The third leg: Australia-Japan security relations in the 21st century
Malcolm Cook
Flinders University
Abstract
This paper examines three elements of the strategic partnership currently developing
between Australia and Japan. At the core of this new partnership and its timing are
the tectonic shifts in Asia’s power distribution and the concerns for the future these
are creating. Both Japan and Australia, among many others, have decided to respond
to these shifts by hewing closer to the United States, seeking closer ties with likeconcerned states and enhancing their own military capabilities. The first section
places this new strategic partnership in the history of Australia-Japan relations and
Australia’s engagement in Asia. The second section briefly touches on some of the key
Australian motivations for stronger security relations with Japan. The final section
looks into the future at the opportunities and challenges facing a closer AustraliaJapan strategic relationship.
Introduction
Stools with three legs are stable and can withstand some buffeting. Stools with two
legs are less stable. A stool with one leg is not a stool.
During the Howard years, this stool analogy was used to describe the present state and
desired future of Australia’s key bilateral relationships. When it came to the United
States, there was a strong desire in Canberra to add a stronger and more
institutionalized economic “third leg” to the long-standing security and diplomatic
ones. The US-Australia FTA served this purpose. In relation to Indonesia this analogy
supported the beginnings of negotiations over free-trade negotiations and the 2006
Lombok Treaty on security cooperation.
In the case of Japan, it was seen that a stronger and more institutionalized security
relationship was needed to support the robust but mature commercial relationship and
the diverse and successful post-war diplomatic one. Prime Minister Howard’s
agreement to Prime Minister Koizumi’s request for Australian armed support for
Japan’s landmark contribution to the Iraq war and the 2007 Joint Declaration on
Security Cooperation were key to strengthening the weak security “third leg” of
Australia-Japan relations.1
Today, security relations are the most dynamic “leg” in Australia-Japan relations.
(Cook and Wilkins, 2011, p. 4) Negotiations over a free trade agreement show few
signs of life, while the Rudd and Hatoyama governments, within months of being
elected, came out with contradictory and stillborn unilateral policies on regional
Jiang (2007) and Tow (2009) discuss a different “third leg.” They both argue that
the Australia-Japan strategic partnership strengthens the weak “third leg” (or more
accurately side) of the US-Japan-Australia strategic triangle.
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cooperation. While the last five Japanese prime ministers have not come to Australia
on a bilateral visit, every second year, under the auspices of the 2007 Joint
Declaration, Japan’s defence minister takes the trip along with the foreign minister.
In 2010, the two countries signed a defense logistics treaty, the first time post-war
Japan has signed a defense treaty with a state that is not the United States. (AFP,
2010) In line with the rolling action plans under the 2007 Joint Declaration, Canberra
and Tokyo are now deep in negotiations over an intelligence sharing treaty. In 2011,
Australia sent all of its operating C-17 transport planes to Japan to assist the recovery
from the triple disaster centred in Fukushima. (Nicholson, 2011) These plans, manned
by Australian airmen, flew provisions to Fukushima from US air bases in Japan and
Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force personnel despite the lack of a status of forces
agreement between Japan and Australia to cover such operations. There is now talk in
Japan of the need for such an agreement. Despite some concerns (including by this
author) that the change of government in 2007 in Australia and the historic one in
2009 in Japan may stop or significantly slow down the burgeoning bilateral strategic
partnership, momentum has been maintained. (Ishihara, 2009, pp. 112-13)
This workshop paper will look at three elements of the 21st century Australia-Japan
strategic partnership as a means to spur discussion and as the basis for a longer
academic article. The first section will place this new strategic partnership in the
history of Australia-Japan relations and Australia’s engagement in Asia. The second
section will briefly touch on some of the key Australian motivations for stronger
security relations with Japan. The final section will look into the future at the
opportunities and challenges this “third leg” faces.
From one to two
The stool analogy works as well to describe the evolution of Australia-Japan relations
over the past century as it does as a guide to the Howard’s government’s bilateralist
foreign policy. From the early days of Australia as a settler colony, commercial
relations with Japan have been key to Australia’s growth. By the 1830s, Japan had
become the second largest purchaser of Australian wool after the United Kingdom
and in the run-up to World War II accounted for two-thirds of Australia’s wool
exports to Asia. The importance of trade with Japan led Tokyo to be one of the second
location, after Washington DC, for Australia’s first diplomatic offices.
At the same time, fear of Asia and Asia’s leading power, Japan, ran deep in Australia.
As E.L. Piesse (1926) notes, fear of Japan was a key motivating factor in the
development of the Royal Australian Navy. Australia’s lack of an independent foreign
policy also meant that it did not develop a strong diplomatic relationship with Japan
despite both being on the same side in World War One and having close security ties
with Great Britain.
