SEVENTY years on from posing the greatest existential threat that Australia has yet faced, Japan is on the verge of becoming our closest military partner next to the US.
The meeting today in Tokyo between the foreign and defence ministers of Australia and Japan would a few years ago have been a routine matter of only marginal interest beyond the two countries, or even within them.
Now the ambitious outcomes will be watched with intense interest in Washington and Manila, in Hanoi and Seoul, in New Delhi and Islamabad, and virtually every other capital in the region.
And especially in Beijing.
Japan is assiduously promoting Australia to become its second most important international partner after the US. It has already agreed a groundbreaking free trade agreement, locking in our economic engagement.
Today’s meeting will indicate just how far the countries are likely to step in security partnership.
Last October, soon after being elected, Tony Abbott told his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe during the East Asia Summit in Brunei that “as far as I’m concerned, Japan is Australia’s best friend in Asia”.
This formulation has since been criticised as endangering friendships with other countries in Asia, such as South Korea, that have a particular problem with Abe, and especially with China.
Abbott has not revisited that phrase, and during his visit to Japan, South Korea and China in April he declined to elevate any of the relationships above another.
Such verbal discipline remains important because Australia’s foreign affairs agenda for 2014 is topped by the determination to conclude a free trade agreement with the country’s biggest trading partner, China, which has eluded negotiators for a decade.
China has found life lonely as the dominant Asian power. Its territorial ambitions in the East China and South China seas have met some push-back, although not yet to the extent of causing it to retreat from recent gains.
Beijing is in the throes of a governance shake-up to streamline the lines of authority, as well as a massive economic restructuring — complicating its bid to upgrade relationships with countries like Australia that will not be security allies but might be cast as “friends” in a broader sense.
This presents Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Defence Minister David Johnston with a particularly nuanced challenge when they meet their counterparts Fumio Kishida and Itsunori Onodera.
Canberra likes to feel wanted by Tokyo, but does not wish Beijing to view its response as hostile to China.
Much attention will be paid in Tokyo today to ensuring a full and meaningful program for Abe’s visit to Australia, probably in early August, when he will become the first Japanese leader to address parliament. But Canberra will also be straining to plan a positive big-picture visit for China’s President Xi Jinping, who will come to Australia for the G20 summit in Brisbane in November — as will Abe.
Xi is almost certain to remain in Australia, to visit Tasmania and possibly also Canberra. And the Abbott government is doing its best to ensure that during this visit the countries can trumpet the successful conclusion of FTA talks.
The formulation Abbott used — starting in Brunei, and repeatedly since — is that building such a strong friendship with Japan “doesn’t mean we don’t have other good friends”.
“Obviously,” he said, “China is a good friend of Australia, and I hope in years to come it will become an even better friend.”
A particular stumbling block to such friendships, in Beijing’s view, is surprises. It especially values predictability and consistency in international relationships.
How much of what will be discussed and agreed in Tokyo today will be the topic of painstaking explanation by Australian diplomats in Beijing?
That will be a useful indicator of the extent to which Canberra wishes to be seen as balancing its Asian interests and relationships. Bishop has herself conducted such quiet diplomacy, briefing ambassadors on issues that may be contentious.
The Abe government has spoken of elevating the strategic partnership between the two countries to a “new special relationship”.
The mutual defence pact that Japan and Australia share, separately, with the US remains central.
US President Barack Obama announced during his recent visit to Japan that any attack on the islands that are possessed by Japan but disputed by China, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, would trigger the mutual defence pact.
But gratifying though this was to Tokyo, anxiety persists about the extent of Washington’s commitment to the “pivot” to Asia. Hence the moves within Asia not only to seek reassurance from the US, but also to intensify complex regional patterns of security co-operation, in which Australia is perceived to play a key part.
At this fifth “2+2” meeting of foreign and defence ministers, the agenda will include:
● Stepping up joint exercises and training, including working more closely in UN peacekeeping operations, and with each other bilaterally as well as jointly with the US.
● Cooperation on humanitarian assistance, including disaster relief, as last year in The Philippines, when Japan deployed its biggest number of troops overseas since World War II, and search and rescue missions as for Malaysian flight MH370.
