PacNet #1 The limits of a securitized Japanese FOIP Vision

Critics of Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision conflate it with an anti-China containment strategy. They see it as an extension of the former Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Others see the “free and open” aspect of FOIP as hypocritical as Japan actively courts non-democratic states to support its FOIP vision, such as through the recent Japan-Vietnam summit and activities with countries considered flawed democracies, such as India.

These interpretations misread FOIP’s strategic imperatives. First, conceptualizing FOIP as an anti-China containment strategy overlooks deep and mutually beneficial Sino-Japanese economic ties. To illustrate this, in 2020, a year in which China’s unfavorably ratings remained at record lows in Japan, we saw deepening Japanese exports to China, equivalent to $141.6 billion (and 22.1% of total Japanese exports).

If we include the $44.4 billion (6.9%) of Japan exports to Taiwan and the $32 billion (5%) of exports to Hong Kong, exports to greater China represent at least $218 billion or 33.1% of Japan’s total exports, nearly twice that of the US at $118.8 billion (18.5%). Economic decoupling is not possible nor desirable, a sentiment shared by most of China’s trading partners.

We have also seen Japan’s willingness to cooperate with China on infrastructure and connectivity in third countries based on the principles of transparency, fair procurement, and economic viability, to be financed by repayable debt and to be environmentally friendly and sustainable.

In surveys conducted by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), China returned to its position as the most promising country in terms of trade in FY2020 survey. Its return to the top of the JBIC survey ranking was related to COVID-19 policies that kept supply chains mostly intact and operational, allowing for the resumption of economic activity. China compared very favorably to India, which experienced a severe nationwide lockdown and the associated disruption in the economy.

Second, FOIP’s “free” and “open” do not reference democracy or freedom of press advocacy; they refer to trading regimes, sea lines of communication, and the digital economy being rules-based, transparent, and arbitrated by international law and/or multilateral agreements. Japan has a long track record of working with partners regardless of their political system, commitment to democracy, or human rights track record. Japan-Iran, Japan-Vietnam, and Japan-China energy and economic cooperation are cases in point.

Participating in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement alongside China further illustrates Japan’s reticence to sever its economic ties with its largest trading partner.

Third, Japan’s expanded defense procurement continues to be incremental both in terms of budget but also capabilities. For example, according to Janes Defense Budgets forecasts an increase to $49.6 billion in 2022 is slightly larger than 1% of Japan’s GDP. Compared to China, spending approximately $209.16 billion in 2021 (approximately 1.34% of GDP), Japan’s spending increase remains modest and focused on the acquisition of cyberspace, electromagnetic, and over-the-horizon radar capabilities, as well as satellites to enhance space and maritime domain awareness. Beyond these capabilities, the 2022 defense budget aims to secure funding for the deployment of around 570 Japan Ground Self-Defense Forces (JGSDF) and to deploy surface-to-air and anti-ship missile batteries on Okinawa’s Ishigaki Island.

 In contrast, while China is committed to expanding its nuclear arsenal and testing hypersonic delivery systems, Tokyo is still wrangling over constitutional reform and whether it should increase defense spending to 2% of GDP.

If FOIP was a containment strategy, we would see a substantial increase in deterrence capabilities, including submarine acquisitions, lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWs), and the acquisition of mid- to long-range missile systems that would be able to target threats in the region.

Instead, Tokyo’s FOIP vision continues to be multifaceted. Key features continue to include trade promotion, development, the expansion of infrastructure and connectivity, and investment in resilient supply chains. Together, these core features are inculcating a rules-based predictability into critical sea lines of communication (SLOCs) through an adherence to international law.

For Tokyo, the focus on SLOCs, trade promotion, development, the expansion of infrastructure and connectivity and investment in resilient supply chains is tangentially related to Japan’s economic security. A disruption in SLOCs through a regional conflict, incident, or Taiwan contingency would cut off Japan’s economy from the critical arteries for the import and export of goods and energy resources.

Trade promotion, development, the expansion of infrastructure and connectivity and investment in resilient supply chains is about enmeshing Japan into the Indo-Pacific’s economy, its burgeoning institutions, and its rules-making process. Tokyo wants to lock itself into the region’s political economy to ensure that it evolves in a form favorable to Japanese interests. This means strategic partnerships, multilateral cooperation and agreements, and socio-economic tools rather than military tools being the primary means Tokyo wishes to achieve its strategic priority.

