AJISS-Commentary
The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies
NPINakasone Yasuhiro
Peace InstituteRIPS
The Japan Institute ofInternational Affairs(Secretariat)

Research Institute for
Peace and Security

No. 291
9 December 2021

AUKUS AND JAPAN

Nobukatsu Kanehara

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and should not be
attributed to The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies.

AJISS-Commentary
The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

The sudden announcement of AUKUS’s establishment was for the mostpart greeted favorably by Japan, although France was furious that a seventy
billion USD contract for submarines ordered by the Australian Navy had been
scrapped. The awkward handling of the French-Australian submarine project
was unfortunate, but AUKUS itself will be a great contribution for making theIndo-Pacific region more secure, stable, prosperous, free, open and democratic.
In comparison with NATO in Europe, the American alliance system in the
Indo-Pacific region is sadly weak. NATO has thirty members and a robust
secretariat focused on the singular threat from Russia. It has a single
streamlined chain of command and a common operational plan, with members
pledged to stand “one for all and all for one”. Among NATO’s members are thenuclear powers of Great Britain and France. Germany is an economic engine ofEurope and the Bundeswehr is a formidable military force. The Turks are proud
to have the second-largest armed forces in NATO. Italy and Spain are great
naval powers, while Estonia is leading the way in cyberwarfare.
In the Western Pacific, China is now a daunting military power whosemilitary budget is bigger than those of Japan, the UK, France, and Germany
combined. China no longer hides its ambition to invade Taiwan and it seeks tocarve out its own sphere of influence in Asia, where China stands high as amoral and political leader as did the Chinese emperor for millennia.
Despite the Chinese appetite for regional hegemony, a liberalinternational order is emerging for the first time in the Indo-Pacific region. Many
Asian nations came through different paths from the Western industrial
democracies. They were subjected to colonization and racial discrimination andsuffered from dictatorship for half a century after gaining their independence.
Following spectacular economic development, they turned to democracy one byone from the late 1980s: the Philippines in 1986, South Korea in 1987, andTaiwan in 1996 as well as the coastal or island ASEAN nations.
As Asia’s oldest democracy since the Imperial Diet first met in Tokyo in
1890, Japan has the responsibility to prove to and persuade Asians that all
humans are born absolutely equal in dignity and that freedom and democracy
are not only Western but Asian as well as universal values.

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The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

The only American allies in the Western Pacific are Japan, South Korea,Australia, the Philippines and Thailand. There is no single secretariat, noco-operational plan, no common exercises, and no common threat perception
like NATO.
South Korea is now a great power whose economy is as big as Russia’sor Canada’s and which has a six hundred thousand-strong army and a military
budget as big as Japan’s or the UK’s. However, its strategic orientation isconfused under a leftist Blue House, which still sticks to an old-fashioned Cold
War ideology of opposing American and Japanese imperialism.
Japan has expanded its role in regional security since it regained
independence in 1952. Under the 1960 revisions to the Japan-US alliance treaty
agreed to by Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, Japan pledged to allow US forces
based in Japan to defend South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines,
ex-Japanese imperial territories and a US colony left without strong defenses
after WWII. This was seen to be in Japan’s national security interest as well.
In the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea’s
development of nuclear weapons became a new regional threat. Japan pledged
under Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi to help US forces operate in dealing withcontingencies in the vicinity of Japan, inclusive of South Korea, throughnon-combat operations with the Self Defense Forces. In 2015, Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe pushed through a new law to give the SDF the authority to engage incombat operations itself under the right of collective self-defense. Unfortunately,
South Korea is still hesitant to commit itself to regional security alongside Japanand the US.
The Philippines occupies a vitally important location on the southern sideof the Bashi Channel facing Taiwan at a chokepoint for three key sea lanes
connecting Northeast Asia with Europe, the Gulf region and Australia. To thewest, the Philippines faces the South China Sea that China claims entirely as its
own sea. Unfortunately, its military force is, like that of Thailand, not strong
enough to take on China’s PLA.
India is a future superpower whose population will surpass that of China
soon and has an average age ten years younger than China’s. India is a born