World War Two clearly showed that this lack of correspondingly strong diplomatic
and strategic relations led to a collapse in the bilateral relationship with Japan
becoming the first and only country ever to attack the Australian home land. While
there was strong debate in the Australian parliament over curtailing the commercial
relationship with Japan during World War Two, pressure from the United Kingdom
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and the aggressive actions of Japan in particular helped ensure that even this sturdy
leg was toppled.
After Japan’s defeat in World War Two and its re-establishment after the SCAP
Occupation, Australia was one of the first countries to re-establish normal commercial
relations with Japan and support its re-entry into the regional and global order.
Australia’s willingness to re-engage Japan was aided greatly by the ANZUS alliance,
an alliance Australia insisted on in return for supporting the more regionally
significant US-Japan alliance. (Umetsu, 2006)
Soon after the re-establishment of normal economic relations with the 1957 AustraliaJapan Commerce Agreement, Tokyo and Canberra began to cooperate diplomatically.
Both states had very similar foreign policy settings – their alliance relationship with
the United States as the cornerstone, an Asian engagement (or re-engagement)
strategy and strong support for a liberal, rules-based multilateral order.
At the global level, this convergence of interests has led to close cooperation on
support for the United Nations and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the end
goal of nuclear disarmament. At the regional level, Canberra and Tokyo began
working closely together from the 1960s to build institutions that fostered closer
economic integration and a sense of community in the Asia-Pacific region.
(Funabashi, 1995) The successful formation of APEC in 1989 and it elevation in 1993
to the leaders level reflected just how strong this “second leg” of the relationship had
become and how it supported the first leg of close commercial relations.
In the Cold War period, Australia and Japan, despite both having close alliance
relationships with the United States and similar concerns about the stability and
ideological leanings of Southeast Asia, did not develop a significant security
relationship. Rather, the first official visit by a Japanese defence head to Australia
took place after the fall of the Berlin Wall. (Terada, 2010, p. 6) The southern and
northern “anchors” of US strategic primacy in Asia did not cross chains. Particularly
Japan focused almost solely in strategic terms on its alliance relationship with the
United States and the territorial defense of Japan. While untested, Australia’s own
memories of World War Two may have acted as a significant deterrent to closer
security ties between Canberra and Tokyo at this time, just as these memories and
Japan’s colonial past still strictly limit Japan-South Korea security ties despite their
common strategic interests.
From two to three
The Howard administration was not the first Australian government to wish that
Japan would play a larger role in regional security and develop closer security ties
with Australia. Rather, this has long been the unstated policy preference in Canberra.
In the early 1990s, Australia encouraged then worked closely with Japanese
peacekeepers under the United Nations sanctioned UNTAC operation in Cambodia.
Changes in Japanese politics and the regional security environment and the close
personal relationship between Howard, Koizumi and President Bush provided the
opportunity for this wish to be turned into sustained reality in the first decade of the
21st century.
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Japan and Australia’s shared foreign policy cornerstone – their respective asymmetric
alliance relationships with the United States – means that both states have the
common grand strategic goal of “keeping the United States constructively engaged in
Asia.” Key to this is reinforcing the importance to the United States of its alliances in
Asia and responding, within domestic political limits, to American calls for allied
burden sharing.
The nature of the ANZUS alliance (and the departure from it of New Zealand) makes
Australia more sensitive to these calls than Japan or South Korea. First, both the US
alliance with Japan and with South Korea have always been presented primarily in
relation to the territorial defence of Japan and South Korea respectively given their
shared status as front-line states in the Cold War. Today, with the rise of China and
the nuclear blackmail of its only ally, North Korea, Japan and South Korea are again
front-line states in the post-Cold War regional security order facing credible threats to
their territorial integrity. Australia’s case is very different as it is not a front-line state
and faces no credible direct threat to its territorial integrity. Hence, the ANZUS
alliance and its utility to Washington have always been as a direct contribution to
American regional and global strategic interests.
A second Australian sensitivity to demands for more burden sharing and allied
support for US regional and global security interests stems from the fact that, unlike
South Korea and Japan, Australia does not host major US assets and troops. (Cha,
2000) The Americans’ alliance sunk costs in the ANZUS alliance are much less. This
makes the domestic political management of the alliance relationship easier in
Australia than in South Korea or Japan. However, it also means the United States is
less invested in the relationship as well. Clearly though sunk costs and troop locations
are not the only factors in the depth of alliance relationship as shown by the fact that
Australia along with Canada and the United Kingdom has a much closer intelligence
sharing relationship with the United States than either Japan or South Korea.
