Transcription
Japan is having a moment. What I mean is the world is messy right now. The US has become an unpredictable superpower, threatening to invade Greenland one minute and actually attacking Iran the next. Then you have China, a growing power that every country trades with, but no country fully trusts, leaving everyone with few alternatives, especially in Asia. And that's where Japan comes in. Japan's been very successful I think in networking uh the region. So it has its one ally uh the US one security ally which is the most important foreign policy relationship Japan has but it's butressing that with all these um by building these networks. So Japan Philippines, Japan, Australia, Japan India, Japan Vietnam and so on.
>> That's Robert Ward. He's senior fellow and Japan chair at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. That's the organization that hosts Asia's big annual security summit, the Shangri Law Dialogue that just took place. Robert's also the author of Evaluating Japan's new grand strategy. Now, while Japan is not a superpower like the US or China, its strategic importance has become crucial for the region. Here's how Robert describes it.
>> Japan is what I would call a global middle power. So, there is a couple of others like Germany, UK, France perhaps. In terms of Japan's place in uh place in the world at the moment, it it's fascinating how Japan's role has changed over the last sort of 30 or so years. Um if you f you remember the the first Gulf War where Japan didn't really know what to do, bankrolled the um uh the operation but didn't get any thanks for it and was paralyzed internally. You fast forward to uh 20 well particularly Russia's full scale of invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Um since then I think you you've seen a number of things uh happening. One is that Japan for the US now is a is a critical bulwork for US presence uh in Asia. Without Japan the US cannot credibly claim to be um a residential power in Asia. So Japan for the US I think its strategic importance has just risen hugely. And that that's partly of course relating to the to the threats that we be from China that we've been talking about. Japan also now for for Southeast Asia and other Asian countries, it sees itself as a as a champion of the uh rules-based international order. So, Japan's a big global middle power. A lot of these other countries uh most of them are much much smaller than Japan and they don't want to have to choose between either China on the one hand or the US on the other. So, Japan is really sort of projecting itself as a as a supporter of the rules-based international order, which of course all small countries need uh in order to feel uh protected. And you have one more thing happening here, which is Japan's relations with the uh with NATO uh and with the EU in defense industrial terms, in economic security terms, economic terms. This is another sort of important area to watch as Japan sort of tries to network its allies and partners to to create uh well to amplify its ability to do what it it thinks it needs to do but also to create strategic complexity for countries like China uh and Russia and others.
On the other hand, >> Japan sees good relations with other countries near and far as one way to manage its biggest security challenge, China's interest in taking over Taiwan. Uh it centers on uh what Japan sees as China's menacing of Taiwan. Um Taiwan is is for Japan a really important strategic interest in terms of stability around Taiwan. One of the reasons for that is that Taiwan is only uh just over 100 kilometers from Japanese territory, Japan's westernmost island of uh Yanaguni. Uh so ch so Japan is sort of most immediately worried about that. Um but there are other things too. Um they include China's strategic alignment with uh with Russia uh which is growing closer particularly since Russia's uh full scale of invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And then of course for Japan Russia's alignment with North Korea uh which is also close to Japan is another area of concern. Um and within this of course uh Japan's worried about China's military spending. um this is rising uh very quickly uh and for Japan uh it's not transparent enough uh and these give cause to great cause for concern to Japan uh given Japan's other concerns about what China's doing. There's a specifically Japanese concern here about China's uh territorial needling over the Senkaku Islands which are not that far from Tai uh from Taiwan uh which Japan controls and uh China claims. So all around the Taiwan area there are concerns uh for Japan about what's going on with China in addition to the concerns about North Korea uh and Russia as well.
>> So China is seeing this ramped up security activity from Japan and decides one way of countering it is to invoke history. Beijing's basically going, "Hey guys, the Philippines and other countries across Asia, remember when Japan invaded you in World War II? you don't want to trust Tokyo.
>> And you can see that through some of the um the rhetoric that's been coming out particularly since last year um about China's been talking about the the new rise of Japanese fascism. Um Japan as a threat to the postworld war II order uh and so on. And China hopes that that will resonate uh within uh within Asia. um many countries of which of course have memories of Japanese imperialism in the 1930s and 19 early 1940s.