The Japan-EU Economic Partnership, Japan-EU Infrastructure and Connectivity agreement, and the Resilient Supply Chain Initiative (RSCI), which include Japan, India, and Australia, are all examples of Tokyo’s efforts to enmesh itself in a series of multilateral agreements that anchor Japan into the national interests of other regions and countries and to anchor those countries and regions into the Indo-Pacific.

This multilateral approach does not eschew strategic partnerships, defense agreements, and the centrality of the Japan-US alliance in Japan’s FOIP vision. Japan is continuing to deepen its relationship with the US while moving towards a defense treaty with Australia.

Discussions are also on their way towards the Japan-UK Reciprocal Access Agreement, 2+2 ministerial security talk between Japan and France, and on May 3, 2021 Japan and Canada announced their “Shared Japan-Canada Priorities Contributing to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.”

The latter announcement stresses cooperation in six key areas including: 1) the rule of law; 2) peacekeeping operations, peacebuilding, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief; 3) health security and responding to COVID-19; 4) energy security; 5) free trade promotion and trade agreement implementation; and 6) environment and climate change.

This is an agenda that speaks to Japan’s comprehensive approach to achieving a free and open Indo-Pacific region. It also illustrates the limits of a securitized Japanese FOIP vision focused on confronting or containing China directly.

Policymakers in Washington should understand that Japan’s FOIP approach resonates with many regional stakeholders in the Indo-Pacific as it aims to invest in regional institutions such that they are more resilient, transparent, and rules-based. Critically, Japan continues to engage with China economically from a position wedded to both multilateral engagement and deepening cooperation within the US-Japan alliance.

Dr. Stephen Nagy (nagy@icu.ac.jp) is a senior associate professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo, a senior fellow with the MacDonald Laurier Institute (MLI), a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI) and a visiting fellow with the Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA). Twitter handle: @nagystephen1.

PacNet commentaries and responses represent the views of the respective authors. Alternative viewpoints are always welcomed and encouraged. Click here to request a PacNet subscription.

PacNet #46 – After AUKUS, “present at the creation” in the 21st century

For more from this author, visit his recent chapter of Comparative Connections.

Announcement of the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) “enhanced trilateral security partnership” has generated a lot of attention—good and bad. Most has focused on the decision to provide US nuclear propulsion technology for submarines to Australia; it’s a historic move for sure, but it’s only part of the AUKUS agreement. More important still is fitting AUKUS within the larger mosaic of Indo-Pacific security. This could be—should be—the beginning of a deep, structural modernization of regional security architecture, akin to the emergence of the trans-Atlantic community after World War II.

The submarines (and their contracts) have dominated discussion of AUKUS. They’re important—they transform Australia’s undersea capabilities, shift strategic calculations, raise nonproliferation issues, and mark a genuinely historic technology transfer—but the deal is much more than that. It includes munitions, as well as cooperation in other areas: cybersecurity, space, and new technologies like artificial intelligence. The initiative will, the three leaders declared, “foster deeper integration of security and defense-related science, technology, industrial bases, and supply chains. And … significantly deepen cooperation on a range of security and defense capabilities.”

The following week, President Biden hosted the first in-person Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) leaders’ summit. The four leaders—from the US, Japan, Australia, and India—reiterated their commitment to “a free, open rules-based order, rooted in international law to advance security and prosperity and counter threats to both in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.”

While attention has focused on Quad’s military dimension—and the exercises are important – this meeting, like the virtual summit in March, devoted its energy to nonmilitary components. The leaders pledged to continue their cooperation in health security, and related vaccine diplomacy, plus climate change and new technologies, as well as in cyberspace, infrastructure development, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Significantly, the emphasis is on the provision of public goods, not merely forging an “anti-China coalition.”

The Quad language echoes the declarations issued after the G7, US-NATO, and US-EU summits that were held in June. Each noted sharpening geopolitical competition with China and endorsed a wider spectrum of engagement, with emphasis on climate, vaccine diplomacy, and technology, as well as infrastructure development, embodied by the Build Back Better World Initiative. It sure looks like the Biden team has a template that they are using for regional engagement, whatever the forum.

