such as the establishment of a centralised National Security Council (2013), and pushed through a range of legislative measures that would permit Japan more policy flexibility, most notably the 2015 Peace and Security Legislation, that afforded Japan the legal right to “collective self-defence”.21 These initiatives were crucial to overcoming institutional/bureaucratic stove-piping and synergising action under a centrally directed strategic policy. Abe actively expanded Japan’s security horizons beyond the US alliance to attract a range of new security partners, such as Australia, India, and countries in Southeast Asia and Europe (discussed below).22
Prime Minister Abe actively expanded Japan’s security horizons beyond the US alliance to attract a range of new security partners, such as Australia, India, and countries in Southeast Asia and Europe.
As well as staking out a more proactive international profile for Japan, Abe also sought to reinvigorate Japan’s flagging economy through his ‘Abenomics’ policies, though these have enjoyed mixed success.23 He also sought to put Japan’s historical legacies to rest by attempting to revise the Constitution (to allow for the removal of Article IX), and brokered a deal in 2015 to reconcile historical issues with South Korean President Park Geun-hye (which subsequently collapsed in 2019).24 In these more controversial acts of “historical revisionism,” he was unsuccessful, ensuring that the enduring perceptual and institutional legacies outlined above continue to influence Japan’s security role, albeit to a lesser degree than before.25
Regardless, the extraordinary premiership of Abe Shinzō drastically changed Japan’s security identity and the eponymous “Abe doctrine” created the conditions for the kind of national and cooperative roles that Japan is now able to play. Japanese security expert Christopher Hughes characterises this as a “more assertive, high-profile, and high-risk foreign and security policy.”26 With respect to the country’s changed security identity, Japan has undergone a “security renaissance” in which the national discourse on security affairs has taken are far less divisive, and candid, even robust, tone.27 This attitudinal shift in Japanese strategic thinking is evident in the strident tone of Japan’s 2022 national security documents, and the creative expression of national purpose found within them. Under changed conditions, it is now possible to speak with clarity and openness of a genuine Japanese “grand strategy”.28 Moreover, it signals that the use of military power as an instrument of statecraft is now more accepted within the Japanese government. As National Institute for Defense Studies analyst Ishihara Yusuke attests, “Japanese leaders’ imagination about their available military options has stretched as Japan’s self-restraints have eased.”29
The details of this new strategic approach in terms of Japan’s efforts to harness its national capabilities (“internal balancing”) and enhance external alignments (“external balancing”) in service of aggregating further agency as a pole of power, are discussed in the following two sections.30
2. Mobilising Japan’s national power and building resilience
Japan’s revised security identity explicitly informs its relevant national strategy documents, as well as its broader foreign and security posture, as elaborated in the annual Diplomatic Bluebook. Together, these testify to the reformulation of Japan’s international role and the ways in which it aims to mobilise comprehensive national power, with a view to internal balancing towards external challenges and threats. The clearest rendition of this is provided in the 2022 NSS, which showcases its national power “assets” across five (interlocking, and mutually reinforcing) dimensions.
1. Diplomatic: Japan’s re-energised international diplomacy is a major element in its strategy to augment influence and actively shape the regional order in ways conducive to its national interests and values. Central to this is Tokyo’s flagship Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision (FOIP), inaugurated in 2016 and accorded pride of place in the 2023 Diplomatic Bluebook.31 The FOIP is aimed at ensuring a rules-based order, enhancing economic prosperity and connectivity, and maintaining peace and stability in the region. The FOIP is best understood as an overarching statement of Japan’s grand strategy in the broadest sense, channelling a wide panoply of Japanese capabilities to build a multipolar regional order.
Japan’s re-energised international diplomacy is a major element in its strategy to augment influence and actively shape the regional order in ways conducive to its national interests and values.