● The Japan-Australia Acquisition and Joint-Servicing Agreement that came into force at the start of last year, through which the countries agree to provide resources to each other’s forces when operating side by side.
● The information security agreement signed two years ago, to exchange intelligence.
● The involvement of a Japanese naval ship in the commemoration in October of the ANZAC fleet gathering at Albany to take soldiers to fight in World War I, with the Japanese imperial vessel Ibuki having helped escort the original convoy to Egypt.
● Cooperation on defence equipment and technology, set to be the subject of an agreement confirmed today allowing such exchange — previously granted by Japan only to the US and Britain, with France likely to follow Australia.
When he visited Tokyo in April, Abbott discussed this move with Japan’s new National Security Council, becoming the first foreign leader to meet the group. A ban remains in place on exporting defence technology, but Australia is set to become a rare exception.
It is under this new arrangement that Johnston will become this week the first foreign defence minister to take a close look at Japan’s Soryu submarines, built by Mitsubishi and Kawasaki, with an special interest in their silent-running diesel-electric propulsion systems. This technology could be incorporated in the next series submarines built in or for Australia — or Soryu-class vessels could be purchased holus-bolus.
The countries have already begun joint research on hydrodynamics, aimed at reducing vessels’ water resistance, making them faster and quieter.
This remains at the stage of fundamental science, with work being conducted by scientists in both countries, but is expected to develop military-related spin-offs.
Malcolm Cook, senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, says this security program could be advanced further by bilateral exercises that do not include the US, particularly army to army, by the Japan Air Self-Defence Force training in Australia, with ample space to test-fly fighters, and by inviting Japan to the Talisman Sabre exercises — the key US-Australia bilateral exercises.
Narushige Michishita, director of the security program at Japan’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, tells
The Australian: “Some suggest that Japan might be willing to sell the Soryu-class submarines to Australia. If it happens, that would be a big win-win for both of us.
“Australia will obtain the world’s most cutting-edge diesel-engine submarines, Japan will benefit from better economies of scale, and interoperability of our navies will be significantly enhanced.
“It would also contribute to the objective of maintaining balance in the region.”
He says a negative response from China “is certainly a thing to worry about, particularly for Australia. But history tells us that balancing is always a better strategy than bandwagoning.
“By not balancing with China, you can enjoy your day today, but you will have to play a much tougher game later.”
Johnston recently hosted a visit by Onodera to his home state of Western Australia, where they discussed areas in which co-operation could potentially be expanded, and also agreed to jointly oppose “attempts to change the status quo by coercion”.
This was the ground for Bishop to call in Chinese ambassador Ma Zhaoxu to complain late last year about Beijing’s declaration of an air defence identification zone that covered disputed islands in the East China Sea — resulting in friction at the official level that only faded after Australia took a lead in the search for MH370, which contained 153 Chinese passengers.
The Abe government has rejected international criticisms that its inclination to review the interpretation of Japan’s pacifist constitution to permit “collective self-defence” — including supporting partners and allies under attack — is militaristic, stressing that it seeks to define this right in a minimum manner.
Andrew O’Neil, head of the school of government and international relations at Queensland’s Griffith University, says: “I think we’re witnessing a transformation of the Australia-Japan relationship under the Abe-Abbott governments.
“It wasn’t that long ago when almost all observers agreed that economics was first, second and third order priority, and that closer security and defence ties would never really come to much, despite the aspirational rhetoric.”
He says Johnston’s assertive intervention at the recent Shangri-La security dialogue in Singapore — “very much in line” with the speeches there by Abe and US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel — reinforced Bishop’s response to Beijing’s ADIZ declaration, “placing Australia squarely and publicly in the camp criticising China’s behaviour in the East and South China seas”.
This, O’Neil says, is the “classic balancing behaviour one would expect from small and middle powers in response to a rising great power, so we shouldn’t be too surprised. Also, the democratic ties that bind shouldn’t be underestimated.”
Today’s meeting, he says, will demonstrate how “Tokyo is transparently trying to pull Australia closer strategically, in an effort to resist Chinese domination of East Asia.
“The less isolated Japan is, the harder the task for Beijing to paint it as an outlier.”
Reference: The Australian
