Continued.....
Conclusion: Future Trajectories for Japan’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Maritime Security
The blended nature of the JMSDF capital ship deployments to Southeast Asian waters reflects its multifaceted maritime goals in the region. Japan is expanding on its decades of capacity-building initiatives in the region to include military dimensions. These activities are aimed at creating strengthened relationships with increasingly capable coastal states along Japan’s Indo-Pacific sea lanes. These naval activities are in some ways a simple progression of Japan’s longstanding policy to support the development of maritime capacity. However, this expansion reflects a loosening of Japan’s domestic policy constraints and the increased comfort that Southeast Asian partners have with hosting Japanese forces. The PRC’s increasing capabilities and assertive maritime behavior have hastened this trajectory given Japan’s heavy reliance on South China Sea sea lanes and Japan’s concerns that China’s campaign to assert sovereignty in the South China Sea is strongly linked to its campaign against Japan in the East China Sea.
Japan’s overarching strategic goal to promote the sustained safety and security of the critical Southeast Asian sea lanes has remained essentially unchanged for more than 50 years. However, Japan has incrementally expanded the range of regional security challenges that it directly addresses and agencies that it mobilizes to assist in this effort. For the last decade or so, these agencies have included the Ministry of Defense and the JMSDF. The JMSDF now regularly deploys to the South China Sea and has a record of conducting high-end warfare exercises with the U.S. and other extra-regional navies in that contested body of water. It makes major contributions to multilateral exercises in the region and has been conducting bilateral capacity-building activities with regional navies. The activities should be expected to continue to expand with the primary limiting factors being the availability of ships and other fleet resources.
To date, the bilateral engagements in Southeast Asia have been almost entirely restrained to goodwill activities, and modest projects focused on building regional partners’ constabulary capacities. However, we can expect to see Japan become more involved in assisting regional states with the military defense capabilities. The deal to send newly built and modern air defense radars to the Philippines sets an important precedent in this regard. Continued PRC maritime aggression will be an important driver, but Japan will remain concerned by other maritime threats and increasingly seek to diversify it defense relations away from reliance on the U.S.
Although Prime Minister Abe has been an important figure driving Japan’s defense engagement in Southeast Asia, his departure is unlikely to cause major adjustments to this trajectory. The domestic policymaking constraints that previously inhibited these sort of defense activities have been dismantled and there is a broad political consensus advocating for more Japanese direct involvement in regional security affairs. Most of the LDP candidates to succeed Abe as Prime Minister played a direct role in developing and implementing these policies. Others, such as former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, hold similar views. Even the opposition DPJ seems comfortable with expanding SDF operations in Southeast Asia. This is not an area where they have resisted, it was on their watch that ships were first sent to Southeast Asia under the Pacific Partnership
.
The developments are proceeding in general alignment with a Japanese effort to foster stronger multilateral security networks and new bilateral partnerships in the face of a shift in relative power and influence that is unfavorable to its ally, the United States. With the Ministry of Defense and SDF joining the other Japanese agencies as direct participants in Southeast Asian maritime security, Southeast Asia has clearly become a new nexus in Japan’s maritime strategy. It is important for Southeast Asian states to realize that as Japan’s self-restraint relaxes, they will face bigger decisions regarding the nature and scope of the defense relations they desire with Japan.
John Bradford is a Senior Fellow in the Maritime Security Programme at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the Executive Director of the Yokosuka Council on Asia Pacific Studies. Prior to entering the research sector, he spent 23 years as a U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer focused on Indo-Pacific maritime dynamics.
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Featured Image: Japanese: Maritime Self-Defense Force escort ship Atago (DDG-177) front port side. April 13, 2019 at Maizuru base (Wikimedia Commons)