Heisei militarisation, Australia, and our real security needs

1
Heisei militarisation, Australia, and our real
security needs

• Richard Tanter
• Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability

2
Article 9 of the Japanese constitution

• (1) Aspiring sincerely to an international peace
  based on justice and order, the Japanese people
  forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the
  nation and the threat or use of force as means of
  settling international disputes.
• (2) In order to accomplish the aim of the
  preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces,
  as well as other war potential, will never be
  maintained. The right of aggression of the state
  will not be recognized.

3
Prime Minister Abe Shinzo on upgrading the
Defence Agency to the Ministry of Defence

• "a landmark event that marks the end of the
  postwar regime and will lay the groundwork for
  building a new state."

4
Japanese security - old stories

• The weight of history
• The failures of reconciliation and border
  disputes
• US alliance
• benefits and costs

5
Japanese security tensions - new stories

• Whose version of Global responsibilities?
• North Korea - again
• South Korea
• Taiwan
• mega-terrorism
• sea-lanes and Southeast Asia
• oil and gas - China and Russia
• the rise of China per se
• US extended nuclear deterrence

6
Keidanrens threat board
7
Major Asia-Pacific Shipping Lanes
8
Japan-centred hemisphere
9
The view from China, Russia and Korea
10
What is new? Heisei militarization

• hollowing-out Article 9
• shift from defensive defense to threat-based
  defence
• upgrading and expanding military forces
• willingness to rely on military solutions
• legitimation of use of military force abroad
• closer operational integration with US forces
• growing possibility of weapons of mass destruction

11
New security thinking

• The past
• Yoshida doctrine
• defensive defence and comprehensive defence
• the culture of Article 9
• The future
• Proportional (to threats) defence
• Great power realism
• The new nationalism

12
New policy developments in Heisei militarisation

• Special forces
• Intelligence
• Overseas deployments
• Missile defence

13
The fading taboo - the nuclear option

• The means necessary
• nuclear device
• targeting capacity
• delivery capacity
• The impediments
• US
• public opinion
• IAEA and NPT
• The pressures
• The chances

14
Rokkasho spent fuel reprocessing plant
15
Japanese plutonium-mixed uranium oxide fuel
container reloaded onto Pacific Pintail after
admission by BFL of falsified quality control,
June 2002
16
H-IIA F8 configuration
17
Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS)
18
Strategic contexts for Japanese risk

• Japanese politics - chronic crisis and democratic
  deficits
• delegitimising Japanese democracy abroad -
  history, sex and negative soft power
• the brevity of the American unipolar moment
• Japans choice US vs. China?
• the delayed American choice on China
• the implausible solidity of Market-Leninism in
  China
• the restructuring of East Asia?

19
Japan and Australia military cooperation

• Japan already Australias number 5 military
  partner
• intelligence collaboration,
• Japanese bases in Australia
• maritime cooperation
• official exchanges
• joint exercises
• counter-terrorism activities
• joint participation in a wide range of mainly
  US-led multilateral activities.

20
Japan-Australia Joint Declaration on Security
Cooperation

• Systematises existing arrangements
• "affirming the common strategic interests and
  security benefits embodied in their respective
  alliance relationships with the United States,
  and committing to strengthening trilateral
  cooperation
• Prefigures further bilateral expansion
• Expansion to four-way cooperation
• United States, Japan, Australia, India
• Nuclear options for both countries.

21
Militarising foreign policy wrong horse, wrong
race

• The anachronism of Great Power Realism for Japan
• The problem of alliance maintenance
• The problem of nationalisms
• What has been jettisoned in Japan
• The real security imperatives from regional
  expressions of global problems

22
Five global problems as security threats for
Japan and Australia

• climate change - sudden or progressive
• infectitious disease pandemics
• energy and resource depletion and competition
• cross-border pollution
• regressive consequences of globalisation

23

• Webpage http//gc.nautilus.org/Nautilus/australia
  
• Email rtanter_at_nautilus.org