These sensitivities have long encouraged Canberra to seek Tokyo and Seoul to play
larger roles in regional and global security. This would help remove some of the
burden on the United States. It would also provide new opportunities for Australia to
extend beyond the alliance and the Five Power Defence Arrangements and forge
closer security ties with like-minded Asian powers in line with Australia’s Asian
engagement policy. It is perfectly understandable why Australia worked closely with
Japan and Singapore to establish the ASEAN Regional Forum in 1993-1994 and why
Japan and South Korea were the first two states the Howard government approached
to sign new security agreements with in 2007. The one with South Korea was delayed
until there was a change in government in Seoul.
The rise of China and the consequent relative decline in American primacy and
Japanese strategic weight in Asia have led both Australia and Japan to adopt similar
five-level hedging strategies that respond to the US encouragement of more burden
sharing. This common approach also reinforces the two states’ common strategic
interests and opportunities to work more closely together. 2
2
My idea of this five-level strategy is informed by (Sahashi, 2009).
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First, both Australia and Japan remain keen supporters of inclusive regional security
forums that include China such as the ARF, the Shangri-la Dialogue, the East Asia
Summit and the new ASEAN Defense Ministers+8 (ADMM+8) process. At the same
time, both are actively engaged in minilateral groupings with the United States with a
more operational focus. In the case of Australia, the main one is the Trilateral
Strategic Dialogue process that in 2010 organised the largest trilateral naval exercise
around Okinawa (home prefecture to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands). Japan is also
involved in the 13-year old Trilateral Coordinating Group with the United States and
South Korea focused on common information and responses to North Korea and the
nascent US-Japan-India trilateral process based around the US-India Malabar naval
exercises.
Since the end of the Cold War, both Japan and Australia have been strong supporters
of deeper alliance relationships with the United States including involvement in the
US-led regional ballistic missile defence architecture and support for the Joint Strike
Fighter project. Growing concern with the rise of China in both Japan and Australia
has bolstered public support for closer alliance relations. Associated with these
deepening alliance relationships has been, with American support, the efforts for
allies and strategic partners of the United States in Asia to work more closely together
to both strengthen the US presence in the region and to act as a potential alternative in
case this presence diminishes.
Finally, both states are bolstering their own force projection and domain awareness
capabilities as shown in Australia’s bullish 2009 Defence White Paper and Japan’s
most recent and quite radical 2010 National Defence Program Guidelines and its
associated Medium-term Defense Program. (Fouse, 2011, pp. 6-7) Both documents
call for a significant boost to their respective country’s submarine, Aegis destroyer,
helicopter destroyer and reconnaissance airplane fleets. In the case of Japan, this
boosting of maritime and naval assets is part of a call for a new national strategic
concept based around “dynamic deterrence” to replace the four-decade old, landbased static deterrence Basic Defense Concept.
Way forward
The fact that the new Australia-Japan strategic partnership has continued to flourish
despite the changes of government in both countries and the end of the BushKoizumi-Howard meeting of minds is testament to the strength of the partnership and
the strategic drivers behind it. At an institutional level, there is clearly a cohort of
partnership supporters and boosters spread throughout the middle and senior ranks of
the key agencies and ministries in both capitals. The 2007 Joint Declaration and its
rolling action plans have developed a level of self-perpetuation.
At the core of this new partnership and its timing are the tectonic shifts in Asia’s
power distribution and the concerns for the future these are creating. Both Japan and
Australia, among many others, have decided to respond to these shifts by hewing
closer to the United States, seeking closer ties with like-concerned states and
enhancing their own military capabilities. These concerns are unlikely to diminish in
the foreseeable future while the similar national responses are providing a very strong
base for further cooperation. So far, there are few signs that either Japan or Australia
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are responding to the rise of China by weakening their alliance relationships with the
United States or seeking to become an Asian “Finland.” (Krepinevich, 2010)
While the future of the strategic relationship does look bright, there are at least three
potential challenges ahead. Both Australia and particularly Japan face significant
fiscal and political challenges in living up to their planned military expansions. These
challenges could support joint development of submarine capabilities that would
deepen the partnership. More likely though, they will mean that the expansions are
slower and less than planned which could limit the future scope for cooperation and
trust in each other’ statements of intent.
Second, clearly the rise of China and its more assertive approach to sovereignty
disputes is a much more pressing issue for Japan than it is for Australia that has no
such disputes with China. It is conceivable in the future that Japan-China and
Australia-China strategic relations could head off onto very different trajectories that
could strain the Australia-Japan strategic partnership. (White, 2010) Australia no
longer participates in the US-India Malabar exercises while Japan continues to do so.
Finally, the Australia-Japan strategic partnership is largely premised on the existing
alliance relationships Australia and Japan have with the United States. If these
alliance relationships change in any significant manner this could pose problems for
the future development of the strategic partnership. For example, if the United States
determines that its assets in Japan cannot be effectively defended and relocates them
further afield from China than the future of Japanese security policy in all of its
dimensions would come into question.
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