>> And what's interesting about that narrative that China is pushing is that it isn't working. 80 years after the end of World War II, countries have moved on. They're less focused on Japan's wrongs from the past and more focused on what Japan is doing right at this moment in time. There's the Yusf Ishach survey that comes out of Singapore. Uh and Japan's consistently uh year after year shown as the most trusted country. So Japan has a has built up some very good relationships over the decades investment uh in industrial uh interest, political interest uh and so on. So Japan has a I think pretty good standing uh in in the region. Um, the Philippines is uh has very significant concerns about what China's doing in the ch in the South China Sea of sort of the the territorial needling and and and bullying and so on and that has driven this uh plus of course Philippines is concerned about Taiwan as well and that has driven the Philippines and and Japan much uh more closer together. the president Marcos was in Tokyo recently ele with with Prime Minister Taki Sana and they're elevating the strategic relationship there. Um it was interesting at the recent Shangrila dialogue double s Changrila dialogue in Singapore. Um there was a question to the defense minister Koisimi Shinjiro um from uh from one of the Chinese delegation PLA uh member of the PLA and he he said well you know defense minister Kisumi you know when are you going to apologize to uh all the countries that have suffered uh through from Japanese predations in in the during the imperial era uh 1930s early 1940s and and Koisumi Sand obviously pushed back But if you um looked at the relations, what was going on outside the plenary and how Kimisan was was interacting very actively with lots of uh delegates from some of the Southeast Asian uh states plus of course the support for him uh from from the Philippines that that was very vocal as you'd expect given the state of Japan Philippines relations but but also from other Southeast Asian countries Plus, of course, you've got uh rel Japan's relations with South Korea, which despite concerns that these may not be so smooth given Prime Minister Takahi's um record and of course uh President Lee in South Korea is is viewed as um uh perhaps being less friendly to Japan. This relationship is actually doing pretty well. So of all there are loads of many countries in the region that uh have had poor experiences of Japanese um imperialism but if you fast forward to now um that is not borne out in the state of relations uh between Japan and many countries in the region. So the the PLA members question as Shangr dialogue just looked a little bit um um unusual uh a bit not not a reflection of the reality on the ground.
Roberts talked about Japan's relationship with the Philippines there and also South Korea, but the list goes on from Vietnam to India and beyond. And the importance of Vietnam for Japan was uh was highlighted yet again uh in a recent visit by Prime Minister Takahi to Hanoi. Um and at that visit, she outlined her update to Japan's um sort of framework for its foreign policy. He calls it free and open Indo-Pacific uh concepts of FOY. uh she chose uh Hanoi as the location of that that's symbolically important given the relation the the importance of Japan's relations with with Vietnam but and of course we've talked about the Philippines um but if you zoom out a bit a bit more you've got Japan India relations which are which are which are pretty good and have been good for a long time uh there there's industrial relations there's there's overseas aid relations uh and so on but also of course Japan India relations as they sit within the the quad quadrilateral security dialogue known as the Quad. Uh Australia, US, uh, Japan, and India.
All this adds up to a Japan that's spending more in defense and building more security relationships with its neighbors. Japan has done this incrementally, methodically over the years, as relations with China deteriorated. And as China became a bigger and bigger bully in the Indo-Pacific,
>> I would say that Japan is being um more realistic about what it has to do. Uh and as thanks to some of these changes that Abhinszo made, Kishna Fumio as prime minister made and now Takichi Sai as prime minister is is making um is sort of agency uh within the region uh and beyond uh is increasing. But this realism comes from and the urgency of the need to implement change comes from its fears about Japan's fears about China. China is very close. China is an immediate neighbor. Uh North Korea, Russia also neighbors. So so Japan really does feel that the threat um to its stability uh in the region is is pretty intense and that is why you're seeing the acceleration of defense reforms. Uh there'll be a new uh new three new strategic documents published this year. National security strategy, national defense strategy and the defense buildup plan. These plot the course for Japanese security and defense in the ne over the next coming years. Um and they this this years will be particularly uh important. So lots of changes coming.
So what do you think? Where are you from? And does your country have good relations with Japan? Do you think that relationship is important as a hedge in these geopolitically uncertain times? Let us know in the comments. That's all for now. DW News is giving you the latest and also sharing deep dives on here and across the rest of social media. I'm Melissa Chan. Until next time.