Japan Should Do More to Forge Security Links with ASEAN

This piece was originally published by the Nikkei Asian Review.

Abe at Shangri-La Dialogue

Since his Liberal Democratic Party’s return to power in 2012, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has leveraged Japan’s long-term economic engagement with Southeast Asia through extensive ministerial contacts and humanitarian relief programs. But Abe should do more to engage the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on security issues to promote maritime security and combat China’s attempts to change the territorial status quo.

The territorial row in the South China Sea, where there are a number of crisscrossing claims, is the most critical security issue affecting the ASEAN states. China’s creation of artificial islands, carried out in support of its claims to sovereignty over almost the whole of the sea, has fundamentally altered the status quo in the region. While other states, including Vietnam and the Philippines, have also engaged in land reclamation, their pace of construction and intent to militarize is not congruent with Beijing’s efforts.

Tokyo is clearly willing to help in the confrontation with China. Discussing the issue at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense conference in Singapore in May, Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani made Tokyo’s desire for a closer security relationship with ASEAN crystal clear. “In order to ensure the safety of regional waters as a strategic focal point of our sea lanes, it is [of] extreme importance to enhance capabilities for maritime domain awareness and ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] with ASEAN countries,” Nakatani said.

Although unusually robust, Nakatani’s speech should not be interpreted as a policy shift from Tokyo. Indeed, Japan’s desire to enhance its security relations with countries in the ASEAN region has been demonstrated consistently since Abe took office. In his first year in power, the prime minister made a point of visiting all 10 member states, and he has sent key cabinet ministers to ASEAN countries on a consistent basis. This engagement is aimed at rounding out Tokyo’s relationships in the region, transcending its traditional focus on economics.

But Japan needs to do more to help reaffirm regional norms that promote the freedom of navigation and the rule of law in the maritime domain. Taking a more assertive diplomatic posture on the South China Sea would support the Abe administration’s desire to link China’s assertiveness at sea (including its behavior in a separate dispute with Japan in the East China Sea) to a greater normative principle that upholds international law and opposes coercive changes to the status quo.

First, Japan should beef up its security relationships in Southeast Asia through a more robust presence in the region’s multilateral security forums. These include the ASEAN Regional Forum, the annual Shangri-La Dialogue run by the U.K.-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the biennial ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting Plus, which groups the ASEAN countries with Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the U.S.

Second, Tokyo should do more to help ASEAN countries build up their own maritime capacity, following on from its provision of maritime patrol vessels to Vietnam and the Philippines — the two states most affected by Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea. These vessels will help build Manila’s and Hanoi’s coast guard operations, improving the capacity of the front line states in the dispute.

More Self Defense

Third, Japan should continue to strengthen the role of its Self Defense Forces in the region. Early in June, President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines made a four-day trip to Japan — his sixth visit over the past five years — and agreed with Abe to ramp up security ties between Tokyo and Manila. The SDF and the Philippines Navy held their first bilateral naval drills earlier this year.

Fourth, Japan should further increase its role in the region through the provision of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. The SDF showed what it can do with the dispatch of assistance to the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013. Tokyo deployed more than 1,000 SDF personnel, together with helicopters and significant supplies of food and medicines to assist Filipinos in remote areas.

Fifth, Japan should leverage broader maritime consultation frameworks that already exist with countries such as Singapore. Tokyo has agreed to establish a maritime security forum with Indonesia, and could seek similar arrangements with other ASEAN countries. These less “dispute-focused” consultations build bilateral confidence by concentrating on issues of common concern such as protecting sea lanes and combatting piracy.

Taking a stronger stance in the South China Sea would help Japan in its strategic quest for ASEAN allies. But it would also help to develop new norms of civilized behavior that could be applied to Japan’s own disputes with China in the East China Sea. Moreover, this would be in line with the developing U.S. approach to the region: Despite their differences, the two disputes are increasingly being framed together in Washington’s China policy.

For example, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel, who has stressed the importance of viewing the disputes through the same lens, recently testified before the Senate foreign relations committee on maritime issues in East Asia. As Russel put it during the hearing: “The East and South China seas are important to global commerce and regional stability. Their economic and strategic significance means that the handling of territorial and maritime issues in these waters by various parties could have economic and security consequences for U.S. national interests.”

Japan also has a vital interest in opposing China’s veiled threat to impose an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea if “security conditions worsen.” China’s unilateral ADIZ declaration in the East China Sea in 2013 was intended to challenge Japan’s administration of the Senkaku Islands, which China claims and calls the Diaoyu Islands.

The East China Sea is Japan’s maritime backyard. But Tokyo relies on maintaining the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea to ensure the secure transit of energy supplies from the Middle East. The shipping lanes are also vital to the security of Japan’s extensive trade with Southeast and South Asia. An ADIZ in the South China Sea would threaten these strategic imperatives.

Finally, greater Japanese involvement in the South China Sea would help to strengthen the bilateral relationship between Tokyo and Washington — and the trilateral relationship that Japan and the U.S. have with Australia. But a burgeoning Japanese security relationship with ASEAN would add a new and important dimension to the international effort to persuade China to stop its coercive and expansionist behavior. If that long-term goal is to be achieved, it will be vital for Japan to remain engaged on this issue over the coming years.