Bilateral alliance modernization efforts are underway as well. After the AUKUS meeting, senior defense and foreign affairs officials held the US-Australia Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN), which announced a slew of initiatives to enhance force posture cooperation and alliance integration. When completed, they will significantly improve alliance defense and deterrence capabilities.

The US and Japan and the US and the ROK held their own “2+2” meetings in the spring. Coming so early into the new US administration, both were designed to reaffirm the governments’ commitment to their respective alliances and a warmup for more systematic modernization efforts that would follow once the Biden administration got its team in place and concluded its policy reviews. Those fine intentions were repeated when the two alliance leaders, Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, met Biden during their respective visits to the White House. (The schedule may be delayed given the change in administration in Tokyo and Korea’s national elections next spring.)

The weave is thickening. Alliances are modernizing, allies are developing more robust ties between themselves, and all are beginning to institutionalize ties with nonalliance partners, such as India. Extra-regional powers are increasingly engaged. In addition to its role in AUKUS,  the British Royal Navy has announced that it will station two new patrol vessels in the Indo-Pacific region for “at least the next five years.” As a senior US official explained on background, the deal will “link Europe and particularly Great Britain more closely with our strategic pursuits in the region as a whole.” Several European nations have unveiled Indo-Pacific strategies; the EU’s effort was overshadowed by the AUKUS tempest. Once it gets over its anger at the submarine deal, France will be a factor; it has a genuine regional presence and a real role to play in security affairs.

Geographic expansion is complemented by efforts to broaden cooperation and better compete in geopolitics, evident from the establishment of vaccine, climate and technology working groups in almost every forum, to extensive cooperation on cybersecurity, space, supply chains, and infrastructure development. Martijn Rasser, a technology expert at CNAS, was describing the Quad’s efforts but he could have been speaking more generally when he said they mark “a major step in achieving a comprehensive strategic technology partnership,” adding that “by also emphasizing principles rooted in shared values, the Quad countries are shaping the contours of a new techno-democratic statecraft.”

Together, this will force a rethink of regional defense and deterrence. The US and its partners will acquire new capabilities, which will demand a recalibration of roles and responsibilities. The US-Australia alliance is a model and other institutions will have to change to keep pace. So will the rhetoric. I continue to believe that we should abandon the phrase “extended deterrence” and instead talk about networked, layered, or cooperative deterrence. Whatever the phrase, the concept is the same: the more that deterrence is integrated among allies and partners, the less it will be “extended.” (As always, this refers only to deterrence broadly; the US will continue to extend its nuclear deterrent.)

There will be difficulties. China is going ballistic: Literally, by threatening Australia with nuclear attacks, and rhetorically, with blistering commentary. Even more worrisome is the prospect of actions to show that Beijing is not intimidated and to warn other governments that they should not consider emulating Canberra. The record number of Chinese military aircraft that entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in recent days is one such tactic. Regional tensions may well rise in the interim.

Southeast Asian governments are troubled by that possibility, and some experts, quietly, credit the observation of Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang that “security affairs of the Asia-Pacific should be jointly decided by people in the region and not dominated by the Anglo-Saxons.” Ironically, the prospect of a new “Caucasian Club” in the region could spur still more for reform, such as expanding the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement, which would entice Tokyo and Paris.

The organization, coordination, and (perhaps) eventual integration of these many efforts will be difficult. There are many moving parts and the number continues to expand. There is no forum that could begin the task of making sense of it all—and any effort to create one will make China’s reaction to AUKUS look like a warmup.

Cumulatively, momentum is gathering for a transformation in Indo-Pacific security. Regional governments are adopting more comprehensive strategies, in which security is being defined more broadly and is drawing in a wider array of actors. A key element is trade, and the US failure to reconsider membership in CPTPP is a huge shortcoming. It is difficult, if not impossible, to predict the eventual outcome, but this moment is rich in opportunity—and risks.

Brad Glosserman (brad@pacforum.org) is deputy director of and visiting professor at the Center for Rule-Making Strategies at Tama University as well as senior adviser (nonresident) at Pacific Forum. He is the author of “Peak Japan: The End of Great Ambitions” (Georgetown University Press, 2019), which was translated into Korean last year.

PacNet commentaries and responses represent the views of the respective authors. Alternative viewpoints are always welcomed and encouraged. Click here to request a PacNet subscription.