The emphasis placed upon Japan’s adroit and vigorous diplomacy is striking, with the NSS calling this the “basis for [Japan’s] national security”.32 Though a “new FOIP” was announced by Prime Minster Kishida in March 2023, its essential principles remain unaltered, notwithstanding some rhetorical towards more “inclusivity”, “dialogue” and “openness” to cooperation, perhaps to assure other regional stakeholders of Japan’s non-confrontational intentions.33 One integral feature of the FOIP itself is its leveraging of alliances and partnerships, including through minilateral forums such as the Quad, to buttress support for Japan’s initiatives and to magnify the effects of its own capabilities (see below). It also sought to attract supporters of a more regionally active Japan through a shared vision of an ideal regional order among third-party states, especially in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, to counter Chinese influence, including through the “strategic” use of Official Development Assistance (ODA).34
2. Defence: In a conspicuous reflection of the new emphasis Japan now places on its military capabilities as an instrument of national power, the NSS describes defence as the “solid footing of Japan’s diplomacy”.35 It recognises that “in light of the current reality of the world, this function cannot be replaced by any other means.”36 The linkage between diplomacy and augmented defence capability is further emphasised by former Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa when he declared in August 2022 that ”diplomacy can work more effectively when the security balance is firmly maintained” and “that Japan intends to play a larger role in maintaining the balance’ alongside the US and other partners.”37 To this end, and in a departure from long-standing norms (above) Japan has approved an effective doubling of its defence budget to two per cent of GDP by 2027.38 This new defence outlay will serve to enhance the creation of a Multi-Domain Defense Force capable of operating at an advantage across land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains.39
This will be facilitated by the acquisition of new capabilities, notably counter-strike capabilities (a former taboo), designed to deter or, if necessary, retaliate against an enemy attack.40 Meanwhile, addressing fundamental deficiencies in logistics, weapons stockpiles, and the survivability of Japan’s defence facilities to improve the overall resilience of Japanese military power in a contested environment complete the picture.41 However, this overhaul of Japan’s defence architecture does not represent an abandonment of its historically based commitment to exclusively defence-oriented policy. One should still keep in mind that Japan’s national ability to project military power remains highly circumscribed by the three new conditions on the use of force (including collective defence). According to the Defense of Japan, this can occur:
‘(i) When there is an imminent and illegitimate act of aggression against Japan; (ii) When there are no appropriate means to deal with such aggression other than by resorting to the right of self-defense; and (iii) When the use of armed force is confined to be the minimum necessary level.’42
3. Economic: Based on its long experience leveraging its economic power to achieve national objectives, Japan has become a pioneer in a new way of thinking about economic security.43 Three interlocking aspects to this reinforce Japan’s position as a regional pole. First, the traditional purpose of enhancing national prosperity remains a cardinal focus, reflected in the aims of the FOIP and through Japan’s engagement with regional economic forums such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP,) Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). Second, a flourishing industrial base (including a leading technology sector — see below) remains a prerequisite for sustaining a potent defence establishment. Again, the NSS is explicit — “Japan will advance defense production and technology bases because they are characterized as defense capabilities themselves.”44 Indeed, the government has announced trade subsidies for the national defence industry to retain its functioning as an “indispensable foundation” of national defence, whilst initiating minilateral defence-technology collaboration with partners (see below).45 Lastly, economic security is now recognised as safeguarding the free flow of trade, secure supply chains, and access to critical minerals.46 Interruption of these through coercive trade practices, which Japan experienced in 2010 during a diplomatic confrontation with Beijing, will have damaging effects on the national economy.47 As well as limited efforts to diversify trading partners (de-risking) away from dependence on China, Japan’s creation of an Economic Security Portfolio and issuance of an Economic Security Protection Act in 2022 indicates how seriously Japan takes such threats.48
4. Technology: The identification of Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET) as a national asset critical to strategic competition is also prominent in the NSS. Maintaining a leading edge in technological advances contributes to the ’prosperity’ element of economic security, and competitiveness requires that Japan provide sufficient research and development (R&D) funds, and energise the private sector to pursue breakthroughs in technologies such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, Quantum Computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT). As China gains ground in CET, Japan will not only lose market opportunities, but also will risk being either closed out of, or forced into compliance with, technological or digital standards and norms set by its rival.49 Added to this economic-technological vector of strategic competition is the recognition of the advantages that CET confers in the military/defence realm above. In an emulation of China’s ’military-civil fusion’ policy, whereby it seeks to foster and leverage commercial developments for military applications, Japan will follow suit, both domestically and with external partners (see below).