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The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

democracy and will be a responsible superpower to sustain the Free World with
the Western nations during this century. However, it will take time – until around2035 -- for India to catch up with Japan in terms of economic size.
In this security environment, Japan is growing more and more nervous
as China rises. Japan is the only effective outpost of US forces in Northeast Asia.
If a Taiwan contingency happens, Japan, so near to Taiwan, will be immediatelyinvolved as US forces will make full use of their bases in Japan. Many Japanese
have started to ask the question “can the US deter China from invading Taiwan
not only today but in the foreseeable future?” It can do so today, but it is not clear
if this will hold true ten or fifteen years from now.
The US is still sticking to its policy of ambiguity on Taiwan and will notextend its nuclear umbrella to defend Taiwan. When China becomesadventurous under Xi Jinping around 2030, will the West led by the US truly becapable of deterring China? By that time, China could be on par with the US.
AUKUS is good news for the security of Northeast Asia. The nuclear
submarines to be given to Australia will make a tremendous contribution toregional security. Great Britain will provide formidable support in Asia. ThisAnglo-Saxon triangle was a leading force in bringing the Allies to victory in WWI,
WWII and the Cold War, and it should replicate this success by dissuading China
from adventures this century.
Japan should bear the burden of sustaining a Free and Open
Indo-Pacific together with AUKUS by redoubling its national defense efforts.
Prime Minister Abe increased the military budget during his term from 47 billion
USD in 2012 to 53 billion USD in 2019 in addition to a two billion USD
supplementary defense budget every year. Nevertheless, this increase isdwarfed by China’s dramatic military build-up. The defense budget should be
doubled to reach two percent of Japan’s GDP.
There are several issues that need to be addressed at home beyond that,
but let me point out just two today.
First is intelligence cooperation. Japan should join the Five Eyes club.
For that purpose, Japan should become a full-fledged partner with AUKUS. TheFive Eyes is not merely a tactical framework for cooperation in intelligence; it is a

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AJISS-Commentary
The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

part of much broader strategic cooperation. The Five Eyes was born in the war
to defeat Hitler. They shared a common mission of defending the Free World. To
join the Five Eyes, Japan should stand up as a real partner willing to commit
itself to the cause of a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
Japan should also make uphill efforts in cyber intelligence. Prime
Minister Suga established a brand-new Digital Agency but its cybersecurity isinadequate and its cyber intelligence not effective. The Japanese government
should establish a government cloud with a perfect firewall against sophisticatedand persistent cyberattacks. Japanese private companies have a solid
technological base for hardware. Political leadership is an absolute MUST for
coordinating with a heavily stove-piped intelligence community whose rivalries
with other institutions are as ferocious as those in other nations.
Second, the Japanese government should break the ice to obtain thecooperation of Japanese academia. Japan was bitterly torn by the Cold War. The
Japanese socialists stood with the East led by Moscow. This was not the casefor the British Labourites, the French Socialists or the German SPD. Naturalscientists in Japan joined with the leftists. Under strong political pressure frompeers, no scientist has cooperated with the Japanese government on national
security matters, although the government pours forty billion USD into academia
every year for R&D. Hi-tech cooperation on national security has always been
the least successful area, if not a total failure, of Japan-US alliance management.
Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, the situation has not changed.
Quantum technology will be a game changer in the near future. It willchange not only telecommunications and cyberspace but also every aspect ofwarfare as well as people’s daily lives. AUKUS is determined to lead thescientific world in quantum science and other fields. Japan is lagging behind. It is
now time to engage the best and brightest of Japan’s scientists in national
security, a necessary task for Japan if it is to cooperate fully with AUKUS.

Nobukatsu Kanehara is Professor at Doshisha University and Adjunct Fellow at The Japan
Institute of International Affairs.

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