The Japanese government has held senior-level meetings with Australia, France and the United States, and most recently, had talks with South Korea this week. On top of it all, the administration is working with other partners on North Korea’s recent missile launches and the crisis in Ukraine.
The level of security multilateralism we are witnessing from Japan would have been unimaginable 20 years ago — and politically impossible 40 years ago. Many might argue that barriers to this sort of security cooperation were the result of pacifism and Article 9 of the Constitution. But such an argument ignores the political realities that kept multilateralism out of reach for Tokyo.
To start, what does security multilateralism really mean? Why is it difficult for many countries and why has Japan come to embrace it over time?
In short, security multilateralism is the collective cooperation with two or more partner countries on defense, law enforcement and other realms of security to protect their respective citizens, property and interests. Importantly, security multilateralism is a “pay-to-play” arrangement. It requires parties to dedicate resources and attention while affirming and enforcing a particular set of rules.
Whether the relationships are loosely connected like “the Quad” among Australia, India, Japan and the United States or firmly codified like NATO, multilateralism can offer many benefits. It helps deter belligerence from would-be adversaries and strengthens bargaining power when engaging competitors. It also helps countries to complement each other — what one partner may lack, the other may have in spades.
There are of course downsides. Each member brings a set of demands, and the more parties there are, the more complicated things could get. This means that a government may be forced to deal with issues it would rather avoid.
Further, there is the expectation that each country will bear its fair share of the security burden.
But what is a “fair share?” The difference between what makes an equitable partner and a “free-rider” can be hard to quantify, which is why so many people erroneously cling to statistics like “defense spending as a percentage of GDP.” In reality, the definition of “fairness” varies across the globe — the friction comes when trying to define and implement it.
The costs alone are enough to convince some countries to eschew security multilateralism, but there are other factors as well. For example, former colonized countries are generally loath to join multilateral arrangements — particularly in the realm of security — as they remain fiercely protective of their autonomy.
Meanwhile, Japan has had its own unique hurdle to multilateralism not as the colonized but as a former colonizer. In the postwar period, Japan has had to earn back trust, and we can see how this still affects working with countries like South Korea.
Another challenge is getting officials to see past the costs and understand the benefits. This is especially difficult when governments have a transactional, zero-sum worldview.
Finally, there may be domestic political barriers to taking a group approach. Nationalism, xenophobia and isolationism are all political obstacles that lead to insular, unilateral approaches to security. All of this makes the process of becoming a true multilateral player a challenge — which was the case for Japan.
For Japan, there were legal, policy and political barriers to security multilateralism. Article 9 was an obvious one, in that it meant that Japan simply could not use its military power the same way as other countries. That was a problem for decades amid Cold War proxy conflicts, but the current era of “gray zone” competition — marked by situations short of armed combat — introduces cases where Japan’s self-imposed restrictions have actually prepared its forces well for meaningful contributions.
Policy wise, Japan had to shift its internal designs to accommodate its growing power on the world stage. For years under the so-called Yoshida Doctrine (named after postwar Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida), Tokyo had an ideal arrangement — focus on economic growth under the umbrella of U.S. defense. It worked beautifully for the country as Japan peaked as the world’s No. 2 economy. Had circumstances not changed, Japan might very well have stayed the course. After all, it was not as if domestic politics was demanding a new direction.
However, there were five things that contributed to Japan’s gradual embrace of multilateralism.
The first was the wake up call. Japan got its wake up call in 1990 when it contributed $13 billion to the coalition defense of Kuwait against the Iraqi invasion, but was left out the next year when Kuwait issued thank you ads to all the countries that came to its aid. Japan was left out of the list. The message was clear: If you want to be a leader on the global stage, you have to be more than a “checkbook diplomat.” The message was so strong that Japan passed its Peacekeeping Operations Law in 1992 to enable the Self-Defense Forces to participate in U.N. PKO missions.
The second contributor was external pressure. Gaiatsu (“external pressure”) often evokes negative emotions as critics associate it with sovereignty infringement. But bad politics is often an impediment to good policy, and a push from outside can sometimes help legislators and officials to advance initiatives that are better for a country in the long-run, however much they may sting for select politicians at
the time.
For decades, Japan’s political realities presented barriers to security multilateralism. As hard as it may be to believe now, that 1992 PKO law was one of the most contentious legislation ever to pass Japan’s parliament. Pressure from the United States and others in the international community was necessary to help policymakers push the boundaries of what was politically palatable and enable progress needed to meet Japan’s broader national interests.
Helping to that end was the third factor: the realization that Japan cannot go it alone. There were a number of incidents that contributed to this realization: the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1996; North Korea’s launching of a Taepodong missile over the Japanese home islands in 1998; the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998 and the global financial crisis of 2008 (which knocked Japan off its economic pedestal as the world’s No. 2); and the massive increase of Chinese vessels around the Senkaku Islands in the early 2010s, to name just a few. Tokyo understood that it had too many challenges that it could not manage alone.
But there was a fourth thing needed, which was the opportunity to become more multilateral.
This is where the U.S.-Japan alliance was a boon for Tokyo, because Japan could tap into the U.S. military’s other alliances. To that end, the partners did not just pursue bilateral training opportunities and policy dialogues, but trilateral endeavors with countries like Australia, South Korea and the United Kingdom. They invited multinational observers to attend bilateral exercises and they employed the existing U.S. military architecture to extend the Self-Defense Force’s reach through organizations like the U.S. Central Command and Africa Command.
Once the ball was rolling, Japan had one more thing to do: success by increments. The key for Japan was not taking the big swings, because a significant failure on any multilateral initiative would have reinforced political opposition. For the time being, Japan pursued “minilateral” relationships — that is, smaller, more targeted multilateral groups aimed at specific issues. While it will take more time for Japan to grow its multilateral approaches, every success via minilateralism will present another fait accompli upon which to base the next, broader effort.
There are still challenges for Japan. Expanding relationships with the United Kingdom, France and Germany gives Japan greater in-roads to European partners, but how will the Kishida administration respond to their principal threat in the form of Russia? Does Japan risk engagement on the Northern Territories issue to be an equitable security partner to those nations? Meanwhile, how does Japan entice others to take a stronger stance vis-a-vis a revisionist China?
These are not easy questions to answer. But for the time being, Tokyo has seemed to take to heart the message from an old proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Michael MacArthur Bosack is the special adviser for government relations at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies. He previously served in the Japanese government as a Mansfield fellow.
Source: The Japan Times
