Japanese policy leaders repeatedly stressed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a clear violation of international law, and that Japan should stand up for upholding a ‘rules-based’ international order. For the first time, the term ‘international order’ has appeared repeatedly in Japanese foreign policy statements. Japanese people have generally stood behind the Kishida government’s foreign and security policy activism, including with support for a hike of the defence budget.
Yet there are problems and uncertainties about Japan’s future course. Can Japan confront ‘a three-front war’ against China, North Korea and Russia? How can Japan manage its relations with both the United States and China in an era of great power competition and a growing risk of military conflict, such as that over the Taiwan Strait, when Japan’s economic security is so heavily tied to China within East Asia? How can it best cope with the emerging and existential global issues of inflation, energy shortage, global warming and the crisis of the nuclear non-proliferation regime?
These issues are examined in the new issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly, edited by Tomohiko Satake, launched online today and live online at the Japan Update conference on 7 September.
The Kishida government is due to release a comprehensive strategic review of its security policy and a new National Security Strategy by the end of the year. This will be the first update since Japan released its first ever National Security Strategy in 2013 under former prime minister Shinzo Abe.
Given how Kishida has conducted his foreign and security policy so far, and given the manner in which he came to power, in what future direction can we expect him to steer Japanese security policy?
Kishida has positioned himself as a consensus builder. This was a deliberate corrective and a way to contrast himself in the eyes of the public from former prime minister Shinzo Abe, who positioned himself one step ahead of the public and then sought to bring them along. At the same time, Kishida came to power relying on the support of Abe as the leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s biggest faction, the Seiwakai.
Even in the wake of Abe’s shocking assassination in July, since the balance of factional power within the LDP has over the last two decades shifted, it is with the conservative nationalist Seiwakai that Kishida, and his ostensibly liberal Kochikai faction, must forge a consensus. This narrows the possible options for Kishida in formulating his security strategy.
In our first lead article this week, Yoshihide Soeya explains that ‘Abe divided Japanese politics and society more than any other leader in recent history. He had a steadfast devotion to a conservative domestic agenda’, including patriotic education, constitutional revision and historical revisionism.
This legacy of division, Soeya explains, continues to affect the Kishida government today. ‘Kishida’s decision to honour Abe with a state funeral was received with very mixed public feelings. According to polls conducted by the Kyodo Press, 53.3 per cent opposed the decision while 45.1 per cent approved. Nikkei’s polling was only slightly more favourable with 47 per cent against the state funeral and 43 per cent in favour’.
In a bid to build consensus, Kishida will rely on a few different elements.
First, Kishida will continue to implement particular elements of Abe’s policy where there is consensus. This includes maintaining the Free and Open Indo Pacific (FOIP) and the Quad as key pillars of Japanese foreign and security policy.
On the question of constitutional revision, Kishida is likely to continue to pay lip service to the idea to keep the Seiwakai onside. But he is unlikely to devote much of his limited political capital to anything other than moderate changes that have broad public support.
As Soeya suggests, Kishida may also seek to stress the cooperative aspects of Abe’s overall approach toward China. From 2018, ‘Abe himself changed his approach towards China. In October 2018, he and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Beijing and agreed that bilateral relations were now back on track. Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also agreed that Japan and China would promote economic cooperation bilaterally and regionally. In 2019, Abe formally invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Japan as a state guest in the spring of 2020, a visit that has so far been unrealised because of COVID-19’.
With 2022 being the 50th anniversary of Japan-China diplomatic normalization, now would be the time to do it.
The changing nature of the international security environment means that it’s likely that Kishida will ‘invest much more in its military capabilities and will examine how to retaliate against an increasingly hostile set of neighbours’, Sheila Smith explains in our second lead this week. Indeed, ‘Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has ‘affected the new 10-year defence plan that will set the course for Japan’s own military planning. Japan must now worry more than ever that Moscow and Beijing will join forces against it’. And ‘the live-fire exercises conducted by the People’s Republic of China after US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan demonstrate a jump in the [People’s Liberation Army’s] capabilities to act jointly and across domains to control the waters and airspace in and around Taiwan’.
In the past, arguments for increased defence spending tended to elicit controversy and pushback. Abe’s critics bristled at his nationalist and historical revisionist packaging of such proposals. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the game. Kishida’s emphasis of the invasion as ‘an outrageous act that undermines the very foundation of the international order’ and Japan’s response to it as ‘defending the post-war status quo’, mean that this time Kishida may be able to facilitate some sense of consensus and public support on bolstering Japan’s defence spending.
Still, as one mountain is conquered a new peak arises. Kishida’s consensus-building capabilities may be put to the sword as new battles emerge over where any increased defence spending is directed and how to pay for it given the severe financial constraints from Japan’s public debt, ageing and shrinking population and taxpayer base.
The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.