5. Intelligence: Japan has become increasingly cognisant of the strategic advantage intelligence capabilities confer upon states, including the ability to amplify the effectiveness of their material capabilities (much like the United Kingdom).50 The NSS states that “in a rapidly and complexly changing security environment, the collection and analysis of high-quality and timely information is essential for the Government to make accurate decisions.”51 Despite its formidable record in economic intelligence, which accompanied its period of former economic ascendency, politico-military intelligence gathering is an area where Japan needs to rectify serious deficiencies.52 Firstly, Japan is over-reliant on the United States for much of its intelligence, with some exceptions. In particular, it lacks adequate human intelligence (HUMINT) assets, which circumscribes Japan’s ability to gain valuable information through this vector, though efforts are underway to address these deficiencies, including through collaboration with the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).53 Indicators suggest that a long-contemplated dedicated specialised foreign intelligence agency, including an overseas remit (akin to a Japanese CIA), will emerge in the near future, and the government has already enacted a State Secrets Law to combat previous “leakage” of information, perhaps with a view to joining the privileged Five Eyes intelligence grouping.54 In the meantime, Japan has committed to enhance its satellite intelligence capability substantially to a planned fleet of 10 by 2026. This would improve its situational awareness and information warfare capability, and allow it to respond more rapidly to hybrid warfare challenges.55 Secondly, with strategic competition manifesting in the cyber domain, including misinformation and disinformation, greater threats of espionage, and attacks on critical infrastructure, Japan is seeking to improve its information security resiliency. To do so, the government is seeking to strengthen information sharing with private sector entities, including through the newly established National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC).56
In sum, the national (internal) capabilities and resources that Japan possesses and the manner in which it intends to exercise them and make them more resilient, as recounted above, are indicative of Japan’s new security identity as a resurgent and active regional pole. Whilst some restraints remain, the 2022 NSS is nevertheless remarkable for its directness in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese national power, including centring the country’s defence capabilities in the service of diplomacy. Taken together, this suite of national capabilities permits Japan to assume a more proactive approach to external balancing in the form of regional defence partnerships.
3. Strengthening alliances and partnerships through a ‘multi-layered framework’ to embed multipolarity
Under the umbrella term of ‘International Cooperation’ Japan seeks to mobilise its power and resilience through external balancing efforts, which strongly reinforce and supplement Japan’s own efforts.57 Japan remains committed to and engaged in multilateral security forums, particularly the ASEAN-led East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum, seeking to link the FOIP with ASEAN’s own Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (which inversely attracts ASEAN towards Japan’s orbit as a regional pole).
Yet in its efforts to draw upon the power of other states to buttress its own national position as a pole of power, and attempt to embed multipolarity, Japan has begun to prioritise its external alignments. These include its pivotal bilateral alliance with the United States, its range of more-developed Strategic Partnerships, and a variety of minilateral forums, that often knit together the former elements. These three elements considered here, when combined with multilateral tracks, form a ‘multi-layered approach’ to regional security engagement.58 Together these form the media through which Japan can prospectively improve regional deterrence and shore up a favourable balance of power through a combined approach.
Under the umbrella term of ‘International Cooperation’ Japan seeks to mobilise its power and resilience through external balancing efforts, which strongly reinforce and supplement Japan’s own efforts.
1. US alliance: Japan continues to view its bilateral alliance with the United States as indispensable to its functioning as a viable regional pole of power, and continues to invest in strengthening and extending the alliance’s capacity to generate collective deterrent effects. In a sense, the Japan-US alliance represents a “pole” of power in its own right. It provides an irreplaceable vehicle for Japan to amplify the effects of its own national capabilities beyond the constraints of its unilateral power profile. For example, the enhancement and reinforcement of Japanese indigenous capabilities will not only contribute to an allied collective deterrence and defence front but permit Japan to assume primary responsibility for defeating an invasion of Japanese territory in the near future. This will release US assets based in Japan for other missions, forming part of wider efforts by US allies to do their part to support an enduring US military presence in the region, something which Tokyo, Canberra and others view as essential to a viable multipolar region.
