Japan’s Role in the Evolving Indo-Pacific Security Architecture

Japan’s unprecedented economic growth after the country’s defeat in WWII was not followed by a corresponding strengthening of military capabilities. By the 1980s, Japan was labelled as an “economic giant and politico-military dwarf.” This started to change in the 2000s, especially in the 2010s during the premiership of late Abe Shinzo, under the banner of “proactive contribution to peace” and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). The external drivers of Japan’s policy change included North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missiles programmes, China’s military rise and assertive behaviour in the China Seas, and Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. At the same time, the powerful systemic factors have been mitigated by domestic constrains, such as pacifist Constitution, anti-militarist sentiments and pacifist national identity. The legal and institutional reforms introduced by Prime Minister Abe, including reinterpretation of the right to collective self-defence, made it easier for his successors, notably Kishida Fumio, to strengthen further Japan’s security posture and military cooperation with various intra- and extra-regional players. Nonetheless, some of the domestic constrains have remained.
This panel invites papers that focus on security cooperation, understood mostly in terms of defence and military, that has been developing in the broadly-defined Indo-Pacific region with Japan as one of the players, but not necessarily from the perspective of Japan. Inviting various theoretical approaches, this panel aims to clarify the forms, mechanisms and rationale of security cooperation in the context of US-China strategic competition, as well as the patterns of interplay between the international and domestic factors that shape security policy.
The questions that this panel will address include (but are not limited to) the following: What forms of security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific has Japan pursued in the last two decades? How have the domestic constraints influenced Japanese approaches to security cooperation in light of the growing systemic pressures? What instruments have been employed by Japan (or with Japan and other countries) to deepen bilateral/minilateral security ties, respond to China’s rise and tackle other security threats? How has this cooperation shaped the evolving regional security architecture in the Indo-Pacific region?