Working through the bilateral Alliance Coordination Mechanism (ACM), the allies seek to harmonise contingency response options, including joint military exercises, co-ordinating missile defence (including Japan’s new strike capabilities), logistics, and defence-technology collaboration. As former Foreign Minister Hayashi explains, “in light of strategic balance in the region, Japan and the US’s effort are required to further improve the credibility and resilience of US extended deterrence.”59 Yet uncertainties remain regarding how Japan would practically meet its alliance obligations under its new collective defence legislation criteria in the event of a regional conflict contingency, including in the Taiwan Strait — a concern that both Tokyo and Washington have repeatedly highlighted.60
2. Strategic partnerships (bilateralism-plus): Japan has diversified its range of defence partners to include, most notably, Strategic Partnerships with “like-minded countries” such as Australia, India, and several SEA and European States. Christopher Hughes, Professor of International Politics and Japan expert, has dubbed such partnerships as “bilateralism-plus” — in the sense that they are as much complimentary to the Japan-US alliance, whilst also creating new bilateral security relationships in their own right.61 These strategic partnerships indicate closer security alignment but are less binding, more multi-faceted and more flexible than a traditional military alliance.62 They often pivot upon annual leaders and foreign and defence (2+2) meetings, and issue joint statements in which they express their shared interests and values (most of which reflect Japan’s national objectives, such as endorsement of the FOIP). Moreover, they lay the groundwork for joint military operations through exercises and logistical arrangements — for example, the Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement and Reciprocal Access Agreement). These partnerships are also harnessed in broad support of Japan’s FOIP vision and thus Japan’s profile as a regional pole.
Through this network of regional and inter-regional strategic partnerships, Japan is able to gain endorsement and support in the exercise of its national power abroad and magnify that power in the company of others.
The case of the Japan-Australia Special Strategic Partnership is exemplary of this practice.63 Based on a recently updated Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation, the two countries engage in a range of mutual diplomatic support in the region, engage in military cooperation increasingly intended to support ‘a favourable strategic balance that deters aggression’, and coordinate with their joint US ally in order to reinforce a shared regional defence strategy, both bilaterally and through the TSD.64 The Japan-EU Strategic Partnership Agreement, whilst at an early stage, is a means for Japan to engage European stakeholders in the Indo-Pacific and buttress Tokyo’s FOIP with external support.65 Japan’s membership of the NATO-Asia Pacific partnership process is intended to achieve similar effects by creating connectivity with the transatlantic alliance with respect to shared values and interests in the Indo-Pacific region.66
Through this network of regional and inter-regional strategic partnerships, Japan is able to gain endorsement and support in the exercise of its national power abroad and magnify that power in the company of others. In this respect, not only is Japan evidently a key spoke in the US hub-and-spoke system of regional architecture, but it also seeks to assume a greater regional security role in its own right, from which multiple strategic partnership “spokes” radiate, which concomitantly serve to better network the US hub-and-spoke system. With Japan the likely stronger power in each bilateral relationship, this provides Japan with the agency to shape the partnership to serve Japanese interests. For example, in the case of the Japan-Philippines Strategic Partnership, by providing capacity-building assistance to its weaker, but vitally geo-strategically located neighbour, Japan concomitantly strengthens its own maritime security.67
3. Minilateralism: Joining these relatively new Strategic Partnerships, often centring on the United States, are minilateral forms of security cooperation. The combination of major powers within minilateral forums is a means to generate new power constellations, that themselves represent concentrations (poles) of power that can be harnessed towards strategic competition (including balancing).68 While minilateral forums of international cooperation have proliferated in the Indo-Pacific, it is important to distinguish the two most important of these — the Japan-US-Australia Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) and the Japan-US-Australia-India “Quad” — by their more explicitly strategic purpose. These “strategic minilaterals” are leveraged by Japan to augment its own instruments of national power in the company of other Strategic Partners, alongside the United States.69 They enhance Japanese power through their joint championship of the FOIP, a range of defence and military activities (often facilitated through the above Strategic Partnerships) and either engage in or are prospectively working on associated objectives such as information-sharing, joint exercises, defence-technological collaboration, CET, and other areas. In this respect, consultations between minilateral partners focus on collectively pooling resources toward strategic competition across multiple domains. This incorporates efforts to improve national resilience — for instance, developing shared means to secure critical systems and infrastructure, improve cyber security, secure supply chains, and so forth.
There are also vigorous debates about how the TSD and Quad could build collective deterrence capability. In the case of the TSD, with Japan and Australia existing treaty allies of the United States, much of that capability is in place, with the missing pieces being limited to trilateral strategic and operational planning for potential crisis contingencies.70 With these and other components in place, the TSD could effectively assume a collective defence function. In the case of the Quad, India’s non-US ally status and sense of strategic autonomy limits such prospects. Many specialists point to the convergence of maritime security concerns among the Quad partners and view existing cooperation (including through the MALABAR naval exercises) as a potential nucleus for collective maritime deterrence.71 Notwithstanding, both these key strategic minilaterals add weight to Japan’s other external balancing efforts across the various domains of strategic competition.
Additionally, there is the British-Japanese-Italian Global Combat Aircraft Program (GCAP) — a joint minilateral endeavour to produce a sixth-generation fighter.72 GCAP is emblematic of how Japan is leveraging minilaterals to reinforce its defence-technology industrial base through pooling capabilities with European Strategic Partners, with a view to increasing its military power. Lastly, in an indication of how Japan and Korea are working to transcend historical issues, trilateral military and strategic cooperation with the United States has resumed in earnest with the announcement of the Camp David Principles in August 2023.73 In this common statement of purpose, the partners agreed to regularise minilateral meetings, and unveiled a wide-ranging package of cooperative measures to enhance strategic coordination between the US-Japan and US-ROK alliances, including a range of new military exercises and enabling agreements.74
Conclusions: Is Japan again a force to be reckoned with?
Japan is progressively seeking to shed its “abnormal” status and now plays a role commensurate with its size as a regional pole of power in the Indo-Pacific. Yet, from the analysis above emerges a paradox. Whilst Japan’s relative aggregate power position in the Indo-Pacific has markedly diminished since the economic halcyon days of the past, its efforts to mobilise its latent capabilities afford it greater strategic gravitas and thus enhanced regional impact. Takashi Inoguchi has observed that “Japan has many strengths but has not taken advantage of them”.75 In this sense, Japan may be materially declining in some respects, but its actual power and influence in the region are rising.76 Although Japan has greater (economic and demographic) resource constraints than in the past, it is reprioritising how it allocates its still formidable resources to achieve greater impact as a pole in a contested regional order.
Whilst Japan’s relative aggregate power position in the Indo-Pacific has markedly diminished since the economic halcyon days of the past, its efforts to mobilise its latent capabilities afford it greater strategic gravitas and thus enhanced regional impact.
Japan’s extraordinary efforts to mobilise its ‘comprehensive national power’ will not only allow the country to play a more salient role in the regional order in accordance with its new security identity, but it will make Japan a more valuable ally and partner to countries like the United States, Australia and India, as well as raising its profile in key strategic regions like Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. As Kenneth Pyle predicted, Japan is gradually reclaiming its status as a key regional player, albeit in a new unfolding context of strategic competition enveloping the Indo-Pacific.77 It should be stressed, however, that Japan’s efforts to better mobilise its internal and external sources of power are not solely about supporting US Indo-Pacific strategy as an “alliance follower.” As this paper has argued, Tokyo’s goals are equally to carve out a distinctive national role as a major regional actor in the interests of contributing to a more multipolar regional strategic order. With these dual ambitions, Japan seeks both to be a reliable US ally and also a reliable partner to other Asian states, not just an “appendage” of the United States. Policymakers will be faced with possible tensions between these roles, as Japan seeks to concomitantly reinforce the US-led alliance front as a pole of power, but also assume a more autonomous role as an Asia-focused pole of power in its own right.
As this report has indicated, a salient element of Japan’s remarkably holistic and integrated strategic approach is the unprecedented emphasis on the defence/military element of its power — a radical reordering of former priority on economic statecraft, and one only made possible through the progressive shedding of historical constraints. It is possible that Japan’s reconfiguration of its exercise of alternative levers of “hard power” may afford it more prominence as a regional actor than its purely economic focus did in the past. Japan’s re-emergence as a security actor through enhanced internal and external mobilisation may give China pause for thought as it seeks to expand its own regional influence.